Russian President submits an agreement on the provision of legal assistance within the CSTO to be ratified by the State Duma

Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, has submitted to the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation an Agreement on Jurisdiction and Legal Assistance in Cases Relating to the Temporary Presence of Forces and Assets of the Collective Security System on the Territories of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Member States. The document was posted on Monday in the electronic document database of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, TASS reports.
As you may recall, the Agreement was signed on September 16, 2021 at a meeting of the CSTO Collective Security Council in Dushanbe. The Agreement is aimed to create a mechanism for cooperation between the competent authorities of the CSTO Member States on issues of jurisdiction and legal assistance. As stated in the explanatory material, a request for legal assistance may be rejected if the provision of such assistance could compromise sovereignty or security, or contradict the national legislation of the requested party.
As stated in the Agreement, the competent authorities are understood to mean military administration bodies, commanders of military units, courts, prosecuting authorities, preliminary investigation (criminal prosecution) authorities, internal affairs bodies (police), security bodies and special services, other bodies and their representatives in case these bodies are not present in the places of deployment, whose competence includes the issues regulated in the Agreement.
The Agreement is aimed, in particular, at the prompt investigation of offences committed by one of the parties. These are crimes committed by persons belonging to formations of the sending party against the sending party, by nationals of the receiving party who are not part of the sending party’s formations, in places of deployment, provided that the persons in question are apprehended at the scene of the crime.
“The jurisdiction of the sending party shall also include incidents resulting in serious harm to health, death (including suicide) of persons belonging to the sending party’s formations, which have taken place in the place of deployment, where these consequences were not caused by the violent actions of other persons. In the event that evidence of a crime or other offence is established, the procedure set out in this article shall apply,” the Agreement reads.
It is noted that each party undertakes to prosecute, in accordance with its national law, persons belonging to its formations suspected or accused of committing crimes against the other party, its citizens and legal entities.