Opinion | On September 3, the European Court of Human Rights adopted a decision that is unprecedented in the history of international justice as a whole: it struck out 879 remaining applications for cases against Russia, whose applicants included more than 1,500 people and organisations in total.

The decision concerns applications unrelated to military conflicts or inter-state disputes, as well as those that cannot be examined under a simplified procedure

The European Court of Human Rights’ decision is deeply disappointing. It deprives hundreds of individuals of what for many of them is their last hope of seeing justice for the…