The restrictive measures introduced by the European Union are damaging the Russian economy, putting political cooperation on hold. Businesses receive support from the state and have already started to adapt to the new conditions. Meanwhile, ordinary Russian citizens living in EU countries, who for this very reason may not be able to count on prompt assistance from Russia, are particularly vulnerable. The report “On Violations of the Rights of Russian Citizens and Fellow Citizens in Foreign Countries,” submitted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation in the middle of 2022, indicates the “overwhelming discrimination of Russians,” which “was shocking by its absurdity.” In other words, the rights of Russians are violated by the “collective West” on a large scale. The report provides information on the numerous recorded facts of the violations in most Member States of the European Union. Russian citizens who have been arrested and facing trial are in an especially precarious position. The present article includes information and analytical materials that Russian citizens and fellow citizens can use to better protect their rights in the EU countries. For this reason, we have analysed the relevant provisions of the EU law and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. We also scrutinized the attainability of the right to interpretation and translation, the right to information about one’s rights and a clear explanation of the charges one is facing, the right to legal advice and legal aid, and the right to communicate with relatives, employers, and consular authorities in criminal proceedings. The European Court of Human Rights caselaw was studied to identify the basic rules governing remuneration and the quality of legal counsel and translation services. Certain recommendations that may help Russian citizens better protect their rights when facing criminal prosecution in the EU Member States are laid down in the conclusion, which is especially relevant given the unprecedented political pressure the West is putting on Russia.

Global plastic production increased from 1.5 million tons in 1950 to 390 million tons in 2021, of which only 9% was recycled, 19% was incinerated, almost 50% was disposed of in landfills and 22% was dumped in areas where this waste could be openly burned or released back into the environment. Plastics have changed the global economy and the lives of billions of people for the better. However, their use comes with significant environmental and social costs. Plastic waste negatively affects human health and the environment. The life cycle of plastics covers the entire spectrum of activities, from raw material extraction, production, distribution, and use, to its disposal as waste, and environmental problems can arise at any stage of the plastic life cycle. Most plastic degrades very slowly in the environment. There are currently a number of international commitments to reduce marine litter and plastic waste, particularly from land-based sources, as well as several applicable international agreements and soft law instruments related to trade in plastics or reducing impacts on marine life. However, none of the international documents provides a global, mandatory, specific, and measurable targets for reducing plastic pollution. In this regard, many states, as well as commercial actors and civil society, are calling for the adoption of a global instrument to regulate marine pollution from litter and plastics. In this article, significant attention is paid to the analysis of a future treaty aimed at combating plastic pollution.

This study is based on the analysis of a large volume of materials, including international legal acts, advisory acts, and modern doctrinal studies by Russian and foreign authors. The methodological basis of the study was general scientific (logical and systemic analysis, dialectical method, methods of deduction and induction) and special scientific (historical-legal, comparative-legal, formal legal methods, legal modelling and forecasting), and methods of cognition.

In the course of the study, various international acts of a mandatory and recommendatory nature were analysed, the doctrinal positions set out in the scientific literature and put forward by domestic and foreign legal scholars were summarized, and the main problems of combating plastic pollution were identified.

Within the framework of this article, an attempt has been made to give answers to the following questions: To what extent is the problem of plastic pollution an important challenge for modern international law? Does current international law effectively regulate the problem of plastic pollution? What should the content of a new treaty on plastic be? And what are the positions of states on the content of such a treaty?

Recent decades have seen a growing number of armed clashes in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia involving military units and international terrorist groups that readily use the practice of attacking and looting cultural property as a military strategy. In this regard, a comprehensive study of the legal and organizational foundations of the international legal regulation of the protection of cultural property during armed conflicts, as well as an assessment of their effectiveness, and the identification of promising tasks for the development of additional measures and strategies for the preservation of cultural heritage, with due account of new challenges and threats, is of scientific and practical interest. This paper examines the provisions of key international treaties, as well as decisions of the main bodies and specialized agencies of the UN, which together form the existing international legal regime for the protection of cultural property in armed conflict. The author also analyses the decisions of international criminal justice bodies on holding individuals accountable for deliberate attacks on cultural sites as part of military actions. Special attention is paid to the study of scientific works of both Russian and foreign researchers which contribute to the formation of international legal concepts designed to resolve existing problems in the current international legal regulation of the issue under study and produce promising concepts for the development of the doctrine of international law. General scientific and special research methods are used as the methodological basis of the study. The study found that, throughout the 20th century, states have consistently developed norms for the protection of cultural property from threats associated with armed conflicts, while the 21st century has been marked by the use of best practices in the activities of international justice bodies regarding the application of the rules on liability for attacks on cultural property during armed conflicts. In addition, the study revealed that, for the first time in the history of UN peacekeeping activities, the UN Security Council field tested the mandate of the Multidisciplinary Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, in which the peacekeeping contingent, among other things, performed the tasks of protecting, safeguarding, and restoring cultural heritage sites together with UNESCO. It would be wise to identify and generalize the prospects for the development of new international legal measures for the preservation of cultural heritage for future generations, taking into account the changing nature of armed conflicts, the intensification of the activities of international terrorist groups, and the growing practice of destroying the centuries-old cultural heritage of peoples in the name of so-called “cultural cleansing.” The relevance of this study lies in the establishment of new approaches of states to the protection of cultural heritage as a means of ensuring international peace and security.This paper presents the author’s objective assessments of the established international legal framework, judicial practice of international criminal justice bodies, and doctrinal approaches of both Russian and foreign scientists on the issue of the international legal regulation of the protection of cultural property during armed conflicts. The forms of international legal cooperation of states at the United Nations within the framework of UNESCO on the development of modern regulatory and organizational foundations for the interaction of the competent authorities of states to prevent and suppress the destruction of cultural heritage, as well as the looting and illegal export of cultural property in the event of an armed conflict, especially by terrorist groups, are considered separately.

