The Federal Law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations stipulates that a religious organization functions on the basis of a charter which has been approved by its founders or a centralized religious organization. The charter of a religious organization indicates its denomination and any affiliation with an existing centralized religious organization (the first and the second paragraphs of Art. 10). For the state registration of a local religious organization there must be a document confirming that the local religious organization is a part of the centralized religious organization of the same denomination if the local religious organization is subsumed under the structure of the centralized religious organization (the fifth of Art. 11). Article 3.3. of the Organization’s Charter provides that the charter of a religious organization which is a part of the Center shall be approved by the Center according to the procedure established by the Ruling Committee of the Center. Integration in the Center’s structure is verified by a document issued by the Center. It is within the responsibility of the Ruling Committee of the Organization ‘to establish the procedure of issuing a document confirming the integration of a religious association in the structure of the Center, to approve the charter of such a religious organization, any changes and amendments to the charter, to appoint and remove members of its permanent ruling body, and facilitate relations between religious associations incorporated into the structure of the Center’ (paragraph 3.8 of the Charter). The term “regional and other incorporated branches” used in the above provision of the law covers any organs, organizations, and associations that together constitute the unified whole of the liquidated public or religious associations, or other organizations. The constitutional principles of equality and justice (Art. 17, part. 3, Art. 19, 55 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation) determine that provisions of Art. 7, 9 of the Federal Law on Combating Extremist Activity are equally applicable to all public and religious associations and other organizations, whose structures may have differences established by, e.g., federal laws on Public Associations, on Political Parties, on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations, and on Non-commercial Organizations. The absence of a definition of an incorporated branch in the Federal Law on Freedom of Conscience and 12326, 12327 Religious Associations and Articles. of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation that define the civil-law status of religious associations, as well as the non-use of this term in the Organization’s Charter in describing its structure, does not mean that these circumstances could entail a different (selective) interpretation of provisions of the Federal Law on Combating Extremist Activity on the basis of an organizational-legal form and corresponding differences in the structure of the religious organization which is to be liquidated. The fact that every local religious organization has been registered as a separate legal entity under the procedure set forth in the law is not an argument for a different interpretation of the legal rule being applied, because the current legislation allows rather than precludes that regional and other sub- structural branches of certain associations are able to have the status of a legal entity (for example, Art. 10 and the ninth paragraph of Art. 21 of the Federal Law of 19 May 1995 No 82-FZ on Public Associations, paragraph 15 of Art. 15 of the Federal Law of 11 July 2001 No 95-FZ on Political Parties).