4.  The list of applicants and the relevant details of the applications are set out in the appended table.
5.  The applicants complained that they had been unfairly convicted of drug offences following entrapment by State agents. In application no. 48523/15, the applicant also raised other complaints under the provisions of the Convention. As regards application no. 3436/15, on 31 October 2013 the Levokumskiy District Court of the Stavropol Region found the applicant guilty of three counts of an attempted drug sale “committed with the same intent” on 10 and 17 May and 19 June 2013, as well as declared him guilty of unlawful purchase and storage without an intent to sell of a large quantity of drugs, seized from him on 19 June 2013. The applicant was sentenced to ten years and a month of imprisonment. The conviction and sentence were upheld on appeal by the Stavropol Regional Court on 23 January 2014. In May 2015 the Deputy Prosecutor of the Stavropol Region asked the Presidium of the Regional Court to amend the conviction by excluding episodes of 17 May and 19 June 2013 “in view of the lack of a criminal conduct [in the applicant’s actions]” and to uphold the conviction in respect of the episode on 10 May 2013. The Deputy Prosecutor argued, in particular, that the “operative experiment” in the course of which the applicant had sold drugs on 10 May 2013 had been properly authorised by the acting head of the district police department and had been recorded, and thus there was no need to perform subsequent “operative experiments” in the form of the test purchase on 17 May and 19 June 2013. On 30 June 2015 the Presidium of the Stavropol Regional Court accepted the Deputy Prosecutor’s request for the revision of the final conviction by virtue of Article 401 of the Russian Criminal Code, annulled the conviction in respect of the two episodes of drug sale on 17 May and 19 June 2013, declared the applicant guilty of an attempted drug sale on 10 May 2013 and sentenced him to eight years and one month of imprisonment. The Presidium noted that having conducted “the operative experiment” on 10 May 2013 the police had already established and recorded the applicant’s criminal activity. However, the police officers had not prevented the applicant’s subsequent criminal activities and “had again, on 17 May and 19 June 2013 performed similar operative measures”. The Presidium concluded that the applicant’s conviction of episodes of 17 May and 19 June 2013 had therefore been based on unlawfully obtained evidence and thus should be voided. As regards the episode on 10 May 2013, it observed a video recording of the “test purchase” and noted that the applicant had talked about future drug sales. It then read out a statement by a witness M. who had testified that “the buyer had not incited anyone to sell drugs” when they were in the “company drinking alcohol”. The Presidium concluded that there was no indication of the police entrapment on 10 May 2013.
DOMESTIC LAW AND PRACTICE
6.  Title 3, Section XIII of the Code of Criminal Procedure (here and after – the CCrP) of 2002 (“Procedure for review at second instance”) (Часть 3, Раздел XIII “Производство в суде второй инстанции”) stipulates in Article 390 § 2 that the decisions taken by the second-instance courts on appeal acquire binding force immediately.
7.  On 29 December 2010 Federal Law no. 433-FZ, which entered into force on 1 January 2013, amended the Code by introducing a new Chapter 47.1 (“Cassation procedure”) (“Производство в суде кассационной инстанции”).
8.  Article 401.2 (“Right to lodge a cassation appeal”) of the Code prescribed a list of persons who were entitled to lodge a cassation appeal against any judicial act. Paragraph 3 of the same Article introduced a one‑year time-limit for lodging a cassation appeal against a judicial act which had become final and provided for a possibility to reset that time‑limit on certain grounds.
9.  The new Article 401.6 provided safeguards against cassation revision of final judgments and decisions where revision could aggravate the situation of a convicted person, an acquitted person, or a person in respect of whom a criminal prosecution had been terminated. First, such revision was possible only within one year after these judgments or decisions had become final. Second, the cassation appeals were further restricted by the substantive criterion allowing a review only if a judgment breached the law “to an extent which distorted the essence and meaning of a judicial decision as an act of administration of justice”.
10.  On 19 December 2014 the State Duma adopted Federal Law no. 518-FZ, approved by the Council of the Federation on 25 December 2014, and signed by the President on 31 December 2014. The Law amended Article 401.2 of the Code by removing any time bars for lodging cassation appeals. The provisions of Article 401.6 remained in force.
11.  The CCrP provides for a possibility to reopen proceedings in a criminal case when a violation of a Convention right has been found by this Court. The relevant provisions read as follows:
Article 413.  Grounds for reopening of proceedings in a criminal case due to new or newly discovered circumstances
“1. Final judgments ... may be annulled and the proceedings in a criminal case reopened due to new or newly discovered circumstances ...
... 4. New circumstances are ...
...
2) A finding by the European Court of Human Rights of a violation of [Convention provisions] during consideration of a criminal case by a Russian court ...”
Article 415. Initiation of [revision] proceedings
 “5. The Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation revises ... [judgments] under circumstances listed in subparagraphs 1 and 2 of Article 413 of the Code upon application by the President of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation within one month. Having considered the [above] application, the Presidium ... annuls or alters the judicial decisions in a criminal case in line with ... the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights ...”
Article 419. Proceedings in a criminal case after annulment of judicial decisions
“Judicial proceedings in a criminal case after annulment of judicial decisions due to new or newly discovered circumstances and the lodging of appeals against new judicial decisions follow the general rules [established by the Code].”
12.  In 2016 the Russian Supreme Court published an extensive report summarising the legal positions of the European Court of Human Rights in cases where a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention has been found in view of the applicants’ conviction as a result of the police entrapment. It has since issued a number of similar interpretative summaries of the Court’s case-law on this subject. In addition, relying on Article 415 § 5 of the Russian Code of Criminal Procedure, the Presidium of the Russian Supreme Court has regularly authorised the re-opening of criminal proceedings in view of the fact that the European Court of Human Rights found a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention following the Russian courts’ failure to effectively conduct the review of the defendants’ arguments that the criminal offence had been committed as a result of the police entrapment (see for example the Presidium’s decision no. 28-P17 issued on 12 April 2017 in response to the Court’s decision in the case of Ulyanov and Others v. Russia [Committeee], nos. 22486/05 and 10 others, 9 February 2016).