MOSCOW, May 15 (RIA Novosti) - A total of 20,300 cases or around 26% out the total are pending against Russia in the European Court of Human Rights, Russia's envoy to the court said on Thursday.

For comparison, Anatoly Kovler said the share of cases against Romania make up 10%, 7% for Ukraine, and 4% for Poland.

"We are ahead of all of Europe in this sense," he said.

Earlier in the year Kovler said that the European Court of Human Rights had received a total of 46,700 cases against Russia in the past decade, making up 20% of lawsuits submitted.

Russia has lost most of its cases in the Strasbourg court. In 2007, the court ruled against the country 192 times and in its favor only six times.

In March this year a report prepared by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe said that Russia must pay 4.3 million euros ($6.7 million) in compensation for lost legal cases in 2007 at the court in Strasbourg.

The court ruled that Russia failed to carry out effective investigations into deaths and disappearances of people, illegal searches conducted, and unlawfully destroyed property during counter-terrorist operations in the troubled North Caucasus Republic of Chechnya in 1999-2001.

In addition, the court ruled that Russia was guilty of holding suspects in custody for too long, torturing prisoners, failing to provide adequate medical treatment and dragging out legal cases.