MOSCOW, November 29. /TASS/. Russia doesn’t need to establish a domestic counterpart to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), since Russian courts are quite capable of coping with such tasks, Chairman of the Russian Constitutional Court Valery Zorkin said in a report, which was released on Tuesday.
"Russia’s current court system makes it possible to ensure proper interaction between its various branches and guarantee the full and effective protection of the people’s rights on the basis of the priority of human rights and using national judicial mechanisms. All problems that used to force our citizens to turn to the ECHR can and will be resolved within the Russian judicial system," Zorkin said in his report.
Zorkin noted that he "wouldn’t want to remember only the bad things," when Russia was under the ECHR’s jurisdiction. He also warned against hurrying to set up any interstate analogue to the ECHR. "Russia’s participation in the Convention (European Convention on Human Rights - TASS) has had a certain positive impact on the development of Russia’s human rights system. This experience should not be forgotten: it should be analyzed and properly used. But what we should be in no hurry to do is to set up, as is sometimes suggested, a new interstate court of human rights as an institutional substitute for the ECHR," the report says.
On March 15, 2022, the Russian government notified Secretary General of the Council of Europe Marija Pejcinovic Buric that Russia was withdrawing from the organization and planned to denounce the European Convention on Human Rights. On March 16, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers terminated Russia’s membership in the organization and the ECHR suspended consideration of claims filed by Russian nationals after September 16, 2022.