present at the appeal hearing and made submissions to the appeal court. Taking further into account what was at stake for the applicant, who had been sentenced to thirteen years' imprisonment, the Court does not consider that the Orenburg Regional Court could properly determine the issues before it without a direct assessment of the evidence given by the applicant either in person or through some form of legal representation.
39. In so far as the Government may be understood to argue that, by failing to indicate in his appeal statement his wish to participate in the appeal hearing and to obtain legal representation, the applicant waived those rights, the Court considers it necessary to note the following.
40. As regards the right to take part in the appeal hearing, the Court is satisfied that the applicant's failure to request to attend did not constitute an explicit and unequivocal waiver of that right. If analysed in terms of an implicit waiver, the Court has certain doubts that the necessary safeguards were in place to make it satisfy the Convention requirements (see, among other authorities, Talat {Tunc}, cited above, § 60). Nonetheless, the Court need not resolve that issue, because it considers that the proceedings before the Regional Court in any event fell short of the requirements of fairness for the following reasons.
41. It follows from the parties' submissions and the documents at the Court's disposal that at trial the applicant explicitly declined services of M., who appeared to be legal-aid counsel, and that the trial court accepted that decision and allowed his request for self-representation. However, there is no indication that the applicant waived, explicitly or implicitly and in accordance with the above-mentioned requirements (see paragraph 35 above), his right to be represented by legal-aid counsel on appeal (compare Grigoryevskikh v. Russia, No. 22/03, § 89, 9 April 2009).
42. For the reasons stated in paragraph 38 the Court cannot accept as decisive the Government's argument that the applicant's representation on appeal was not mandatory under the domestic law. In this respect the Court stresses that it is not its role to decide in the abstract whether the applicable domestic law is compatible with the Convention or whether it has been respected by the national authorities, but to assess whether the requirements of Article 6 have been complied with (see Ringeisen v. Austria, 16 July 1971, § 97, Series A No. 13).
43. In so far as the Government further argued that it had been for the applicant to request appointment of counsel on appeal, the Court notes that it has already dismissed similar arguments, pointing out that, according to the applicable norms of the CCP, as interpreted by the Russian Constitutional Court, the onus to appoint a legal-aid lawyer rested upon the relevant authority at each stage of proceedings (see Shulepov, cited above, § 37). In the Grigoryevskikh judgment (cited above, § 90) it was specifically emphasised that the effectiveness of the guarantee of legal representation by default contained in Article 51 of the CCP would be undermined without a corresponding obligation on the part of the court to verify in each individual case whether it is lawful to proceed with the hearing in the absence of legal counsel for the accused. In that case the Court concluded that it had been incumbent on the appeal court to verify whether there had been a valid waiver of legal assistance by the applicant and, if there was none, to appoint a lawyer as required by Article 51 §§ 1 (1) and 3 of the Code (ibid).
44. In view of the above findings, the Government's submission concerning the applicant's presumably extensive experience of the applicable procedures because of his previous convictions is without relevance for the Court's analysis, particularly having regard to the fact that the applicant
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