Conclusion One

Worse than in the Brezhnev era

Over the six years of Putin’s most recent term, more than 10,000 people were tried under repressive criminal articles, and more than 105,000 under administrative ones

– Given his [Putin’s] enormous authority, it is a stabilising factor for our society, for the development of the country, for the implementation of transformations, it is a guarantee of stability both inside the country and on its external contour.

With these words, 83-year-old Valentina Tereshkova, who flew into space under Nikita Khrushchev, justified from the rostrum of the Russian parliament the resetting of presidential term count, which allowed Vladimir Putin to essentially rule Russia for life. In truth, the “stability within the country” of which the cosmonaut spoke was not achieved by the authority of the president. The “stabilising factor” was repression, essentially identical to that practiced during Tereshkova’s space flight. However, in those times the state did not hide its motives and tried all dissidents under special, “political” articles.

In the 1926 Criminal Code of the RSFSR, the first substantive – it came immediately after the introductory, so-called general part – × chapter was “State Crimes”, which consisted of many variations of the infamous Article 58. Its subparagraphs contained all the offences under which millions of Soviet citizens were repressed – from treason to anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation. The Code was significantly changed under Khrushchev – the main “political” article became Art. 70 “Anti-Soviet Agitation and Propaganda”, with the later addition of Art. 190 “Dissemination of Knowingly False Fabrications that Defame the Soviet State and Social System” 84.5% of those repressed between 1956 and 1960 were convicted for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”, according to the data in the article by historian Vladimir Kozlov, head of the Centre for the Study and Publication of Documents of the State Archive of the Russian Federation, titled “Kramola: Dissent in the USSR under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. 1953-1982” × . In 1991, those convicted under these articles were recognised as victims of political repression and rehabilitated under the law “On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression” × .

In modern Russia, everything is much more complicated – it seems as if there are no “political” articles just for dissenters. The real motives of the state can be hidden behind a wide variety of offences: from economic (Alexei Navalny’s first trial was under an economic article) to everyday crimes such as hooliganism or vandalism. Nevertheless, the “extremist” articles Art. 280, 282, 282.1, 282.2, 282.3, 282.4 × are considered today’s analogues of the Soviet repressive articles. Extremism is a complex concept that is not clearly described in the law, and any action or statement that the authorities do not like can be labelled extremist. In addition, signs of modern “anti-Sovietism” can be seen in other articles – first of all, Art. 205.2 on “justification of terrorism” as well as Art. 280.3 on “discrediting the army”, Art. 284.2 on “calls for sanctions” and Art. 207.3 on “disseminating misinformation”.

We have analysed all of the above articles Art. 205.2, 207.3, 280, 280.3, 282, 282.1, 282.2, 282.3, 282.4, 284.2 × and revealed that at least 4,667 cases under them were brought before Russian courts in 2018-2023. 5,613 people were accused in these cases. Some have already been convicted, some are still awaiting their fate. However, it is unlikely that the latter will be able to avoid a guilty verdict, since the number of acquittals in Russia is much lower than 1%.

This number of people accused and convicted under repressive articles is more than those convicted for anti-Soviet offences during a similar six-year period under Nikita Khrushchev and many times more than those tried for offences against the Soviet regime during the Brezhnev era. 

But in reality, the victims of modern repression may be much more numerous, because Putin’s authorities, like the Soviet authorities, use a wide range of articles for their purposes – treason, espionage, cooperation with foreign organisations, disclosure of state secrets, participation in a subversive community and others (see our methodology). By the way, some of these articles are used more often in modern Russia than in Brezhnev’s USSR. However, nowadays those convicted under them are at least not shot.

With the outbreak of the war, repression also began in the army, affecting those who refused to fight in Ukraine. The punishments for disobeying an order CC Art. 332 × , abandoning a military unit CC Art. 337 and 338 × or faking an illness CC Art. 339 × were severely toughened in 2022. If we include convictions under the above-mentioned articles, it turns out that during Putin’s last term, more than 10,000 people were subjected to repression – 10,187 criminal cases were brought to the courts, in which 11,442 defendants were tried. 

