Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation recaps 2024 activities at expanded board meeting

Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation Konstantin Chuychenko reported on the results of the Ministry’s work over the past year and also identified priority areas of its activities during a meeting of the Ministry’s expanded advisory board on 18 March 2025.

One of the most important focuses is the integration of reunited regions into the Russian legal system.

“This process is almost complete. We have ensured the work of the regional public administration system, the activities of municipalities, and the smooth functioning of the most important legal institutions, such as notaries and the bar association. The residents of all the reunited regions are receiving Russian-style documents, while the regional civil registry offices are providing services for the registration of vital records, taking into account the extraterritorial principle. Regional bodies of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service and Federal Bailiff Service, as well as expert laboratories, have been created and are operating successfully. The procedure for applying Russian criminal and criminal procedural legislation has been regulated. Issues related to the judicial system have been resolved,” Chuychenko said. 

Chuychenko said it is still important to establish the institution of justices of the peace. The Ministry of Justice is currently providing assistance to prepare draft regional laws regulating the procedure for the appointment and activities of justices of the peace.

The Ministry is constantly systematizing regional and municipal legal acts, as well as its own internal acts. Chuychenko reported that more than 1,700 of the Ministry’s orders and instructions that had effectively lost their force were cancelled in 2024. In addition, it also cancelled almost all regulatory legal acts of the justice bodies of the USSR and the RSFSR that had not effectively been applied, but officially remained in force.

The liberalization of criminal legislation remains a key focus, the minister said. In 2024, the thresholds were increased for major and especially large-scale damage in order to classify 36 economic-related crimes. This made it possible to decriminalize a number of crimes and re-classify them as administrative offences.

The Ministry of Justice is currently drafting a Concept of the Criminal Law Policy of the Russian Federation. Chuychenko explained that the draft pays significant attention to expanding the grounds for non-prison-related punishments. In an effort to develop constructive proposals, the Research Advisory Council for Improving Criminal Policy was established under the Ministry of Justice. It includes practicing lawyers and representatives of leading educational and research organizations. 

The main goal is to further develop the bar association and the professionalization of judicial representation on its basis.

“We have discussed this issue with the professional community on numerous occasions and have reached the conclusion that the bar association is the optimal platform to bring together professional lawyers who defend the interests of citizens in court. The bar has everything it needs: well-established infrastructure, tried and tested codes of ethical norms and professional standards, as well as years of practice in actually applying them,” Chuychenko said.

The Ministry of Justice and the Federal Chamber of Lawyers have prepared specific policy proposals that have undergone the approval procedure with all the relevant government agencies and were submitted by the Ministry of Justice to the Russian Government this year.

Lawyers presumably will be the main ones generally handling representation in courts. The new practices will not affect close relatives, state law offices, patent attorneys, or a number of other entities whose activities are regulated by special legislation. 

“I would like to stress that the government will not interfere with advocacy. All the necessary changes to the relevant legislation should be made strictly in accordance with the principles of the independence of the bar association,” Chuychenko said.

The legal profession will be consolidated in several stages. Chuychenko said the long transition period that has been planned for the provisions of the law to take effect will ensure the gradual transition of lawyers to the bar association and also maintain the availability and quality of legal services.

Chuychenko devoted special attention to issues concerning the new regulation of notarial activities. He said that notaries perform a public function and, on this basis, the government should have the right to control how notarial activities are carried out and establish the rules by which notaries should work. 

“We are not discussing the revival of the state notary profession. The reform is needed because the current law on notaries is not consistent with the current legal paradigm as a matter of principle. The ‘Fundamental Principles of Legislation for Notary Activities’ were adopted back in 1993. Subsequently, they were regularly amended in a haphazard manner, which completely emasculated the state of all its involvement in notarial activities and essentially deprived it of all control powers. This led to abuses, corruption risks, and an insufficient level of protection of citizens’ rights when engaging in notarial actions,” the minister said. 

The Ministry of Justice has drafted a new law on notaries. It has already undergone the public discussion procedure and been coordinated with the appropriate government agencies. It is scheduled to be reviewed and adopted in 2025. One of the key proposals is the reform of the tariff system for notary services. The cost of notary services will be regulated by the government. 

The law will also enhance requirements for persons wishing to become notaries and provide better monitoring of candidates for criminal records. Unified state assessment boards are expected to monitor the entire process of admission to the legal profession. The procedure for replacing a temporary absent notary will also be significantly limited. These sweeping changes will affect the monitoring of notaries. Inspections will be comprehensive and include both paperwork and professional activities. The regional bodies of the Ministry of Justice and the Prosecutor’s Office will presumably be empowered to file lawsuits in court to terminate the powers of notaries. In addition, there are plans to terminate the joint jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice and the Federal Notary Chamber to adopt regulatory legal acts.

Commenting on further improvements to the pro bono legal aid system, Chuychenko reported that the number of cases where assistance was provided solely within the framework of the pro bono legal aid system increased by 38% in 2024 compared with 2023.

In this regard, one of the top priorities is the creation of public law offices, the primary and most effective party involved in the pro bono legal aid system. At present, public law offices have been established in 53 Russian regions, including the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Kherson Region. The offices are up and running during all emergency situations and also use mobile offices that operate out of Russian-made GAZelle NEXT vehicles. There are currently 53 such vehicles in use in Russia and they have already made more than 6,000 trips.

