According to the document, the ship's charter will be a separate special regulatory legal act, including in relation to general military charters
MOSCOW, November 2. /tass/. The Government of the Russian Federation has submitted to the State Duma a bill providing for the empowerment of the President of the Russian Federation to approve the Ship Charter of the Russian Navy. The document was posted on Tuesday in the Duma electronic database.
As noted in the explanatory note, the draft law establishes "the powers of the President of the Russian Federation to approve the Ship Charter of the Navy, <...> the ship charter will be a separate special regulatory legal act, including in relation to general military charters."
As indicated in the Cabinet of Ministers, in 2007, the general military charters of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation were approved by a decree of the President of Russia, "the legal status of the Ship's Charter has changed dramatically - it has become practically a by-law", lost the opportunity to be coordinated with federal executive authorities and state legal structures of the president.
"As practice has shown, [the charter] has begun to fall out of the legal field of the Russian Federation, losing its status as a normative legal act," the accompanying documents say. Often, as explained in the Cabinet of Ministers, the arguments of the commanders of ships that they act in accordance with the Ship's Charter are not accepted when analyzing incidents, because "there is a document of the highest legal force."
The authors of the bill draw attention to the fact that the ships of the Russian Navy in peacetime, constantly interacting with foreign ships and foreign authorities (including a likely enemy) in the World Ocean, ensure the military security of the Russian Federation from sea and ocean directions, therefore, the Ship Charter "all the more requires approval by presidential decree", "since the actions of the commanders of ships (commanders of ship formations) are associated with the potential possibility of international conflicts in peacetime, and this is the level of regulation of the President of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia".
