Russia Reform Monitor: No. 2027

December 4:

London's Register reports that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled Russia's mass surveillance of its citizens' telephone communications is a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which the country ratified in 1998. While the act of intercepting communications itself was accepted, the court condemned Russia's lack of "adequate and effective guarantees against arbitrariness and the risk of abuse." The violated article echoes Russia's own constitution, which guarantees "the right to privacy of correspondence, of telephone conversations, postal, telegraph and other messages" - all increasingly under threat as a result of the Kremlin's policies.

The Russian Duma has just approved a new law giving the country's Federal Constitutional Court the power to overrule international law, The Moscow Times reports. The law, if signed by President Vladimir Putin, would provide the Court with "a special legal mechanism for resolving the question of the possibility or impossibility of executing [international] court rulings from the point of view of the higher legal force of the Russian constitution" - effectively elevating Russian domestic law over international law, despite provisions in the Russian constitution stipulating the opposite.

December 5:

The recent rupture in diplomatic relations with Russia is forcing Turkey to rethink its energy priorities. London'sTelegraph reports that Ankara, a historic energy client of the Russian Federation, is casting a critical eye on its extensive dependency on Russian energy amid worsening diplomatic relations between the two countries. While more than half of Turkey's gas imports, and ten percent of its oil, currently come from Russia, "it is possible to find other suppliers," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned.

December 7:

According to Russia's Federal Security Service, the number of Russian citizens fighting with the Islamic State terrorist group has risen from 1,700 in February to 2,400 in September. The Financial Times reports that most of the Russian fighters are coming from the regions of Chechnya and Dagestan, while many immigrants from Central Asia become radicalized and recruited while in Russia as migrant workers. In response, Russian officials are employing a number of measures to stop the jihadi flow. Methods currently being attempted by the country's security services include stepped up exit checks for Russian citizens traveling to the main transit countries to Syria, as well as blocking social media channels being used by the Islamic State to recruit young Russians.

Russian authorities have set their sights on the independent "Dozhd" television station, Current Time reports. Russia's prosecutor general has launched a formal inquiry into the opposition television channel, Dozhd's general director has announced via social media platform Twitter. The investigation pertains to the channel's purported infractions of the Kremlin's new "law on combating extremism," as well as potential violations of "labor law and legislation on licensing."

Russia's deepening economic woes are putting a crimp into the Kremlin's military modernization agenda.According to RIA Novosti, Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov has confirmed that the Russian government will deferred previously-outlined military modernization plans for 2016 to 2017 on account of "the difficult financial and economic situation" that has faced Russia in the past year.