7.  The applicants are fifty Russian nationals. Their dates of birth and places of residence are listed in Appendixes I, II, III and IV.
8.  The applicants are former military servicemen. They all obtained final court decisions in their favour ordering military units to provide them with housing before their dismissal from military service. The respective court orders’ details, such as dates of the judgments and their entry into force and the respective court’s names, are summarised in the Appendixes.
9.  In some cases the defendants were subsequently replaced by the Housing Provision Department of the Ministry of Defense.
10.  The judgment in case of Mr Nazarov has remained unenforced to date. The judgments in favour of other applicants were enforced on the dates listed in the Appendixes below.
11.  Pursuant to the judgment in favour of Mr Medinskiy (Appendix III) the authorities decided to allocate a flat to the applicant on 6 November 2015. According to the transfer and acceptance act, the applicant accepted the flat on 20 November 2015. On 21 January 2016 he registered his title to the flat.
12.  Pursuant to the judgment in favour of Mr Vedernikov (Appendix III) the authorities decided to allocate a flat to the applicant on 27 October 2015. According to the transfer and acceptance act, the applicant accepted the flat on 13 November 2015. On 11 January 2016 he registered his title to the flat.
13.  Since 1999 Mr Nazarov owned a ¼ share in a flat (15 sq.m.) in Pushkino, the Moscow Region. In 2007 the housing commission of the military unit considered his housing situation, noted his title to a share in the flat and decided to put the applicant on the list of persons in need of housing.
14.  On 13 January 2009 the Military Court of the Moscow Garrison ordered the housing commission of the military unit to provide him with housing in Moscow, as indicated in the appended table. On 27 January 2011 the same court replaced the defendant by the Housing Provision Department of the Ministry of Defense.
15.  Between 18 August 2009 and 24 June 2011 the applicant had a ½ share in tenancy of a flat in the Smolensk Region.
16.  On 25 April 2013 the Hosing Department of the Ministry of Defense found that overall size of the applicant’s living premises (see paragraphs 13 and 15 above) exceeded the housing norms for the respective region. Accordingly, the debtor authority decided to strike his name off the list of persons in need of housing.
17.  On 24 February 2014 the Military Court of the Moscow Garrison and on 26 June 2014 the appeal court upheld lawfulness of the above decision.
18.  In the meantime, the defendant twice applied to the domestic courts with a request for termination of the enforcement proceedings, as the applicant’s name had been removed from the list of persons in need of housing, and there had “no longer been a possibility to enforce the judgment”.
19.  On 29 November 2013 the Presnenskiy District Court allowed the request. On 14 April 2014 the Moscow City Court quashed the lower court’s decision on appeal and issued a new ruling dismissing the request in full. The court found that the first-instance court had incorrectly interpreted the applicable law. There was no evidence that the judgment in the applicant’s favour could no longer be enforced. It was not quashed or amended. A “loss of a possibility to enforce” should have been “of an objective nature” and could not be conditional on the circumstances depending on the debtor itself. The defendant’s arguments were rather indicative of its disagreement with the court’s findings in the judgment of 13 January 2009, but did not constitute a ground for termination of the enforcement proceedings.
20.  On 23 December 2014 the first-instance court and on 4 September 2015 the Moscow City Court acting as an appeal instance rejected the defendant’s new request to terminate the enforcement, based this time, inter alia, on the judgment of 24 February 2014 (see paragraph 17 above). The courts gave the same reasons for the refusal as in the previous round of the similar proceedings.
21.  In 2016 the defendant again requested the court to terminate the enforcement proceedings, the application being lodged this time with a military court. The registry of the military court sent to the applicant notifications of the hearing by registered mail and by telegram to his known address. The notifications had not been delivered as the flat was closed. On 20 December 2016 the registry of the court informed the applicant of the date and place of the hearing by phone, as confirmed by a “telephonogram” (a telephone conversation record). The applicant stated in the telephone conversation that he had no longer lived at the address he had provided to the court and had refused to give his new address.
22.  On 21 December 2016 the Military Court of the Moscow Garrison granted the request. With reference to the judgment of 24 February 2014 (see paragraph 17 above) it found established that as of 25 April 2013 the applicant had no longer been in need of the housing, which meant that the defendant had no longer had a possibility to enforce the judgment of 2 February 2009.
23.  The applicant was not present at the hearing. The decision specified that he had been duly notified of the date and time of the examination of the case.
24.  On 23 December 2016 he collected the telegram (see paragraph 21 above) from the post office.
25.  The applicant appealed, referring, inter alia, to the two earlier decisions on the same matter rejecting the defendant’s similar requests, and argued that he had not been duly notified of the hearing in his case.
26.  On 16 February 2017 the Civil Division of the Military Court of the Moscow Command upheld the decision on appeal. It found, inter alia, that the defendant’s prolonged failure to take actions to enforce the judgment in the applicant’s favour did not have any bearing on the lawfulness of the decision to discontinue the enforcement, as since 2013 the applicant had no longer been entitled to State housing. The proceedings were held in written form.
27.  As regards the absence from the first-instance hearing, the appeal court noted that the notifications of the hearing had been sent to the applicant by registered mail and by telegram to his known address, but had not been delivered as the flat had been closed and the applicant had failed to collect the telegram pursuant to a notification thereof. Further, on 20 December 2016 he was informed of the date and the place of the hearing by phone. The court also noted his reply in the telephone conversation that he had no longer lived at the address he had provided to the court, as well as his refusal to provide his new address, and rejected the complaint.
28.  On 3 May 2017 a judge of the Military Court of the Moscow Command rejected the applicant’s first leave for cassation appeal. The judge found, in particular, that the decisions of the Presnenskiy District court referred to in paragraphs 19 and 20 had not had a res judicata effect on the proceedings as the domestic law did not prohibit the debtor from lodging a repeated request for termination of the enforcement proceedings.
29.  On 20 July 2017 a judge of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation refused to grant leave for the second cassation appeal against the decision of 21 December 2016.
30.  On 15 March 2015 the applicant Mr Bazhenov (Appendix II) died. On 23 May 2015 his widow, Ms Leyla Khalilyevna Bazhenova, born on 13 July 1973, expressed a wish to maintain the application in his stead, and submitted a copy of the certificate confirming that she was her late husband’s legal heir.
31.  Two applicants, Mr Balyas and Mr Golovachev, withdrew their complaints on the dates specified in Appendix IV.