Russia has begun the formal process of withdrawing from the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (ECPT), a Council of Europe treaty that enables unannounced inspections of places of detention by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT).
On 8 September 2025, President Vladimir Putin submitted a bill to the State Duma to denounce the convention, according to a parliamentary filing cited by Russian state media and international wire services.
The legislative move follows a decree signed in late August by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin calling for Russia’s withdrawal from the ECPT and its protocols. That decree, published on an official government portal, urged the President to proceed with denunciation and ended Russia’s participation at the executive level.
If completed, withdrawal would terminate CPT access to Russian prisons, remand centres, police cells and other facilities where people may be deprived of their liberty. It would also end the CPT’s ability to conduct preventive visits and issue recommendations directly to Russian authorities — a mechanism distinct from, and complementary to, the European Court of Human Rights. The ECPT was opened for signature in 1987 and entered into force in 1989; Russia ratified it in 1998.
United Nations experts publicly warned on 3 September that Russia’s move to withdraw from Europe’s torture-prevention system posed “grave risks” for detainees, noting that CPT monitoring has historically provided an additional safeguard alongside domestic oversight. Their statement urged Moscow to maintain cooperation with independent monitors.
The ECPT is a Council of Europe instrument and operates separately from the UN Convention against Torture (CAT), which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1984. Russia (as legal successor to the USSR) remains a party to the UN treaty unless and until it lodges a formal denunciation under Article 31 of the CAT; no such UN notification has been announced. The UN treaty prohibits refoulement to states where torture is at risk and requires criminalisation and investigation of torture by parties.
Russia left the Council of Europe in March 2022 following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and ceased to be a party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) on 16 September 2022. The Strasbourg court continues to hear “legacy” cases concerning acts under Russian jurisdiction up to that date, and the Committee of Ministers supervises execution of judgments already delivered. Moscow has said it will not implement future ECHR rulings, but the legal obligation to comply with pre-16 September 2022 judgments remains under Council of Europe decisions.
In July 2025, the European Court of Human Rights issued a 501-page judgment finding Russia responsible for extensive human rights violations in Ukraine from 2014 to September 2022. Although Russia has rejected the Court’s authority, the judgment illustrates the continued processing of pending cases despite Russia’s exit from the ECHR system.
Russian officials have cited the absence of a national representative on the CPT since 2023 and alleged discrimination by the Council of Europe as justification for leaving the ECPT. Rights groups and independent media note that CPT visits — which can be ad hoc and unannounced — have historically focused on conditions and ill-treatment in detention, including earlier public statements on the North Caucasus, and that withdrawal would end this external scrutiny.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry and media outlets in Kyiv criticised the planned withdrawal when the government decree emerged in late August, framing it as a retreat from international oversight. The criticism intensified after the President’s bill was filed, with observers pointing to a broader pattern of Russia renouncing Council of Europe instruments since 2022.
The Duma will now consider the denunciation bill. Under Russian procedure, international treaties are denounced by federal law; once enacted and the Council of Europe is notified, CPT visits and related cooperation would cease for Russia on the timetable set by the convention’s rules on withdrawal. The Council of Europe maintains that while Russia is no longer a member state, obligations linked to past participation in other instruments remain where expressly provided.
Background: the ECPT mechanism
The ECPT established the CPT, a body of independent experts that examines treatment of persons deprived of their liberty through visits and confidential reports, which are published at the state’s discretion or can be accompanied by public statements in cases of persistent non-cooperation. The convention’s preventive model was designed to supplement judicial remedies by encouraging improvements in practice through inspection, dialogue and reporting.
What changes if Russia leaves
Withdrawal would remove a channel for unannounced international inspections of Russian places of detention and end the CPT’s dialogue with Russian authorities. It would not affect Russia’s status under the UN CAT unless a separate denunciation is notified to the UN. Cases concerning alleged torture before 16 September 2022 will continue in the Strasbourg system, but new incidents after that date fall outside the European human-rights court’s jurisdiction.
