Russia moves to withdraw from European Convention for Prevention of Torture

The Russian government has called on Vladimir Putin to withdraw the country from the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture, according to a resolution published on a government portal on Monday.

The resolution, dated 23 August and signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, approves the government’s “denunciation” of the convention and its additional protocols and calls on Putin to submit the proposal to the lower house of parliament for Russia’s formal withdrawal.

The convention was adopted by Council of Europe member states in 1987, and Russia ratified it in 1998, two years after joining the organisation. It established the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), a regulatory body authorised to carry out unannounced inspections of prisons, detention centres and psychiatric facilities to assess conditions and prevent torture and abuses.

Following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia was excluded from the Council of Europe, meaning Russian citizens lost the protection of the European Convention on Human Rights and no longer had access to the European Court of Human Rights.

However, Moscow technically remained bound by the Convention for the Prevention of Torture, as it had not formally withdrawn from it.

In November, the CPT criticised Russia’s “persistent lack of cooperation” with the convention, accusing Moscow of refusing to allow inspections and failing to provide information on “certain specific events which have raised concerns”, including the death of opposition leader Alexey Navalny in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024.

International organisations have repeatedly voiced concerns about Russia’s increased use of torture since 2022, with an October report by the UN finding that torture in Russia was “widespread and systematic” and “committed with impunity” by the authorities.