Since the early 2020s, a parallel confrontation has been developing: the first between the Euro-Atlantic community and Russia; and the second between the United States and its partners, on the one hand, and China on the other. Western democracies have been forced to develop an approach to distributing the military burden, in particular with regard to the use of land forces (army). The latter suffered from military downsizing in the 1990s to the early 2010s, being partly in a state of dystrophy. This article studies these processes through the prism of the theories of building armed forces and alliances, studies these processes. The paper focuses on NATO as an institute, as well as the United States, and on Germany as a key European contributor to multilateral NATO forces. Key documents such as the new strategic concept of the Alliance and New NATO Force Model were adopted at the Madrid Summit in June 2022. The latter document has provided the Organization with a potential of 800,000 troops, the vast majority of which will be provided by its European member states. This means that the contribution of their troops to deterring Russia is of utmost importance, with the American role being politically significant, though practically limited. As a result, the United States has the strategic freedom to exploit a large part of its armed forces, specifically its ground forces, to contain China. The consensus on this distribution of responsibility formed in 2021, not 2014. This paper investigates the tactics of the United States as a key beneficiary to encourage its partners to adopt this scheme. The author compares the practical readiness of major European member states to use ground forces to deter Russia. The paper studies in detail the changes of the U.S. ground force groupings in Europe, especially in Eastern Europe and Germany, as well as in the Far East. It also examines the features of structuring military cooperation between Western countries and their partners in the Pacific Ocean in the context of containing China. The author concludes by outlining the general features of, and the prospects for, the evolution of this scheme in terms of the distribution of military responsibility.

Western officials and media have accused Russia of worsening the situation on the global food and energy markets in connection with its Special Military Operation in Ukraine. In addition to existing financial, diplomatic, political, and other restrictions, the West is waging an anti-Russian information campaign, blaming Moscow for the global food and energy crises. In practice, food and energy crises have long existed in certain states and regions, as well as at the global level, going through phases of transformation, aggravation, and mitigation, depending on a combination of causes. The authors do not deny that geopolitical events have had an impact on the stability of the energy and food systems, but not to the extent that Western countries claim. The profitability of speculation on global and local food and energy markets; the effectiveness of the G7 measures to control prices and pricing; the firm intention to further the sanctions pressure on the Russian fuel and energy complex; the launch of pilot mechanisms for the West to collect a kind of rent from the global fuel and energy complex; and the consolidation of the goals of decarbonizing the world economy in binding regulations at the national, regional, and global levels – all this indicates that the West’s reactionary measures against Russia will not stop any time soon and in the future may be deployed against other actors to achieve their political and economic goals. In a practical sense, these actions require a certain consolidation of efforts and a change in the strategy of Russia and friendly states towards Western countries to reduce dependence on their information agenda and political actions aimed at instigating crises in various spheres.

There are several problems in the modern theory of international relations that are difficult to solve, but the very existence of which leads to a certain demarcation of possible and received knowledge. These phenomena include the problem of “anthropomorphizing,” which is an attribution or an identification of certain human characteristics with complex social actors, including, above all, states. This research technique is often not limited to the use of any figures of speech and serves to ascertain the ontological and epistemological foundations for further theorizing. The purpose of this article is to systematize the existing approaches to “anthropomorphization” and put forward further directions for understanding this theoretical problem. The author reconstructs the three main traditions of “anthropomorphization” – to the works of Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, and Georg Hegel. Each tradition has a certain understanding of both the meaning of this research technique, as well as of the ontological and epistemological consequences, which implicitly affect the result obtained. The tradition of Hugo Grotius is distinguished by a metaphorical understanding of “anthropomorphization” associated with a peculiar perception of the rights and freedoms of the individual. Conversely, the tradition of Thomas Hobbes considers the internal characteristics of the state by analogy with the individual, while similarities are used to raise new research questions. Finally, the last tradition arose under the influence of Georg Hegel. It connects the problem of “anthropomorphization” with the processes of external communication of states. This article provides an ordered interpretation of ontological and epistemological consequences of these theoretical schools, as well as the traditions that are linked to them (as much as possible). The author analyses the synthesis of several traditions of ‘anthropomorphizing’ presented by constructivist Alexander Wendt. The emerging tradition of “anthropomorphization” is aimed at clearly defining its own epistemological and ontological foundations while raising the theoretical status of “humanization” itself. As a result, the article concludes on the possibility, limitations, and prospects of revisiting and more actively using the concept of “anthropomorphization” in reflectivist and neopositivist methodologies, as well as the likelihood of hybrid versions of the three main research traditions emerging.