After five and a half years of difficult deliberation, the State Duma ratified Protocol No. 14 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. A significant event happened on January 15th. This protocol still could not come into force only because Russia was the only one of the 47 member countries of the Council of Europe that refused to ratify it. This long-suffering document concerns the reform of the European Court.

Interview with the rector of the St. Philaret Institute, Prof. Priest. Georgy Kochetkov “Daily Journal”: Father Georgy, what events in the social and church life of Russia last year were, from your point of view, the most important?

In the opposition We are in the "Camp of Good" January 16, 2010 Zoya Svetova Two news in some surprising way coincided. The Banner magazine awarded the literary prize Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Lyudmila Ulitskaya for their correspondence, published in the same journal. The European Court of Human Rights for the second time postponed a hearing on the complaint of Yukos to Russia. The initiator of the transfer of the hearings was Russia.

The Judicial Collegium of the Supreme Court of Tatarstan upheld the verdict against Irek Murtazin, the former press secretary of the President of the Republic Mintimer Shaimiev. Murtazin was sentenced to a year and 9 months in a colony-settlement, according to the wording, for slandering the head of the republic and inciting social discord or hostility. The social group to which Murtazin allegedly incited hostility is understood to be the power of Tatarstan.