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Resolution of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation dated 2 July 2026 No. 45-П in the case concerning the review of the constitutionality of provisions on fire safety in forests insofar as they concern the duty of local self-government bodies to clear dry grass and create firebreaks on land with undivided state ownership adjoining forest lands, and administrative liability for failure to perform that duty. The Constitutional Court did not find these provisions inconsistent with the Constitution, but identified their constitutional-legal meaning: the duty to clear such land of combustible materials and create mineralized strips is a state, rather than local, power, and may be imposed on a local self-government body only by law, together with the transfer of the necessary material and financial resources; without this, holding a municipality administratively liable under Part 3 of Article 8.32 of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation is precluded.
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An official of the regional institution Lesnaya Okhrana held the administration of the Kansky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai administratively liable under Part 3 of Article 8.32 of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation because land with undivided state ownership adjoining a forest plot had not been cleared of dry herbaceous vegetation and no fire-prevention mineralized strip had been created during a special fire-prevention regime. The fine amounted to 600,000 roubles; the district court upheld the order, the regional court reduced the fine to 300,000 roubles in view of the local budget’s subsidized status, and the cassation court and a judge of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation left the acts unchanged.
The administration challenged before the Constitutional Court interrelated provisions concerning the powers of local self-government to grant land without delineated ownership, fire safety in forests, and administrative liability, arguing that they allowed the municipality to be required to maintain state property without funding and to be held liable for failing to perform a duty for which it had neither the powers nor the resources — that is, they permitted strict liability and a financial burden on a subsidized budget not provided for by law.
The Constitutional Court recalled that public authorities are responsible for preserving nature and must take effective measures to prevent fires (Resolution of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation dated 5 March 2013 No. 5-П, Resolution of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation dated 29 September 2021 No. 42-П and others), and that, in allocating matters of local significance, the legislature may not act arbitrarily: the competence of municipalities must be defined clearly and consistently, without conflating it with matters of state significance (Resolution of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation dated 29 March 2011 No. 2-П).
Land plots whose state ownership has not been delineated remain state-owned by their legal nature — the presumption in Article 214 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation does not alter this. Empowering local self-government bodies to grant such plots does not in itself turn the maintenance of that property into a matter of local significance and does not automatically impose the burden of maintaining it on the municipality (Resolution of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation dated 3 July 2019 No. 26-П). By analogy with forest legislation, under which the creation of fire barriers on forest-fund lands is a federal power transferred to the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and financed through subsidies, no equivalent power in respect of undivided lands adjoining forests has been expressly transferred by law to local self-government bodies.
Accordingly, the duty to clear such land of combustible materials and create mineralized strips may be assigned to local self-government bodies only by empowering them, under a federal law or a law of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation, with the corresponding state power, provided that the necessary material and financial resources are transferred at the same time. Otherwise, municipalities would bear excessive costs undermining the autonomy of local self-government, a burden that is particularly significant for municipalities with extensive forested areas.
The Court separately distinguished this duty from the duty to create (renew) firebreaks around populated areas to protect them from the spread of wildfires: the latter serves different purposes, falls within the powers of both state authorities and local self-government bodies, and its allocation between levels of public authority was not considered in this case.
Finally, addressing the principles of certainty in administrative liability (Resolution of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation dated 31 May 2005 No. 6-П), the Court emphasised that the blanket provision of Part 3 of Article 8.32 of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation is permissible only insofar as the regulatory provision to which it refers is in fact addressed to the person being held liable (Resolution of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation dated 6 November 2024 No. 50-П). Holding a local self-government body liable for failing to perform a duty that had not been imposed on it by law would amount to liability for failing to comply with requirements not addressed to it, contrary to Article 54 (Part 2) of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
The judgment distinguishes the issue of the municipality’s guilt under the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation from the issue of the allocation of powers between levels of public authority: until the legislature expressly empowers local self-government bodies to clear undivided land near forests and transfers funding for that purpose, holding a municipality liable under Part 3 of Article 8.32 of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation for failing to perform that duty is precluded.
For courts of general jurisdiction and commercial courts, this means that in each such case they must verify not only the fact that the land was not cleared, but also the existence of a legal basis on which the corresponding state power was transferred to the municipality together with the resources necessary for its exercise. Judicial acts issued without such verification are subject to review under the rules of Chapter 37 of the Commercial Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, Chapter 42 of the Civil Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, or analogous procedural provisions.
For the state authorities of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and the federal legislature, the judgment creates a direct incentive to adopt a law transferring the relevant power, by analogy with the mechanism under Article 83 of the Forest Code of the Russian Federation, financed through subsidies from the federal budget. Until such a law is adopted, municipalities whose territories are substantially covered by forests are not administratively liable for failing to clear undivided land adjoining forests, reducing the burden on subsidized local budgets.
The judgment also clarifies the relationship between the duty under Point 10 of the Fire Safety Rules in Forests and the duty under the second paragraph of Point 70 of the Fire Prevention Regime Rules — protecting populated areas themselves from the spread of wildfires. The scope and allocation of this second duty between levels of public authority were not addressed in the judgment and remain in force independently of the meaning identified for the first duty.
This analysis was prepared on the basis of the CasusLegal database (case law of the highest courts of the Russian Federation). The titles of the cited decisions link to their full texts in CasusLegal.