Russia Examines Itself: Meeting with Commissioner for Human Rights Tatyana Moskalkova

Do note the size of the hard bound reports atop the table.

Few nations review their own human rights record to seek improvement to their social systems. For example, the Outlaw US Empire is famous for examining, criticizing and illegally punishing other nations but never examines its own very calamitous shortcomings and related crimes. IMO, it takes a measure of confidence to be introspective of one’s self and even more when it comes to ordering an examination of your own nation’s behavior regarding its treatment of its citizenry. IMO, this report reveals an attitude—a philosophy—Russia’s enemies don’t want the world to know: Russia has a far better set of values than they, and Russia’s transparent about them. Readers will note that Putin has delegated the investigation and policing of social conditions and rights within Russia to women, and they’ve not disappointed. Tatyana Nikolaevna has held her post since 2016 and has built a powerful agency. At the transcript’s opening it links to the section of Russia’s Constitution dealing with her office that I’d like to present a portion of before we deal with the discussion, which is known as Article 1:

1. The position of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation (hereinafter referred to as the Commissioner) shall be established in accordance with the Constitution of the Russian Federation for the purpose of ensuring guarantees of state protection of the rights and freedoms of citizens, their observance and respect by state bodies, bodies of local self-government and officials.

2. The Commissioner shall be appointed and dismissed by the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation.

3. By the means specified in this Federal Constitutional Law, the Commissioner shall contribute to the restoration of violated rights, the improvement of the legislation of the Russian Federation on human and civil rights and bringing it into line with the generally recognized principles and norms of international law, the development of international cooperation in the field of human rights, legal education on human rights and freedoms, forms and methods of their protection.

Yes, this is enshrined in Russia’s Constitution and IMO is stronger than the Bill of Rights, which again Russia’s enemies don’t want anyone to know about—Russia’s constitutionally obliged to examine itself to ensure it conforms to international human rights standards. The Outlaw US Empire cannot say that, nor can most other nations. Putin the lawyer makes Obama the lawyer look like he bought his diploma and never learned anything. IMO, Putin’s adherence to the law has earned the trust of many nations and is the major reason why the attempts by the West to denigrate Russia have failed so badly. Now let’s read the report:

Vladimir Putin: Tatyana Nikolaevna, are the positions of the Commissioner for Human Rights established in all the constituent entities of the Russian Federation?

Questioner: That's right. With the exception of Zaporozhye yet.

Vladimir Putin: You will soon have a report in the State Duma. What would you like to talk about at our meeting today?

Tatyana Moskalkova: Mr President, in accordance with the Federal Constitutional Law, I first submit to you an annual report on the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation and his activities.

You have started your first visits abroad to Belarus and Uzbekistan. We work very closely with our colleagues from Belarus and with the Ombudsman of Uzbekistan within the framework of the Commission on Human Rights of the CIS that you and other CIS heads of state have re-established. Last year, the first meeting was held. We have put together a roadmap for our work.

Creating a safe space and creating economic conditions for development is, of course, the most important thing, it guarantees the right to life, the right to social success. In my report, I describe in detail, analyze for each group of rights and for each category of citizens, what rights are in what position.

At the same time, we, of course, rely on the FOM – the Public Opinion Foundation: it is very important to track how people assess the state of their security. I must say that the picture has changed significantly in ten years. If ten years ago people believed that their rights were respected only in 32 percent, today this figure is much higher – 52 percent. Conversely, the number of citizens who critically assess and believe that the rights of citizens are not respected has decreased from 63 percent to 36.

This is the result of consistent and serious work of all State bodies to fulfill their constitutional duty-to protect human and civil rights and freedoms.

Here, too, our contribution to this situation is being made through hard, serious work, honing the tools provided to us by the Federal Constitutional Law-to me, the Federal Commissioner – and the law that you signed in 2020 "On Human Rights Commissioners in the Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation".

In two years, we have managed to improve the results three times and help more than 17 thousand citizens, and together with collective appeals – this is 87 thousand. We try to go to the site if we see that this is a collective, shouting appeal, but we get answers that everything is in order. We will continue this practice.

But, for the sake of justice, this diagram shows how the number of requests coming to us has increased – up to more than 93 thousand. This trend of increasing the number of applications continues, because people's trust in the institution of the Commissioner for Human Rights is growing.

But, on the other hand, people are also becoming more demanding to respect their rights. Today, it is very important to rebuild and improve our mechanisms and tools provided by the law, and we also use our own inspections or with the involvement of the prosecutor's office, we file administrative claims in court to protect people.

