Human Rights in Russia week-ending 29 May 2021 - with Kirill Koroteev

Simon and Sergei

This week our guest on the podcast is Kirill Koroteev. Kirill is head of international legal practice at the Agora International Human Rights Group. Kirill used to work as legal director of the Memorial Human Rights Center, where he specialised in handling cases before the European Court of Human Rights. Kirill graduated from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and has a Masters degree from the University of Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Among the issues discussed in the podcast are: important differences between the legal systems of France, England and Russia; whether lawyers require different skills to work in the legal systems of Russia, France and the UK; the European Court of Human Rights - what is good and what is bad; the law on 'foreign agents'; the ECtHR and the law on 'foreign agents'; the work of the Agora Human Rights Group; major human rights issues in Russia today; last year's Constitutional changes and the ECtHR; Russia and the Council of Europe; the future of human rights in Russia.

This podcast is in Russian. You can also listen to the podcast on our website or on SoundCloud, Spotify and iTunes.

The music, from Stravinsky’s Elegy for Solo Viola, is performed for us by Karolina Herrera.

Sergei Nikitin writes on Facebook: "-You see, if we consider the Russian judicial system with regard to its formal norms, we find everything that we can find in other countries: the system of legislation, constitutional oversight, judicial review of the executive. Reading the jurisprudene of the Supreme Court, we can find both the concept of legal certainty and the concept of judicial review over the abuse of power, and so on and so forth. All of this exists as general principles of jurisprudence, but when you go to court, the answer you get in the courts-at least in the courts where the state is involved-is that the minister's decision is correct because it was made by the minister. A bureaucratized judicial system is combined with a complete lack of judicial independence. The judge knows that a judgment not in favour of the state will be overturned, and by the number of judgments that are overturned, their work will be judged. Our interlocutor, Kirill Koroteev, is head of international legal practice at the Agora International Human Rights Ggroup and was formerly legal director at Memorial Human Rights Centre. Kirill told Simon Cosgrove and me about his rich legal experience, about the Romano-Germanic and Anglo-Saxon legal families, about his work and much more. I regret that the subject matter of our podcast this time did not give Kirill an opportunity to reveal his knowledge of the musical collective The Beatles, where he is also a first-class specialist."

Simon Cosgrove adds: "If you want to listen to this podcast on the podcasts.com website and it doesn’t seem to play, please download by clicking on the three dots to the right. A summary of some of the week’s events in Russia relevant to human rights can be found on our website here"