5.  The applicants' names and other details are indicated in the appended table. 6.  The applicants emigrated to Israel from the USSR in the 1980s and 1990s and obtained Israeli nationality. Before immigration they had been receiving old-age pensions from the Soviet authorities. However, once the applicants left the USSR, the payments were discontinued in accordance with the USSR pension law applicable at the material time. As they left the USSR prior to its collapse, they were not entitled to a pension under the new Russian legislation. 7.  In early 2000 the applicants unsuccessfully applied to the regional departments of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation (“the Pension Fund”) for the payment of their pensions to be restored. On unspecified dates they brought civil proceedings against the Pension Fund requesting restoration of the payment of their pensions. 8.  By the final judgments listed in the appended table the applicants' claims were allowed and the Pension Fund was ordered to restore pension payments. 9.  In their judgments the courts found, inter alia, that although the pensions had initially been awarded in accordance with the USSR legislation, the latter was also applicable in the Russian Federation. The courts interpreted the relevant legal provisions in the light of the Constitutional Court judgment of 15 June 1998, considering that the pension payments should be restored regardless of the date or place of emigration from the Russian Federation. 10.  The Pension Fund restored the payments in ten cases (see § 43 below). 11.  On 17 June 2005 the Pension Fund, in a letter numbered ГВ‑21‑15/6390, asked the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to provide an explanation of the issue. It based the request on the fact that courts of different regions had different attitudes towards the problem. Thus, it noted that in Moscow, the Moscow Region and in most of the other regions the courts rejected claims for payment of pensions to emigrant pensioners whose pensions had been awarded in accordance with the legislation of the USSR. At the same time, the courts in St Petersburg, in the Samara Region, in the Kaluga Region and in the Yaroslavl Region awarded such payment. 12.  Subsequently the Pension Fund, as a party to the proceedings in the present case, lodged requests with the competent regional courts for supervisory review of the final judgments in the applicants' favour. The Presidia of the regional courts granted the requests, quashed the judgments and dismissed the applicants' claims. 13.  The Presidia found that according to the relevant USSR legislation, under which the pensions had been awarded, there was no possibility to continue the payments to the applicants, as they had left the country. According to their interpretation of the Ruling of the Constitutional Court of 15 June 1998, the payments were to be restored only if the pensions had been awarded in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation, not the USSR. The Presidia accordingly concluded that there was no basis under the domestic law for the payments to be awarded to the applicants. 14.  The relevant data on the Presidia decisions is listed below.