Necessary Defense: The Problem of Assessing the Legality of Actions to Protect Oneself and Others from Socially Dangerous Attacks

The article is devoted to the problem of assessing the legality of actions to protect oneself and others from socially dangerous attacks. The urgency of this problem is due to the events that occurred in the summer of 2024 at a children's summer camp in the Nizhny Novgorod region, when a guard at the camp was found guilty of intentionally causing serious harm to health, resulting in the death of the victim. The conviction in this case caused a public outcry, the situation was reflected in detail in the media, a number of lawyers and public figures expressed opinions on the need to retrain the actions of the convicted person. The authors of the article conducted a study of media materials that are freely available in order to establish the circumstances of the incident. Based on the conducted research, the authors carried out a criminal legal assessment of the actions of the guard from the standpoint of the institute of necessary defense. It is concluded that these actions were committed in a state of necessary defense, and taking into account the nature and danger of the encroachment, its limits were not exceeded. Based on this, it is argued that the guard was lawfully harmed in order to repel and suppress a socially dangerous encroachment.