Compared to the horrific terror that the country experienced between the late 1920s and the early 1950s, with millions of victims, the times of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Putin look relatively mild. However, criminal cases for “anti-Sovietism” were just a small part of the repressive system deployed in post-Stalinist times, the main emphasis of which was on so-called “prophylaxis” – this term is mentioned in the documents of the State Archive, published as part of the compilation “The Regime and the Dissidents. From the Documents of the KGB and the CPSU Central Committee” by the Moscow Helsinki Group in 2006 × . People who “had suspicious connections with foreigners,” “harboured treasonous intentions,” or “allowed politically harmful acts,” were put on a special list by the Chekists, and official warnings were issued to them. In addition, the “public” worked against them: their words and deeds were discussed at meetings, brought before comrades’ courts – all this put pressure on people, spoilt their lives and careers. According to the KGB, more than 120,000 people were subjected to such “prophylaxis” between 1967 and 1974. 

The modern Russian authorities are actively using similar methods. As in the USSR, dissenters are expelled from universities, fired from their jobs, forced out of the country, and those who do not want to leave are forced to publicly apologise and swear allegiance to the authorities. Yet it is practically impossible to calculate how many people have gone through this type of repression: even if centralised statistics exist, they are only kept covertly, somewhere in the bowels of Centre E or the FSB.

What can be counted, however, is the number of cases in which citizens have been brought to administrative responsibility under articles related to freedom of speech, conscience and assembly For more details, see the methodology section × . We found that the figures are comparable to the number of those subjected to “prophylaxis” in Soviet times – in the six years from 2018 to 2023, more than 105,000 such cases were brought before the courts, the vast majority of which ended in punishments – fines, arrest or compulsory labour. It is not possible to compare the number of those fined with the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras, since the first Codes of Administrative Offences only appeared in the Soviet republics in 1984, and before that punishments for minor offences were regulated by many different sector-specific documents × .  

Thus, the total number of those repressed in Russia for criminal and administrative offences in 2018-2023 can be estimated at about 116,000 people.

But that’s not all. In 2021-2022, the number of criminal cases for verbal threats against law enforcement officers (offence under CC Art. 318) increased sharply, as did the number of cases for “disobeying the lawful demands of law enforcement officers” (CAO Art. 19.3). These are very ambiguous offences, which could include both opposition activists who were aggressive towards the authorities and ordinary troublemakers (which, apparently, are in majority). Therefore, we did not include people punished under these articles in the total count. It is important to note, however, that there are a lot of such people – 600,000 cases were brought to the courts over the past six years. Therefore, we will pay a separate attention to these articles in our study. 

There is one more corpus delicti that the authorities could use for repressive purposes: after the lifting of COVID restrictions and even after the WHO announced the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, the courts continued to fine citizens for non-compliance with quarantine measures. As it turned out, between April 2022 and late 2023, some 159,000 people were fined in COVID-related cases. These articles were also often applied to opposition activists for attempting to organise mass protests. 

All this cannot be explained by demographics, let alone the epidemiological situation. The only explanation is that in addition to the widely discussed repression of opposition and anti-war activists, Russia has a system of social pressure where citizens are severely punished for the most insignificant misdemeanours. 

We will now describe the different types of repression under Putin in more detail.

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Conclusion Two

“Don’t Chatter!”

Between 2018 and 2023, more than 50,000 people have been repressed for speaking out

As mentioned above, in Soviet times people were punished for speaking out under articles on anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, as well as for ” disseminating knowingly false fabrications”.  Nowadays, improper statements are punished under articles on extremism and justification of terrorism. 

