The Foreign Ministry admitted a change in the law on domestic violence after the decision of the ECHR – RBK

The court also ordered Russia to take measures to combat domestic violence, protect victims, rehabilitate victims and change public opinion about violence against women.

Former State Duma deputy Oksana Pushkina, who is a co-author of the Russian bill on the prevention of domestic violence, considered the decision of the ECHR a victory. Press secretary of the head of state Dmitry Peskov, in turn, did not comment on the decision of the ECHR, saying that Russia has enough tools to combat domestic violence.

The bill on the prevention of domestic violence in Russia was introduced in 2019 to the State Duma, but was never adopted. According to the document, it is proposed to consider domestic violence as a deliberate act “causing or containing a threat of causing physical or mental suffering”, which does not contain signs of an administrative or criminal offense.

According to the draft, spouses or ex-spouses can be recognized as victims of domestic violence; a man and a woman who have children in common; close relatives, as well as other persons living together and running a joint household.

In early December 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the bill must be balanced in order to exclude “the possibility of external interference in the life of the family.”

In December 2017, Dmitry Grachev took his wife Margarita to the forest and chopped off her hands with an ax out of jealousy. The Investigative Committee opened criminal cases on the infliction of grievous bodily harm, which entailed the loss of an organ (subparagraphs “b, h”, part 2 of Art. 111 of the Criminal Code), as well as abduction (part 2 of Art. 126 of the Criminal Code – two episodes) and the threat of murder (part 1 of article 119 of the Criminal Code).

Serpukhovskaya court of the Moscow region sentenced Grachev to 14 years in a strict regime colony and ordered to recover 2 million 35 thousand rubles. as compensation for moral damage.

At the same time, before the incident, the man had already taken Margarita Gracheva into the forest, threatening her with murder. After that, the woman went to the police, but the district police officer refused to open a case. Later, he himself became a defendant in the negligence case (part 1 of article 293 of the Criminal Code), he was also fired from law enforcement agencies.