We were approached by a woman from among orphaned children who could not get housing for ten years, despite the fact that a court decision was made. We filed an administrative claim to the court, the court supported us, and she was not only provided with housing, but also paid moral damages.

It is very important that people, of course, receive support from our institute. And this support is not only related to the violation of rights – today there are more and more humanitarian appeals: they are not related to the fact that officials or bodies violated the law. People turn to us for help due to a special situation – these are evacuees who are currently staying in temporary accommodation centers on our territory, and, of course, family members of the participants and participants of the free self-defense system.

We pay special attention to this category. And not only due to the fact that we have created a round-the-clock "hotline", we have all employees in turn and on night phones also respond to signals. We have specially created a division that deals only with these issues.

But the most important thing is the ability to empathize, get in direct contact and explain to people what is being done to resolve a particular situation. We have a lot of appeals today related to missing persons and captivity. There are also requests related to payments and medical care.

We were able to help several thousand people in close cooperation with the Ministry of Defense, the FSB, and other government agencies. We keep in touch in dialogue with the Ombudsman of Ukraine, exchange lists of missing persons, and we managed to determine the fate of more than 100 people and help.

We agreed to simultaneously visit each other: I – the Ukrainian servicemen who are on our territory, and the Ukrainian Commissioner for Human Rights – our prisoners of war. We visited more than 1,700 people, and last year we began by mutual agreement to transfer things and parcels from home to our prisoners. This is very important today, and it is very important that this dialogue is preserved.

We also cooperate with the International Committee of the Red Cross and insist that our prisoners are not just visited, but provided with medical care and do everything necessary to ensure that the Geneva Conventions are respected.

We will continue this humanitarian work. We are in demand here, and we will work wholeheartedly.

Vladimir Putin: Good.

Tatyana Moskalkova: It depends – as you correctly say, as we all understand it – on what point of reference we are in the history of our state's development.

We continued to work with evacuees and, of course, in new territories. Zaporozhye is still in the process of creating the institution of the commissioner, so we left and created our own public reception offices there. People can come in, ask for help, and solve pressing issues.

It is very important that the commissioners for human rights showed themselves in extreme situations – not only working as a single team with appeals from members of the SVO and their families, but also during the floods in Orenburg, our commissioner was immediately included in the governor's headquarters. And it is very important that he directly communicated with people, looked at where they were resettled, what conditions they had. We participated in a large amount of humanitarian aid that was delivered to people, provided explanations and legal advice.

Together with Maria Lvova-Belova, we are consolidating in this regard, so that in these extreme conditions we can be together with people and help them solve complex issues.

Of course, work continued on the so-called traditional appeals: social rights, the rights of people held in places of deprivation of liberty, and criminal procedure rights.

As for socio-economic rights, the number of complaints has decreased, especially on labor issues. National projects launched today and state programs are yielding results. Nevertheless, we are faced with the fact that there are non-payment of wages, lack of indexation. With our assistance, more than four thousand people have received their delayed wages.

Many families were relocated from dilapidated homes. A collective big complaint came from the Komi Republic that the houses in which people live are not recognized as emergency, and it is impossible to live in them. We received seemingly reassuring letters. We went to the site, made sure that these houses really should be included [in the list of emergency], the head of the republic helped us, and today people received the necessary compensation in order to purchase the necessary housing.

They helped collect alimony payments from careless parents and provide housing for orphaned children. In this large book, unlike the previous report that I presented to you, we have introduced a separate section on the categories of citizens who we consider the most vulnerable: disabled people, pensioners.

And this year we will pay special attention to those citizens who live in rural areas. You gave an impulse in your Address to the Federal Assembly, and we have just held a large coordination council in the Republic of Dagestan on this topic, where all the authorized representatives of the country have gathered.

Of course, there are a lot of problems today, and we are appealing to the State Duma to speed up, for example, the adoption of the law on mobile pharmaceutical points, on expanding organizations that have the right to sell medicines in these regions.

We ask the Government to consider subsidizing the delivery of construction materials to hard-to-reach regions. Unfortunately, we do not have a program on mountain settlements. They have their own very serious features, and we recommend that the Government look at the possibilities of developing such a program in order to increase the guarantees of the rights of citizens living in rural areas.

In criminal proceedings, we still have the leading number of complaints-in comparison with other categories, although it has slightly decreased compared to last year – regarding the quality of the investigation. But a large number of complaints are related to refusals to initiate criminal proceedings.