At the beginning of Putin’s most recent term, the main repressive article was the “extremist” Article 282 “Incitement of Hatred or Enmity, as Well as Abasement of Human Dignity”. In 2018, three-quarters of the total number of repressive criminal cases 613 out of 829 × were brought under it. After winning re-election, Putin initiated a “thaw” and partially decriminalised this article.  However, this decriminalisation was incomplete – it hardly led to any of the previously initiated cases being closed – out of the 613 criminal cases, only 23% were dropped in court, 41 cases were dismissed, and 417 led to convictions × , while a similar article appeared in the code of administrative offences (CAO Art. 20.3.1). In absolute terms, the number of people prosecuted for “incitement of hatred and hostility” has not decreased, but rather grown. Over the past six years, a total of 948 people have been tried in criminal courts on charges of incitement of hatred, while 4,995 people have been fined for administrative offences. In total, over the past six years, more than 45,000 people have gone through the courts under CAO articles that imply punishment for public statements.

By 2023, another “extremism” article of the Criminal Code took the lead in terms of repression under it – Article 280 “Public Appeals for the Performance of Extremist Activity”, which is also used to punish people for their words – the total number of cases under this article in 2018-2023 is 1,721 × .

This is a highly classified article – there are practically no published verdicts under it. The exact reasons for which Russians are tried are only known in isolated cases, mostly when the trials are monitored by journalists and human rights activists. Among the small number of published verdicts there are cases in which the defendants wrote Islamophobic slogans on the Internet or expressed dislike for Caucasus nationals or Jews in comments. However, it is impossible to establish with certainty what each person was actually tried for. Among the trials anti-Semitic statements, for example, one story stands out: a man from Astrakhan was convicted for his comments about Jews, one of which mentioned Putin. In the VK group “Science and Technology”, under a post about Mikhail Bulgakov, a certain Alexei Mamaev left the comment “Bulgakov, albeit a Freemason. Gipsies belong on a stake! And Putin to is Freemason” (original grammar and spelling reflected). It is likely that the president’s surname was the determining factor in initiating the case. Calling Putin a Jew apparently constitutes extremism as far as the Russian authorities are concerned. At least, in the list of extremist materials compiled by the Ministry of Justice, the distribution of which is a criminal offence, there is a video with the title: “Putin publicly admitted at a meeting of Jews that he is a Jew”. The video with this headline is publicly available on YouTube – it is an ordinary report from Putin’s visit to the Jewish Community Centre to celebrate Hanukkah in 2000.

In recent years, Article 205.2 on “justification of terrorism” has become increasingly important. It was introduced in 2006, when Russia ratified the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism and had to bring its national legislation in line with European norms. Fifteen years later, after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe, but the article stayed in the Code – and is now one of the main repressive tools of the Putin regime. Over the past six years, from 2018 to 2023, 1,560 people have been tried under it. This is despite the fact that back in 2018 Putin claimed near total victory over domestic terrorism, and a few months before that ordered the withdrawal of troops from Syria, where Russia was formally fighting international terrorism. 

The way law enforcers, especially the FSB, use the “terrorism” article to fight the internal enemy is vividly illustrated by the story of the terrorist attack in Arkhangelsk. On 31 November 2018, 17-year-old college student and anarchist Mikhail Zhlobitsky carried a bomb into the regional headquarters of the FSB in the Arkhangelsk Oblast and blew himself up. Three FSB officers were wounded, the student himself died on the spot.

Shortly before the attack, Zhlobitsky’s alleged suicide note appeared in an anarchist Telegram chat room. In it he spoke about his motives: “[The FSB] trumps up cases and tortures people”. After the explosion, a wave of repression against those who sympathised with Zhlobitsky, either in reality or only according to the FSB, swept across the country (and still continues). One of the most famous episodes is the criminal case under CC Art. 205.2 against Svetlana Prokopyeva, a journalist from Pskov, initiated in February 2019 after her speech on Echo of Moscow and the release of an article on the website of Pskovskaya Lenta Novostey. The court has ruled that Prokopyeva justified Zhlobitsky’s actions, which including with the phrase “the FSB is out of line”, and that her attitude to the terrorist attack in Arkhangelsk was expressed in a “personal negative attitude towards law enforcement agencies” – as stated in the text of the court’s verdict, which is at Proekt’s disposal × . In the end, Prokopyeva was only sentenced to a fine of half a million rubles, possibly due to a widespread campaign in her support.

