INTERNATIONAL TREATIES OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION ON THE PROTECTION OF CULTURAL PROPERTY IN THE EVENT OF AN ARMED CONFLICT AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CRIMINAL LIABILITY FOR ENCROACHMENTS ON IT

The article is devoted to the analysis of international and national laws on criminal liability for infringements on cultural values in the event of an armed conflict. According to statistical data, 54 armed conflicts happened in the world in 2021, and resulted not only in the loss of human life and destruction, but also in the loss of cultural property. The objects of research are international treaties of the Russian Federation and the norms of national legislation: the Hague Convention On the Laws and Customs of War on Land of 1907; the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict of 1954 and its protocols; Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions for the Protection of War Victims of 1949; Manual on International Humanitarian Law for the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation; the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The authors analyze the legal conceptual apparatus used in these documents, as well as the theoretical approaches to understanding it, and give their own assessment of the quality and specifics of terminology. The article presents the characteristics of the historical development of the international legal protection mechanism for the abovementioned objects, as well as the implementation of these norms in the national criminal legislation of the Russian Federation. The conducted research revealed some drawbacks in establishing liability within the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the inclusion of formal elements of crimes under different chapters, and the absence of necessary features in the description of crimes. Special attention is paid to the analysis of Art. 356 of the CC of the RF within the context of using it for crimes against cultural property in the event of an armed conflict. According to the authors, such legal recognition could have a negative impact on the possibility of bringing the guilty persons to justice. As a result of their research, the authors put forward a suggestion to divide infringements on cultural property in the event of an armed conflict into war crimes committed by combatants, and crimes committed by civilians. The authors use this classification to describe the specifics of the possible inclusion of corpus delicti within the criminal law.