No 1 (2024)

Currently, there are no uniform, internationally standardized rules for the importation of weapons by diplomats into the territory of the receiving state. Since a significant number of issues concerning the legal status of diplomats are determined domestically by each state independently, the problem of the lack of a uniform practice of bringing diplomatic employees to the responsibility for the prohibited items importation arises. The paper presents a study of the problems of the admissibility of the firearms importation into the territory of a foreign state by certain categories of inviolable persons. The authors focus attention on various approaches to understanding the essence of state sovereignty. The paper considers the experience of foreign states in regulating the procedure for importing, storing and carrying weapons by foreign citizens. Particular attention is paid to legal regulation in the territory of the United States, where, despite the pure and simple weapon import ban for private citizens, in the case of the weapon import by security guards of diplomatic missions, an exception with prior approval is possible. The paper provides the information on the legal regulation of this issue within the territory of the Russian Federation. The provisions of the Federal Law “On Weapons” are analyzed, according to which foreign citizens, including diplomatic representatives, do not have the right to store, carry and use firearms in the territory of the Russian Federation on a long-term basis. The authors formulate the conclusion about the necessity of supplementing the Vienna Convention of 1961 with a provision on the procedure for the movement of firearms across customs borders for heads of diplomatic missions and consular institutions, members of the diplomatic staff of diplomatic missions, consular officials, as well as members of their families.

The paper analyzes the prospects for the development of a new criminal procedural law to replace the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation of 2001, which has lost its consistency. Using legal methods of scientific research, as well as the cultural method, the author analyzes the purpose of criminal procedural activity, the historical background of its formation and consolidation, as well as adversariality as an ideal form of contemporary criminal procedure. The paper shows that liberal legal values enshrined in the form of the purpose and system of principles of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation of 2001 do not reflect the real interests of Russian society in the public sphere. Believing that determining the purpose of the criminal procedure and the place of adversariality in the system of its principles is a methodological mistake of the legislator, the author makes a number of conceptual proposals for improving the criminal procedure law. The author proposes to clarify the formulation of the goals and objectives of criminal proceedings, taking into account the specifics of the legal mentality of Russians. When formulating the purpose of criminal procedural activity, it is necessary to indicate the tendency of the criminal procedure to identify correctly the factual circumstances of what happened achieved through repeated verification of the facts in different procedures and by different officials. The tasks of criminal procedural activity formulated in the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation should be implemented in pre-trial and judicial proceedings by different criminal procedure subjects. It is proposed that the tasks of criminal procedural activity should include identifying a guilty person and assigning punishment to him; acquittal of an innocent person and his rehabilitation; identifying the factual circumstances of an incident; protection of individual rights and freedoms. Adversariality should be excluded from the criminal procedure principles, and the criminal procedure itself should be organized according to a mixed type with investigative pre-trial proceedings and adversarial judicial proceedings.