The head of the Investigative Committee proposed to return the death penalty

The head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, proposed considering the possibility of lifting the moratorium on the death penalty. He stated this at the International Youth Legal Forum "Values ​​of Law in the Context of the New World Order," TASS reports .

"We need to consider lifting the moratorium on the death penalty. In some cases it needs to be applied, and in these cases I am a supporter of the death penalty," Bastrykin said, noting that a corresponding presidential decree would be sufficient for this.

Following the terrorist attack at Moscow's Crocus City Hall in March of this year, which claimed at least 145 lives, many Russian public and political figures began to talk about the need to lift the moratorium and the need to return the death penalty to Russia.

Thus, in particular, the leader of the party "A Just Russia - for Truth" Sergei Mironov said that he would achieve a referendum on this issue on the Single Voting Day on September 8, 2024.

In turn, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin stated that a nationwide vote is not needed to return the death penalty, but a corresponding decision by the Constitutional Court is sufficient. The court then declined to comment, citing the fact that this issue could become the subject of consideration. However, later in June 2024, Constitutional Court Chairman Valery Zorkin stated that the return of the death penalty in Russia is unacceptable, at least under the country's current Constitution.

"Just as the threats against which these measures are directed are 'mobile', so too can the measures aimed at counteracting them be 'mobile', and as a consequence, so can their constitutional assessment. (...) But there are also limits to such 'mobility'. For the Constitutional Court, one of these is the certainty of the inadmissibility of resuming the appointment and application of the death penalty within the framework of the current Constitution," Zorkin wrote in a report on the impossibility of returning the death penalty to Russia.

The Kremlinhas refused to state its position on the issue of reintroducing the death penalty. Vladimir Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said in March that Putin was refraining from participating in the discussion.

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