protection for other vulnerable migrants and de facto stateless persons. This discussion has conceptual repercussions for the broader statelessness debate. Should statelessness be eradicated at all cost? This paper demonstrated how in an absence of a viable path to an effective citizenship, human rights legal framework around de jure statelessness can be mobilised to spearhead the protection of the rights of other noncitizens in the post-Soviet space. This does not mean, however, that the situation of stateless persons in Russia paints now overall a rosy picture. Quite the contrary, the human rights lawyers continue to warn that ‘thousands and thousands of stateless people living in the Russian Federation are either being held in detention centres or are living under the constant threat of detention’ (Abramenko, 2019). Even though the Mskhiladze judgment yielded successful results in many cases launched on behalf of the stateless and de facto stateless persons in detention in Russia, there were also cases where the domestic judges continued bureaucratic foot-dragging with regard to the guidelines of the Constitutional Court (Burtina 2018b). These people are likely to face continued detention at least until the formal legalization procedures are determined at the legislative level and the new law ‘On Stateless Persons’ (Burtina 2018b) is passed and implemented. Nevertheless, the Mskhiladze case attests to the legal productivity of statelessness, demonstrating how the relationship between de jure and de facto statelessness in post-Soviet space can be mobilised to secure human rights for those whose citizenship protections are ultimately ineffective. 21