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Ukraine’s appeal to ECHR over arrested sailors’ case groundless, says Russian ministry

The Justice ministry believes that Kiev "overuses its right to file interstate complaints"

MOSCOW, December 11. /TASS/. Ukraine’s appeal to the European Court of Human Rights over the restrictive measures taken against the detained 24 Ukrainian sailors, who on November 25 illegally crossed the Russian state border in the Kerch Strait area, is based on allegations and speculations, the Russian Justice Ministry said in reply to ECHR questions following Ukraine’s complaint against Russia.

The Justice Ministry said it had replied to all of the ECHR’s questions and at the same time protested a number of procedural flaws in the Ukrainian authorities’ appeal and the way the ECHR responded to them.

"The Russian authorities believe that Ukraine overuses its right to file interstate complaints and tries to employ the European Court as a tool of getting information and attaining selfish political aims," the Russian Justice Ministry said in a statement received by TASS.

The Justice Ministry said that the Russian authorities’ answers to the questions about the circumstances of the detention of 24 Ukrainian nationals on board the Ukrainian ships The Berdyansk, The Nikopol, and The Yanu Kapu, stopped by Russian border guards in the Kerch Strait on November 25, had been dispatched to the ECHR on December 10. In its replies Russia said that the aforesaid Ukrainian nationals were detained in the capacity of suspects under Part 3 of Article 322 of Russia’s Criminal Code (illegal crossing of the Russian state border committed by collusion or by an organized group and accompanied by violence or the threat to use violence) and remanded in custody on the basis of resolutions by Russian courts in accordance with the applicable rules of criminal procedure. Also, the ECHR was briefed on the whereabouts of the detained Ukrainian citizens, the availability of legal assistance to them, the light injuries three of the detained suffered and the medical assistance provided to them, as well as the fact that the Ukrainian citizens had no complaints to make and that the situation was kept under control by human rights commissioners in Crimea, Moscow and Russia.