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The article proposes classifying the models of discharging a citizen from obligations based on the legal circumstance that is recognized as sufficient to terminate the compulsory enforceability of the remaining debt. Three basic logics are distinguished: procedural-discharge, payment-disciplinary, and evaluative-selective. It is shown that they describe different grounds for discharge and can be combined within a single legal order. The Russian construct is qualified as a procedural-discharge model with a restrictive-filtering mechanism: completion of the procedure prescribed by law constitutes the general ground for discharge, while bad faith and other disqualifying circumstances act as exceptions. This approach allows for distinguishing between rehabilitation and restructuring, explaining the statistical dominance of property realization, and determining the limits of judicial discretion in the application of Art. 213.28 of the Bankruptcy Law¹.

The article briefly highlights the results of seven years of consumer bankruptcy, analyzes the problem of classifying citizens as honest and bona fide debtors. The author analyzes the practice of refusing to discharge debts due to a significant amount of claims against the debtor or a consistent increase in debt to creditors in the absence of the required level of income, as an independent basis for refusing to discharge debts and comes to the conclusion that the balanced approach proposed by the Supreme Court helps prevent indiscriminate failures. The author examines and highlights key points of the precedent ruling of the Supreme Court on the issues of malicious evasion of repayment of debts.

During the COVID-19 crisis, Russian regulators implemented a package of emergency legislation including measures referring to the insolvency law. The law was published on 1 April 2020, and on 3 April the Government exercised its right to introduce a 6-month moratorium on initiating bankruptcy proceedings for certain categories of debtors.