According to Proekt’s calculations, since 2018, 105 people have been persecuted in one form or another across the country because of the terrorist attack on the FSB headquarters in Arkhangelsk. Most of them were prosecuted under criminal articles.

In almost all cases, administrative proceedings were initiated against those who went on pickets in support of Prokopyeva and other people who were tried for “justifying” Zhlobitsky’s actions under CAO Art. 20.2 × . Anarchists and journalists, who may have been members of the same VK groups as Zhlobitsky, were searched and questioned. Repression under the “Zhlobitsky case” has spanned over many years: in the first year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as many criminal cases related to the terrorist attack were initiated as in its immediate aftermath back in 2018.

There is another particularly high-profile recent repressive story connected with the Zhlobitsky case. Almost five years after the Arkhangelsk bombing, Moscow mathematician Azat Miftakhov became a defendant in a case of justifiying Zhlobitsky’s actions. First, back in 2021, he was sentenced to six years in prison for setting fire to a United Russia office. Due to the time spent in the pre-trial detention centre and the reduction of his sentence on appeal, his term ended on 4 September 2023. Right as he was leaving the colony, Miftakhov was detained again by law enforcers on a new criminal case under CC Art. 205.2 for justifying Zhlobitsky’s actions. 

According to the testimony of prosecution witnesses, the mathematician defended Zhlobitsky while watching TV in the colony, and after serving time he allegedly intended to go to Ukraine to fight against the Russian invasion there. Miftakhov allegedly said all this to two cellmates, Yevgeny Trushkov and Rufan Gadzhimuratov. Their testimonies became the basis for the new case , Miftakhov’s wife Elena Gorban, who studied the case files, told Proekt × . Apparently, both witnesses were manipulated by the law enforcers. 

Trushkov was serving time for gang rape , according to leaked Interior Ministry database × . By his early thirties, he had accumulated a collection of convictions for carjacking, petrol theft, and stealing a TV set , as follows from pubicised court verdicts studied by Proekt × . Having become close to Miftakhov in the colony, Trushkov gave the FSB the necessary testimony against the mathematician. Why he did this is unknown, but the second witness was generously rewarded.

In March 2023, Gadzhimuradov was sentenced to two years and two months in a penal colony for robbery and beating a woman , according to leaked databases × . But just six months after his conviction and 10 days after Miftakhov’s arrest in the new case, he was granted parole – the decision was published by the Omutninsk District Court of the Kirov Oblast × . Miftakhov, in turn, now faces up to five years in a penal colony.

The scheme looks well-established: in 2019, prisoners were also used to initiate a case against St. Petersburg resident Pavel Zlomnov – Zlomnov was detained in a terrorism justification case on the same day that he was released from pre-trial detention on another trumped-up case of arms trafficking: law enforcement officials were unable to charge Zlomnov due to a lack of evidence. In both cases, Memorial recognised him as a political prisoner × . Zlomnov’s cellmates claimed that he recited poetry about Zhlobitsky while watching a report about him on TV. 

Convicts are not the only source of dependent witnesses for the FSB. Servicemen have been used in the same way. In 2018, Maxim Smolnikov (aka Xadad), an artist from Khabarovsk, published a comment on social media in which he questioned the reasons for Zhlobitsky’s actions: “He [Zhlobitsky] was pushed to this suicidal act by state repression,” and called the death of the assailant “too high a price” In the indictment available to Proekt, these phrases are labelled as “hostility to law enforcement officers of the Russian Federation” × .

