Environmental criminal law provides for measures targeting the most serious environmental offences and improving the enforceability of environmental provisions. In the article, environmental criminal law provisions in Poland and Russia are analyzed and compared. The changes introduced by the Council Directive 2008/99/EC on the protection of the environment through criminal law have a significant impact on the Member States' criminal law, promoting broader criminalization of environmentally harmful behavior and more severe sanctions. Although the Russian Federation is not an EU member and adopts its environmental legislation, it is still a party to several international treaties and therefore is obligated to provide an adequate level of environmental protection. There are several similarities between the criminal provisions in both countries concerning the classification of environmental crimes and the limbs of their legal definitions. Besides, both countries use a continental model of criminal procedure including their rules on evidence. It allowed us to compare national law enforcement practices. The authors analyze current law enforcement challenges and discuss possible solutions.

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Homicide cases in which the perpetrator succeeds in disposing the body or due to the other factors the investigators are unable to locate the victim’s body, its remains can be referred as the most difficult, due to a large number of practical investigative and evidence-related challenges. However, there have been many cases where the perpetra-tors were not only identified, but successfully sentenced as well. The prosecution in such cases could succeed on the condition that it would manage to establish an impeccable, logical, and coherent line of events. To handle this task, it must be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that in light of the evidence gathered in the case, murder is the only possible explanation and the defendant, not the other person, committed (was responsible for) this crime. The author provides an overview on the literature and selected criminal cases to systemize valuable experiences and to lay down some basic principles and valu-able recommendations which can contribute to a better understanding of the process of proof in such types of criminal cases, its scope and internal logic.

The Russian procedure of identification of mass disaster victims is based on the present state of knowledge and the employment of state-of-the-art scientific analysis equipment. The Authors analyse legal regulations, concerning the identification of unknown bodies, that are in force in Russia, describe recommendations established by the doctrine regarding the methodology of conducting respective identification procedures, as well as forms and methods of the work organisation of the investigative team in a section describing identification of victims.