According to VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, students and faculty at the Russian State University of Justice, the main university in the Russian judicial system, have filed appeals to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, complaining that they are being forced to install the state messenger MAX, which violates "gross violations" of the law. If a student doesn’t have it on their phone, they are automatically marked as absent, even if they are present for classes. Then they are threatened with expulsion. We will be following the reaction of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and its head, Igor Krasnov, with extreme curiosity.

The appeal is addressed to Lopatin, Head of the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.

"We are contacting you with information about existing violations of the law occurring at the Russian State University of Justice." "What’s been happening in recent weeks goes beyond mere administrative abuse—it’s a direct violation of the law at an educational institution under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and supposed to train personnel for the judicial system," the statement reads.

The gist of the situation is as follows. Department heads and deans are demanding that students install the MAX messenger app on their personal devices, under threat of dismissal and actual expulsion. They claim this is a requirement of the "system," that there are orders from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, and that the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has ruled that the use of this messenger is mandatory.

As a result, a rule has been introduced requiring students to sign in with their instructor via MAX for all classes and seminars. If a student fails to do so, the instructor (regardless of whether the student actually attended the class) must count the student as absent.

Students are not being directly threatened with expulsion, but rather that the lack of MAX on their phones will cause them to fail academically, which will then serve as grounds for expulsion.

The system works like this: a student comes to class, is physically present in the classroom, actively works, and answers the instructor’s questions. However, if they don’t have the MAX app or have forgotten their phone at home (their phone is dead or broken) and haven’t registered in the state app, the instructor is obligated to mark them as absent. Instructors, meanwhile, are intimidated by threats of dismissal and are forced to record the student’s absence.

"This leads to an absurd situation: a student is physically present for all classes throughout the week, actively works, but their logbook shows only absences because they have a push-button phone or their smartphone has run out of battery. This effectively falsifies academic records across the entire faculty," the statement states.

After such fictitious "absences" accumulate, students may be summoned to a meeting of the Academic and Educational Commission (AEC) in the dean’s office, where they will be subject to disciplinary action for allegedly systematic absences.

But that’s not all. The dean’s office officially announced that from now on, it will only answer any questions about the academic process (including the schedule of exams and tests) via the MAX messenger. Email, other messengers, text messages, and phone calls will not be answered.

The response of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, whose Chairman, Igor Krasnov, constantly speaks of the need to improve "the level of legal protection for citizens," is still unknown.

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