A person reports that a theft or assault has been committed against him – this is assessed without collecting evidence), and the person is refused to find the criminal and compensate him for harm. And only on our appeals, and thanks to the law, we have the right to get acquainted with the materials of pre-investigation checks ourselves, and we see that they are sometimes formal, and we see that a person should have been admitted to justice, but he was refused.

We canceled 450 appeals, and the prosecutors cancel them by hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands – this is a big problem. I will appeal to the State Duma to create a special working group and consider the possibility of starting an investigation of at least obvious crimes from the moment a crime is registered.

And, of course, there is still, oddly enough, a large number of appeals related to detention. This measure of restraint, despite the fact that you have repeatedly raised these issues at the Board of the Prosecutor General's Office, is still very relevant in our country. There are even cases when the investigation asks for house arrest, and the court gives a measure of restraint in the form of detention. I am particularly concerned when this is related to nonviolent crimes against women, against women with children. The court will have its say, but before the trial there is a whole scale of other coercive measures.

The situation in the penitentiary system has improved. The law on counteraction, on strengthening responsibility for torture is working today, although we receive these appeals, but we see the reaction of the prosecutor's office, the Ministry of Justice, and the Federal Penitentiary Service.

The largest number of requests today is related to the condition of detention. I visit the colonies quite often, I was in the Rostov region, in the Donetsk People's Republic, in the Kostroma region. Repairs have been made, and the colonies have become better. But there are also those that still require investments, and maybe not material investments, but investments of the soul and creative approach.

Vladimir Putin: We should not forget about the material ones either. There's a lot more to do. People should be kept in normal, human conditions.

Tatyana Moskalkova: Absolutely correct. But, oddly enough, today the penal enforcement system is developing faster than places for holding persons subject to expulsion, temporary detention centers for foreign citizens. They are sometimes kept there for years, and their conditions are more than modest.

Many temporary detention facilities require serious capital investments and material costs, and in our report we recommend that the Government pay attention to this. There are temporary detention centers that, in violation of the law, do not have a walking courtyard, that is, people cannot go out for a walk.

In addition to working with requests, we also have other areas.

Vladimir Putin: Do you have all this marked?

Tatyana Moskalkova: Yes, we have a whole section devoted to recommendations to the authorities, and I will ask you to instruct the Government to consider them.

In the same report, there are other areas that are mandatory for us: legal education, lawmaking, coordination of the activities of the Russian Federation's human rights commissioners in court, and international cooperation.

Despite the fact that they tried to isolate us from integration platforms, there is still a lot of interest in us today, and the international conference that we hold annually with your support is developing successfully. Last year, more than 40 countries came to overcome difficult logistical problems.

The Eurasian Alliance of Ombudsmen is developing. We started with four States six years ago, and today these are the ombudsmen of ten States. We meet every year, discuss a lot of interesting topics, and promote international cooperation in a bilateral format.

In conclusion, I would like to say that this solid report – which I think is solid – contains detailed information on all areas of the Commissioner's activities.

In conclusion, I would like to thank you for your support of the Institution of Human Rights Commissioners and for the fact that you, as a guarantor of human and civil rights and freedoms, are doing a tremendous job in this direction.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you.

The Human Rights Research and Education Center works for you, right?

Tatyana Moskalkova: The Scientific and Educational Center was created with your support…

Vladimir Putin: In 2019.

Tatyana Moskalkova: That's right. I have asked you that we do not have a single such solid center in the country that can train both young human rights commissioners and their staff – the staff should know how to work with appeals - to train members of public monitoring commissions who work in colonies, to work with young human rights organizations.

For many years, they imposed on us their own understanding of human rights and their own understanding of the protection of human rights. Today we have significantly changed this understanding. And, of course, a person in his rights is his social well-being, the right to life, the right to happiness. This is all that we are trying to ensure, not just [the rights of] certain, narrow categories of people.

Vladimir Putin: Good. Thank you very much. [My Emphasis]

Russians are gaining greater confidence in their government to solve social and other problems, which gives Russia’s institutions the opportunity to do their jobs and prove their worth. Yes, Russia’s imperfect, but unlike some nations it’s aware of that fact, knows it has problems, and does its best to solve those that are made known. One of the major factors that helps this development is that Russia’s national political parties also act as social agencies to help with problems of governance at the municipal levels, not just get out the vote organizations that become active as elections near. I also believe that those in government have learned it’s best to trust the public, not fear it as was the general situation during the Soviet period. And this great change from 1984 to 2024 in public/government trust makes it very difficult to buy Russians to betray their nation. And that affects the Near Abroad too.

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