This was explained to Espreso by Onysiia Syniuk, legal analyst at the Human Rights Center “Zmina.”“Russia’s withdrawal from the Convention is the result of an already existing system. For the Kremlin, it is a way to publicly demonstrate that international norms no longer mean anything to them,” Syniuk emphasized.The Convention never stopped tortureThe document, in effect since 1987, prohibited torture and established a monitoring mechanism — the Committee’s right to visit places of detention, inspect conditions, and review the treatment of prisoners.“It is important to understand two things. First, even during the period when the Convention was in force, conditions in Russian detention facilities remained inadequate. Torture and systemic inhumane treatment never disappeared. The Convention itself did not stop the Russian system. Second, as early as 2024, the Committee stated that Russia was barring its representatives from detention facilities. So, in practice, there was no real monitoring,” Syniuk explained.According to her, Putin’s move is mostly a political gesture.“This is a demonstrative confirmation of how the Russian Federation views accusations of torture. It is essentially a public refusal to recognize the problem. As we see with our prisoners of war, torture is not an exception or the fault of individual perpetrators. It is the system itself, built on violence,” the lawyer noted.International obligations remainDenouncing the European Convention does not mean torture is now allowed. Russia remains a party to other international treaties, Syniuk said.“These include, first and foremost, the UN Convention against Torture, as well as norms of international humanitarian law, which explicitly prohibit cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners of war and civilians. In addition, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court qualifies torture as both a war crime and a crime against humanity. So even after denunciation, responsibility does not disappear. Russia can still be held accountable, both through international courts and via national mechanisms,” Syniuk stressed.She pointed to Ukraine as an example, where criminal proceedings have already been launched against individuals involved in the torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians.Torture for outsiders and insiders alikeThe situation concerns not only Ukrainian captives but also Russian prisoners themselves. According to Syniuk, torture was widespread in Russia even before denunciation.“Russian human rights activists even called it a ‘torture tax.’ The state effectively built violence into its system of punishment. Therefore, the refusal of the Convention is more of a confirmation of a reality that has long existed,” she said.In her view, the denunciation does not change anything fundamentally and is mostly symbolic.“Russia is no longer a member of the Council of Europe, and denunciation looks like a gradual severing of all ties with this institution. The explanatory documents even claimed that the reason was the refusal to appoint a Russian representative to the Committee. The argumentation looks purely political,” she added.According to Ukrainian human rights defenders and UN monitoring missions, about 90% of prisoners of war have been subjected to torture, illustrating the enormous scale of the problem.The greatest loss from this decision, the lawyer noted, is the limitation of independent monitoring.“The European Committee could record facts of torture. Now this instrument no longer exists. And while access had already been blocked, denunciation closes the door completely. The main question now is how to collect evidence and establish specific perpetrators of torture,” Syniuk concluded.