The price of black PR

The European Court of Human Rights upheld the complaint of former Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov against the refusal to register him as a candidate for the State Duma during the 2003 elections. The court found Russia to be in violation of Article 3 of the First Protocol of the Human Rights Convention “Holding free elections”, and therefore Skuratov was awarded compensation in the amount of 8 thousand euros. In addition, Russia must pay legal costs in the amount of 12 thousand euros. At the same time, the court rejected the application in the part that contained a complaint about the unfairness of the trial.

This news has two components: on the one hand, the figure of Skuratov, on the other, the decision of the European Court directly related to Russian election legislation. Former Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Skuratov has been featured in newspaper spreads twice lately: the first time when he stated that he was ready to become a prosecution witness in the Aeroflot case, that is, to help Russian justice convict Berezovsky in absentia. The second is in connection with the satisfaction of his complaint in the European Court. Skuratov is an extremely controversial figure and, apparently, all this PR may be connected with his desire to return to “big politics”, it is possible that as a deputy of the State Duma of the next convocation, at the same time once again playing in the Putin-Yeltsin contrast. They say that bad Yeltsin, together with the disgusting Berezovsky, set up and disgraced poor Skuratov, but with a good Putin, you can appear in public again, and at the same time kick bad Yeltsin.

But these are Mr. Skuratov’s personal ambitions, but the complaint is much more interesting: according to lawyers, this is a very important precedent for us. In fact, the European Court of Human Rights made a decision regarding domestic Russian electoral legislation, recognizing that Russia violated the Convention and that our elections are not as free and fair as they say on central television. True, this decision does not have any direct legal significance; Russia is not obliged to change anything.