4 TATISHVILI v. RUSSIA JUDGMENT II. RELEVANT DOMESTIC LAW AND PRACTICE A. Constitution of the Russian Federation of 12 December 1993 20. Article 19 provides for the equality of all before the law and courts of law, and equality of rights and liberties. 21. Article 27 provides that everyone lawfully within the territory of the Russian Federation shall have the right to move freely and choose his or her place of stay or residence. 22. Article 62 § 3 provides that foreign citizens and stateless persons shall have in the Russian Federation the same rights and obligations as Russian citizens unless otherwise provided in a federal law or an international treaty to which the Russian Federation is a party. B. Law on Russian citizenship and the status of citizens of the former USSR 23. At the material time the issues related to Russian citizenship were governed by the Law on Citizenship of the Russian Federation (no. 1948-I of 28 November 1991, as amended on 6 February 1995), which provided that all citizens of the former USSR who were permanently resident in Russia on 6 February 1992 (the date of entry into force of the law) automatically obtained Russian citizenship unless they expressed their wish to the contrary before 6 February 1993. The basis for establishing whether a person was permanently resident within Russian was the propiska stamp (internal residence registration) in his or her USSR passport. Section 18 (gh) of the law provided for a simplified procedure (“by way of registration”) for obtaining Russian citizenship for citizens of the former USSR who arrived in Russia after 6 February 1992 and expressed their wish to become Russian citizens before 31 December 2000. 24. Under the powers vested in him by the law, on 10 April 1992 the President of the Russian Federation adopted the Regulation on the Procedure for Consideration of Issues of Citizenship of the Russian Federation (decree no. 386, the “1992 Regulation”). Section II(5) stated that the notion of “a citizen of the former USSR” applied only to those individuals who did not obtain the citizenship of one of the newly independent states, which had previously been members of the USSR. The same section stipulated that after 31 December 2000 all citizens of the former USSR who had not obtained Russian or other citizenship would be considered as stateless persons. 25. Until August 2002 the status of foreign citizens and stateless persons in the Russian Federation was regulated by the USSR Law on the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the USSR (no. 5152-X of 24 June 1981, as