Terry Davis will meet Dmitry Medvedev to try and persuade Russia to ratify protocol 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights, which has been signed and ratified by all 47 Council of Europe states except Russia.
On July 2, Davis will travel to St. Petersburg to attend a conference of prosecutor generals from the Council of Europe member states.
In December, Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, rejected protocol 14, designed to help the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg cope with the growing influx of complaints, saying the document could encourage more politically motivated decisions against the country and that some provisions were incompatible with Russian legislation.
Although Russia imposed a moratorium on the death penalty shortly after it joined the Council of Europe in 1996, it did not formally abolish capital punishment within three years, as membership of the organization requires.
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has been the subject of an increasing number of complaints over its inefficiency. The protocol will enable the court to reject damage claims if the sums are judged to be insignificant. It also extends judges' terms of office from six to nine years.
