Show notes
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mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">6) What is the legality of showing public videos of
conversations and press conferences with prisoners of war. Is this a violation
of the Geneva Conventions? Valentina Melnikova, for examples, has argued that such
videos can save the lives of Russian POWs (see Valentina Melnikova’s interview
with Gordeeva in the program "Tell Gordeeva").
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mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">7) Do you see any scenario in which Russia could rejoin
the Council of Europe?
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mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">8) Could the exclusion of Russia could have a
positive impact on the Court, given that Russia has one of the worst records so
far as implementing the Court’s decisions is concerned?
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mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">9) According to existing estimates, as many as
250,000 people have left Russia because of the invasion of Ukraine. A great
many of them are young professionals, including lawyers. Do you think this is a
temporary phenomenon? Will people return to Russia in the near future? Or is
this a development that will last for many years?
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black;letter-spacing:.3pt; mso-fareast-language:EN-GB">10) How do you see the future of human rights in the Russian Federation?
Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: “For this reason, a lot of class specialists in the legal practice of the ECtHR appeared in Rusia,” Kirill Koroteev told us, referring to the fact that the flawed judicial system in Russia led to a large increase in applications to Strasbourg. However, on 16 March 2022 Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe. This is the first case of exclusion of a State from the Council of Europe: only Greece left the Council in 1969, and then on its own initiative.
Simon Cosgrove and I asked Kirill if there had been any alternative to this course of events. His opinion is that there was an alternative: an even earlier exclusion of Russia from the Council of Europe. After all, the main purpose of this oldest European organization is cooperation among member states, not armed conflicts among them.
According to Kirill in 2019, the Council of Europe for the sake of 60 million euros actually did everything to permit the Russian authorities to remain members. If the Council had suspended Russia’s membership in 2019, as the organization’s own documents demanded, perhaps membership would have ended sooner.
Kirill, like many Russians, has left a country where the rule of law has long been dormant.
“All we’ve seen in the last 10-12 years,” he says, “is deterioration. What hope for the future is there?”