Characteristics of the objective aspect of incitement to hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity

In the article the author investigates the objective signs of the crime provided by article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation devoted to criminal ac-tions connected with incitement of hatred or enmity, as well as with humiliation of dignity of a person or a group of persons on the grounds of nationality, race, reli-gion, language, origin or social affiliation, which allow to qualify the act as crimi-nal. The materials of the research were normative acts, court decisions, scientific works. The study of the objective side of the offence under article 282 of the Crim-inal Code of the Russian Federation was carried out with the use of a set of meth-ods aimed at the analysis of normative-legal sources, judicial practice and doctrinal approaches (dialectical, dogmatic, empirical, interpretative methods). The results of the research allowed to reveal the content of objective signs of in-citement to hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity, which allow to qualify the act as criminal. The objective side of the offence under part 1 of arti-cle 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation has a formal composition, implying responsibility for public actions aimed at inciting hatred or enmity, humil-iation of dignity on social grounds. The key problems of application of the norm are related to the uncertainty of the criteria of publicity, the difficulty of differentia-tion from Article 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Court deci-sions demonstrate an expansive interpretation of ‘actions’. In order to eliminate problematic issues, legislative clarifications are needed, such as possible regulation of a closed list of ways of committing an offence, definition of quantitative criteria of publicity, development of expert methods for analysing the context.