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In its judgment in the case of Sokolovskiy v. Russia the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) applied and clarified its case law on freedom of expression and religious hate speech in the online environment (see also Lenis v. Greece, IRIS 2023-9:1/21 and Tagiyev et Huseynov v. Azerbaijan, IRIS 2020-2:1/16). It found a violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) because the applicant blogger, Ruslan Gennadyevich Sokolovskiy, had been convicted in breach of his right to freedom of expression. The ECtHR found that the sanctions imposed on Sokolovskiy for offending the...

Amendments to the federal statutes on “foreign agents”, on advertising and on the mass media were adopted by the State Duma on 28 February and signed into law on 11 March 2024. They introduce a complete ban on advertising in the “information resources” of legal and physical entities listed by the Russian authorities as “foreign agents” (see IRIS 2022-10:1/7). The ban includes advertising in the media outlets published by these “foreign agents”, their social media channels, blogs and individual web pages. The administrative fine for Russian businesses...

A judgment of 13 February 2024 in the case of Podchasov v. Russia deals with the right to privacy as protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in relation to the retention of communications data and content by Internet service providers, the protection of encrypted messages and access by law-enforcement authorities and security services to such data and content. The judgment in Podchasov v. Russia is highly relevant for all member states of the ECHR, also in relation to the earlier case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on deploying bulk or secret...

On 30 May 2023, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation adopted thirteen resolutions to formally reject the admissibility of complaints on the unconstitutionality of Article 20.3.3 of the national Code on Administrative Offences from different complainants. The resolutions, published on 20 June 2023, are largely identical in their content and arguments. The article itself was introduced on 4 April 2022 to provide penalties for “public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation for the purpose of protecting the interests of the Russian...

In a judgment of 17 January 2023, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found that the wholesale blocking of access to a new website of an online media company on the grounds that its content “mirrored” the proscribed content on its former website amounted to a violation of the right to freedom of expression and information as guaranteed under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Although judgments of the ECtHR have minimal impact on the practices of the Russian authorities, the judgment in OOO Mediafokus is also relevant for other member states of...