© AFP / Andrej IsakovicPussy Riot band members
With no further means to challenge the ruling, Russia's Justice Ministry said on Wednesday that the compensation will be paid in full as the country always thoroughly executes all of the ECHR's decisions.
In July, the Strasbourg court ordered Russia to pay the three members of the scandalous band €37,000 in damages as well as €11,760 more for costs and expenses. The judges said that the right to self-expression of the balaclava-wearing artists were violated after they were handed two-year prison sentences for an unsanctioned political protest at Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow in 2012.
By rejecting Russia's appeal, the ECHR avoided a public debate on its decision, which "delivers a blow to legal protection of religious freedom in Europe," hegumen Filipp, Russia's Orthodox Church envoy at the Council of Europe, said.
Not only Russian, but European human rights groups were eager to join the discussion if the case got a review, he added.
The envoy regretted that instead of searching for balance, the ECHR opted to "protect the freedom of a small group of people at the expense of freedom of millions of other citizens."
A fair and balanced decision from the European judges would've been especially important in the current times of "radical and extremist manifestations," Filipp said.
"In recent years, a wave of incursions swept through Christian communities across Europe. There were disgusting actions in the Catholic cathedrals of France and Germany; Christian shrines and images were desecrated in Spain and Lithuania; an attempt to ban wearing a baptism cross was made in the UK and the Strasbourg court also demanded Italy to remove crucifixes from schools," he added.
By its ruling, the European Court of Human Rights virtually supported staging non-religious actions in the places of worship, without consent of the communities that they belong to, the Orthodox Church representative pointed out.
Comment: Here is the video of what the members of Pussy Riot did at the church in 2012, a rather disgusting desecration of a spiritual and holy center.
Keep in mind that Pussy Riot staged a different kind of protest in 2008, where they joined with another punk group called Voina and decided that their way to protest presidential politics was to undress and join in a group orgy at a Moscow biological museum. Pussy Riot's leader, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, happened to be a few days away from delivering birth that day. Those are the kind of people that the European Court of Human Rights just defended against the Orthodox Church.
Previously: Double standards. ECHR says you can insult Christianity, but not Islam