The Ministry’s Legal Aid information system continues to provide fast, high-quality, timely, and free consultations in a remote format. Since its launch in 10 pilot regions, free legal aid has already been provided through the system for more than 128,000 cases. The number of visitors to a key part of the system – the VPRAVE.RF information portal – increased more than fivefold in 2024.

“On the basis of the ministry’s system, the Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation will ensure the creation of the Legal Aid Federal State Information System. It will work in each region in cooperation with the Public Services Portal. The President of the Russian Federation gave the corresponding instructions at a meeting with members of the government in October last year,” Chuychenko said.

Chuychenko cited the elimination of red tape and the simplification of administrative regulation as key goals in the Ministry’s work with the non-commercial sector.

There are currently more than 219,000 non-commercial organizations operating in Russia. The procedure for their state registration is actively transitioning to an electronic format. More than 50% of registration applications are already submitted through the Public Services Portal. This reduces the financial burden on non-commercial organizations and exempts them from paying state fees and notary fees when submitting documents. 

The Ministry of Justice has also drafted a bill that would unify reporting by non-commercial organizations and optimize the procedure for its submission. In December 2024, the Ministry’s Portal for Non-Commercial Organizations was fully operational. The Portal currently contains over 3,500 charters and more than 6,000 reporting forms submitted by almost 4,000 non-commercial organizations. 

Another major goal is to create a modern and effective forensic examination system. The Ministry of Justice has forensic institutions throughout the country. Each year, they perform over 135,000 forensic examinations and expert studies. In 2024, they were also tasked with conducting religious studies and ethics examinations, as well as studying settlements involving budget and extra-budgetary funds.

Last year, the Russian Federal Forensic Centre opened a new building in Moscow. Using advanced Russian-made equipment, the centre’s specialists can conduct examinations in 72 different subjects.

The Ministry of Justice has successfully implemented a number of socially significant legislative initiatives to improve enforcement. For example, a publicly available register of people who purposely evade child support payments will be fully operational in 2025. The minister reported that the Russian Federal Bailiffs Service ensured a major increase in child support payments collected in 2024, which amounted to RUB 92 billion as of 1 January 2025. The next key step will be to create and run a registry-based model of enforcement proceedings.

Chuychenko stressed the importance of continuing work to humanize the penal system and improve its infrastructure.

One of the key objectives in this regard is to further develop the country’s network of correctional centres, where more than 50,000 places have been created to date.

“The State Duma is currently considering a bill to impose forced labour as a direct sentence. More than 60 Criminal Code punishments are supplemented by forced labour, which would allow courts to use them more broadly as a criminal punishment. It has been repeatedly noted that the re-offence rate of those sentenced to forced labour is much lower than after serving a sentence involving imprisonment,” Chuychenko said. 

The Ministry is working to develop the institution of probation in an effort to reduce the level of repeat crime. More than 32,000 individual programmes for resocialization, social adaptation, and rehabilitation have already been drawn up. The law on probation has been in full effect since 1 January 2025. Probation centres are being set up to help individuals who are subject to post-penitentiary probation. There are already 36 such centres operating in Russia’s regions. 

Commenting on the modernization of penal system infrastructure, Chuychenko said that design and survey work to build a combined institution for 3,000 prisoners in the Kaluga Region needs to be completed as soon as possible. A pretrial detention centre for 1,000 prisoners in the Republic of Tatarstan also needs to be built and commissioned this year, he said.

The Ministry of Justice continues to actively engage in international cooperation in matters concerning justice. Six international treaties were signed over the past year.

“As part of Russia's BRICS chairmanship, we held the first-ever BRICS Justice Ministers’ Meeting. During the meeting, support was voiced for the Russian Federation’s foreign policy course in matters relating to justice, which aims to maintain the international legal order based on the generally recognized principles and norms of international law, the sovereign equality of states, and mutual respect. All BRICS justice ministers expressed solidarity about the need to create an international BRICS investment arbitration centre,” Chuychenko said.

Another one of the Ministry’s key focuses is the creation of a seamless legal space within the Union State of Russia and Belarus. In December 2024, Russia signed a treaty with Belarus on the procedure for the mutual execution of decisions by Russian and Belarusian courts. The document stipulates that Russian and Belarusian court decisions will be immediately executed from the moment they come into force without the need to undergo any additional procedures for issuing an exequatur. 

Russia and Belarus also signed two important international treaties prepared by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation: a treaty on measures for the mutual protection of citizens against unjustified persecution by foreign states and international justice bodies, as well as a protocol to the Russian-Belarusian Treaty on Equal Rights, which allows Russian and Belarusian citizens permanently residing in the territory of the other country to participate in elections to their local government bodies on a reciprocal basis.

Russia is also jointly implementing a project with Belarus to create a digital platform that would provide international legal aid in civil cases.

Chuychenko cited the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum as one of the most striking examples of cooperation. In 2024, approximately 5,000 representatives of the legal community from Russia and 80 other countries took part in the Forum. The 13th St. Petersburg International Legal Forum will take place on 19–21 May 2025.

Source: Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation

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