A recent ruling by Russia’s Constitutional Court supporting the legality of a law on “discrediting the army” is in fact a constitutional coup d’etat. The judges have proclaimed that the supreme value of the Constitution is no longer the individual, and his or her rights and freedoms, but the state. The approval of the invasion of Ukraine is now a Russian citizen’s constitutional duty, lawyers Elena Lukyanova and Ilya Shablinsky say.

  • Russia’s Constitutional Court claims invasion of Ukraine justifies anti-constitutional legislation

    The Constitutional Court’s ruling also states that the article does not infringe on “an individual’s freedom to choose and hold and act in accordance with certain beliefs, since such freedom does not involve the perpetration of offenses.”

    “A perfect argument,” lawyer Konstantin Zosin wrote in a Facebook post. “By the way, the court’s only argument in terms of violating freedom of belief. So, for example, you could theoretically pass a law to shoot all those who write with their left hand. And this law would not violate the rights of left-handed people, since the exercise of the rights of left-handed people does not involve them committing an offense, that is, using their left hand when writing, which is forbidden by this law.”