25 March 2026
The ruling by the Russian Supreme Court affecting property in Finland has an exclusively propagandistic significance
By Leonid Nikitinsky
Source: Novaya gazeta
The Civil Law Collegiate of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation overturned rulings by lower-level courts and mandated the St. Petersburg Dzerzhinsky district court to completely review their ruling on a lawsuit brought against the Government of Finland by the Tsvetkov family from St. Petersburg.
The Supreme Court published this ruling on their website on 24 March. It said that the Tsvetkov family had bought a house and the surrounding estate in Finland for 180,000 euros in 2017 and used it as they pleased until July 2023, when they were turned away from Finland at the border crossing. The reason for this was a tightening of visa requirements for entry into Finland.
In their lawsuit against the Finnish government brought to the Dzerzhinsky district court, the Tsvetkov family claimed that it was for this same reason that they had been unable to pursue a civil case in Finnish courts and demanded the Finnish Government buy out their property and pay compensation for moral damages incurred.
The Dzerzhinsky district court, the St. Petersburg Regional Court and the Third Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction all refused their application for litigation, citing, as the Supreme Court points out, the ‘judicial immunity of foreign states.’
In my view, there is also an issue with court jurisdiction.
In the Russian Civil Procedural Code, as virtually everywhere else, including Finland, property-related lawsuits are reviewed in the jurisdictions where that property is located. The Tsvetskov family were disingenuous in claiming the case could not be heard in Finland: they could have used a representative, albeit with likely irrecoverable associated costs. Alternatively, the Tsvetkov couple still have the right to sell the property themselves. In addition, an administrative (as opposed to a civil) lawsuit could be brought against the Finnish Government (as the highest state authority in Finland) in the jurisdiction where the property is located to demand the removal of entry restrictions.
But after the Supreme Court ruling, the Tsvetkovs’ lawsuit must be returned to St. Petersburg and reviewed one way or another.
While ruling justifiably in favour of the Tsvetkovs in Russia would be difficult, enforcing such a ruling would be completely impossible. Sovereign Finland will see to that. Meanwhile such a legal precedent opens a new Pandora’s box: the Tsvetkovs are by far not the only Petersburg family to have a holiday house in Finland.
Not only Finland either: Russians own property in the French Riviera, London, San Francisco and many other places.
In making this ruling, the Civil Law Collegiate has, in my view, been influenced not so much by legal considerations as much as propagandistic ones, striving to demonstrate how ‘unfriendly countries’ touting human rights are simultaneously violating the rights of Russian citizens. This is indeed the case, and not just with property either. But the aftermath of the Special Military Operation* and the counter measures undertaken by European countries cannot be solved on the legal, but only the political level.
*The Russian Government-approved and adopted term for the war in Ukraine, beginning with the invasion in February 2022. Using words such as ‘war’ or ‘invasion’ to describe the war in Russia is now a criminal offence, since ‘discrediting the [Russian] army’ is contradictory to Articles 280 and 207 of the Russian Criminal Code. The translator has chosen to keep the original term to demonstrate how legislation in Russia suppresses opposition to the war. (Trans.)
Translated by Oscar Seecharan
