Five years after Moscow joined the Council of Europe, Russia's resurgent security forces are threatening to scupper democracy and basic freedoms, Moscow's human rights commissioner said yesterday.
Mr Oleg Mironov said Russia had failed to fulfil important obligations to the council and the European Declaration on Human Rights, a day after the US condemned the human rights record of Mr Vladimir Putin in his first year as President.
Washington has questioned the true targets of the "dictatorship of the law" which Mr Putin, an ex-KGB spy, vowed to create in Russia.
Mr Mironov said Moscow had shirked its commitment to the Council of Europe by retaining the death penalty, limiting the number of mainstream Russian religions, and failing to halt arbitrary arrests and corruption-riddled elections.