MOSCOW — Brexit may have been dominating the headlines, but there’s another looming rift with Europe that could have far-reaching consequences: "Ruxit."

That’s what Thorbjørn Jagland, secretary-general of the Council of Europe, has called Russia’s potential withdrawal from the human rights organization after 23 years as a member, amid a dispute over Crimea.

The prospect of Ruxit — which could happen within the coming months — has Russian democracy activists worried. Leaving the Council of Europe, Russian opposition figures warn, would be catastrophic for human rights in their homeland and provide a boost to Kremlin hard-liners.

Significantly, it would deprive Russia’s population of 144 million people of the right to seek legal redress at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), whose work is overseen by the Council of Europe.

In 2018, Russians submitted the largest number of petitions to the Strasbourg-based court out of any of the Council of Europe’s 47 members. Around 20 percent of the ECHR’s 56,000 pending cases were filed by Russian citizens. In the past two years, Moscow has reluctantly paid out €23.3 million to claimants, including opposition protesters, prisoners, and LGBTQ activists.

Russian human rights defenders warn that exit from the organization could lead to the “speedy reinstatement of capital punishment”

“The European Court of Human Rights is the only legal body capable of restoring justice for those people who are illegally imprisoned and tortured, as well as ruling on compensation for the relatives of people killed either during investigations or while in prison,” said Maria Alyokhina, a Pussy Riot activist and co-founder of Zona Prava, an organization that works to protect prisoners’ rights in Russia.

Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a fellow Pussy Riot activist, were recently awarded around €30,000 by the ECHR over human rights violations related to their treatment in pre-trial detention and court in 2012. Russia paid up, and Alyokhina said the money was used to to fund Zona Prava and MediaZona, an independent news website.

Making an impact

Although Russia, a signatory to the 1949 European Convention on Human Rights, has failed to implement around two-thirds of the court’s judgements — including many on the torture or ill-treatment of prisoners — human rights activists say the ECHR’s positive impact on Russian laws and judicial practice should not be underestimated.

“Even with all the severe problems with human rights in our country, the situation would be a lot worse if Russia hadn’t been a member of the Council of Europe,” reads an open letter signed in November by dozens of Russian human rights defenders.

They also warn that Russia’s exit from the organization could lead to the “speedy reinstatement of capital punishment” — a particular concern in a country where the average annual rate of acquittals in criminal trials is around 0.3 percent. (Capital punishment was never formally abolished in Russia: In 1996, then-President Boris Yeltsin established a moratorium on the death penalty so Russia could be admitted to the Council of Europe.)

While many of the rulings made by the ECHR are made months or even years after human rights violations have occurred, the court also has the ability to intervene swiftly to try and save lives, if necessary.

In April, the ECHR ordered Russia to move Viktor Kudryavtsev, a 75-year-old scientist charged with treason, from a Moscow prison cell, where he was being held in solitary confinement, to a civilian hospital.

Kudryavtsev, who denies accusations that he leaked military secrets to NATO, suffers from diabetes and other age-related illnesses, and had just survived a heart attack. Academics and human rights activists have warned Kudryavtsev would die unless he was hospitalized.

Russia’s prison service said it would comply with the ECHR order, although it had still not done so by the time this article was published.

Crimean complications

The dispute that could lead to Russia’s exit from the Council of Europe has been simmering since 2014, when the Kremlin’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea triggered a suspension of its voting rights in the organization's parliamentary assembly (PACE).

Russia hit back by refusing to participate in PACE sessions. As a result, more than half of the ECHR’s judges, who serve a single nine-year term, have been elected without Russia’s participation in the voting process.

From June 2017 onward, Moscow also started freezing its membership payments, which amount to €33 million a year — equal to around 7 percent of the Council of Europe's annual budget.

France and Germany, as well as other members of the Council, have also said they would prefer Russia to remain. But time may be running out.

Under the Council's regulations, countries that have failed to make payments for two years may be suspended from the 47-member organization and can later be expelled.

Russia has said it will jump, rather than wait to be pushed, and could announce its departure next month if the organization does not alter its rules in Moscow’s favor at its meeting of ministers in Helsinki on May 17.

“Why should we be in an organization that we can’t work in and that doesn’t meet our interests?” Pyotr Tolstoy, the deputy speaker of Russia’s parliament and head of the country’s PACE delegation, told POLITICO.

Jagland, who stands down this year after serving two terms as secretary-general, has said he wants to avoid a Russian exit. France and Germany, as well as other members of the Council, have also said they would prefer Russia to remain. But time may be running out.

Tolstoy — a great-great-grandson of writer Leo Tolstoy — hopes a resolution to the impasse can be found in Helsinki, but said he is not overly optimistic: “Judging by the way negotiations are going, at the moment the chances aren’t great.”

The Russian politician accused fellow Council of Europe member states of a wilful failure to understand his country, saying: “We have a different system of values and a different conception of democracy and human rights."

He also dismissed the concerns of Russian human rights activists, insisting it would be “no tragedy” if Russia is no longer under the jurisdiction of the ECHR.

In 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin approved legislation giving Moscow the right to reject ECHR rulings if the country’s Constitutional Court decides that they contradict Russian law. So far, however, that law has only been enforced twice.

And despite continuing tensions with the West, 58 percent of Russians are in favour of their country’s membership of the Council of Europe and the ECHR, according to a recent survey carried out by the Levada Center, an independent pollster in Moscow. Only 19 percent were opposed, while the rest of the respondents did not express an opinion.

Russia’s exit from the human rights organization would mark the second time a member state has left it since it was formed in 1949. Greece’s military junta withdrew in 1969 under the threat of expulsion, but the country was readmitted five years later after the junta's fall.

Isolation vs. cooperation

Some Russian opposition figures say Moscow’s threat to withdraw from the Council of Europe illustrates an ongoing bitter struggle for the country’s future.

“If Russia leaves the Council of Europe, it will no longer be part of Europe — it will be an outcast,” said Zoya Svetova, a human rights activist and journalist who writes for the MBKh-Media opposition website.

That scenario, Svetova added, would be opposed by members of Russia’s liberal elite, a group usually described as the businesspeople and politicians around Dmitry Medvedev, the toothless prime minister.

But it would be welcomed by ultra-conservative political and security service factions, which "want to live in a country with their own puppet courts and a sovereign internet,” Svetova said, referring to a recently approved law that allows the Kremlin to cut off the country’s internet traffic from foreign servers.

Dmitry Oreshkin, a Moscow-based political analyst whose vote-monitoring efforts helped spark massive protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2011-2012, said that the dispute is symbolic of Russia’s shift away from Europe as part of the Kremlin’s revival of “Soviet values.”

But he added that economic and trade links with Europe, a key consumer of Russian energy exports, would make it hard for Moscow to cut ties entirely, and suggested that the Kremlin's rhetoric is intended purely for domestic consumption.

“The Council of Europe is a convenient enemy,” Oreshkin said. “Leaving it would give Putin a burst of support among ultra-patriotic voters, but this would be a short-term propaganda victory that wouldn’t last long."

He added: "It’s easy to slam the door, but a lot harder to open it again.”

CORRECTION: This article was changed on May 8 to accurately reflect the Council of Europe's rules on suspension. A member country can be suspended after two years of non-payment.