I’m getting rather tired of this misrepresentation. “Decriminalising” does not mean that something is no longer an offence or is moved to civil litigation.
I think the actual law will probably be counterproductive but its intentions were not bad. The idea was that men committing minor acts of domestic violence would be committed to get treatment, but more serious assaults or repetition would continue to be a felony (the law doesn’t remove minor domestic violence from the criminal system, it reduces it below the felony threshold.)
The idea was that women might not report domestic violence because their husbands would then be sent to prison, which might make the situation worse. This is supposed to be an “intervention” approach.
As I say, I suspect it won’t work, but that is largely due to misreporting and what many men will believe to be the case. Right up till they are bound over and told that next time it will be a prison sentence.
Unfortunately although the full text of articles explaining the law is available in English as well as Russian, it tends not to get read.
