Reacting to the decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to strike 879 applications against Russia from its list of cases on grounds of their lesser importance to case law and a lack of resources for their examination, Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia Director, said:
“The European Court of Human Rights’ decision is deeply disappointing. It deprives hundreds of individuals of what for many of them is their last hope of seeing justice for the violations they have suffered.
“The decision to deny these victims their day in court cannot be justified by Russia’s refusal to execute Court judgments, or the fact that the remaining applications raise no novel questions of law, or restraints on resources. This decision should be reversed and the cases brought back on the Court’s docket.
“Council of Europe member states must meanwhile ensure that the ECtHR has the financial and human resources required to fulfill its fundamental role. In addition, they should exhaust all available means to ensure that Russia is held accountable for its violations under the European Convention on Human Rights and that its obligations to implement the judgments through individual measure, including the payment of compensations to victims, are fulfilled.”
Background
On September 3, 2026, the European Court of Human Rights announced its decision to strike 879 applications against Russia from its list, the earliest pending since 2007, despite acknowledging that they contained potentially well-founded allegations of violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court said the cases did not raise issues of marked importance for Russia’s responsibility under the Convention or require further development of its case law.
The applications concerned, among other issues, fair-trial rights, freedom of expression, conditions of detention, property rights and freedom of movement as listed in the Lebedeva and Others v. Russia decision. The applications also included cases brought by former prisoners of conscience, human rights defender Oyub Titiev and opposition activist Andrei Borovikov, the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society and Stanislav Dmitrievsky, and politician and prisoner of conscience Lev Shlosberg.
Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe on March 16, 2022 for starting its war of aggression against Ukraine and ceased to be a party to the Convention on September 16, 2022, but the ECtHR retains jurisdiction over violations committed before that date.
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