To punish the artist, the FSB brought in two young servicemen from the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardiya) – 24-year-old conscript Stepan Zyablitsky and 20-year-old contract serviceman Vladislav Kanakaev, who joined a military unit in Khabarovsk in July 2020, that is, two years after the Arkhangelsk bombing. Judging by their testimony, neither one nor the other was acquainted with Smolnikov or even interested in his work. During their testimony to the investigators and confrontation with Smolnikov, they were unable to recall the approximate content of the comment in question and the accompanying picture , according to the indictment published by Smolnikov’s support group × . In his testimony, Kanakaev even spilled the beans on how he found out about the comment. In his own words, Kanakaev “was summoned by FSB officers to their office, where they showed him a post on the VK social network, consisting of a drawing and some text” in which “the actions of [Zhlobitsky] were justified by the fact that the FSB officers were trumping up cases, threatening and pressuring him, leaving the man with no other choice but to blow up the building”. In other words, over the two years since Smolnikov published his comment, the only people who saw it as a justification of terrorism and incitement of hatred towards the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs were members of the Rosgvardia, who had learnt about the comment “in the office of the FSB officers”. 

As a result, Smolnikov was fined 300,000 rubles, which he cannot pay – his bank accounts were blocked, as after the verdict he was put on the list of terrorists and extremists.

The FSB caught people justifying Zhlobitsky’s actions all over the country. But not once did the investigation report that they had detained his accomplices or instigators. All publicly available criminal cases were initiated for public statements.

The cases of Prokopyeva, Miftakhov and Smolnikov are at the very least widely known. Some of the defendants in the Zhlobitsky-related cases remain nameless, as do hundreds of other Russians convicted of “justifying terrorism”. Russian courts conceal information about nearly a third of such cases – the names of the defendants are replaced with <Information concealed> and the verdicts are not published.  For example, in September 2021, the Chita branch of the FSB reported that a local resident had been convicted for commenting online about Zhlobitsky’s terrorist attack – allegedly, “the person under investigation repeatedly expressed threats to representatives of the law enforcement bloc, related not only to the life and health of employees, but also to the integrity of buildings and structures” , Interfax reported, citing the FSB press service. Later, other media outlets, such as RBC, also wrote about it, citing security officials × . However, neither his name nor the name of his lawyer or the relatives of the man who was sentenced to six years in a penal colony – one year more than CC Art. 205.2 generally allows – × could be found in open sources. There is a criminal case, but against whom and for what it was initiated remains unknown.

The article on “justification of terrorism” became particularly popular with law enforcers after the outbreak of the war – it is now used more often than many other articles, which will be described in the next chapter.

Conclusion Three

War to some, 10 years in penal colony to others

More than 13,000 people have already been tried under the laws introduced in Russia in connection with the war, 4,500 of them military personnel

Russia introduced “military censorship” after the start of the war, but the authorities were preparing for it well in advance. The State Duma first considered a law on the dissemination of “fake news” about the army back in May 2018. That seemed strange, because officially the army was not fighting at that time: the troops had been withdrawn from Syria for almost six months, and the authorities continued to deny the presence of Russian soldiers and military equipment in Donbass. Apparently, this is why the bill was sent for revision after its first reading and soon forgotten. 

But in early March 2022, on the tenth day of the full-scale war against Ukraine, it was not only pulled out of oblivion, but also supplemented with a penalty for disseminating “knowingly false information” about embassies, prosecutors’ offices, the Rosgvardiya and the Ministry of Emergency Situations. The whole process, from voting to the President’s signature, only took two days. 

By the beginning of 2024 , according to a report by the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin × , 273 criminal cases had already been initiated under this article CC Art 207.3 × , with 145 cases reaching the courts (and thus being included in our count) and 148 people being charged. Apparently, the remaining 130 cases have not yet reached the courts. Despite the very vague wording of this article, there have not yet been any acquittals under it so far. Cases that were dismissed during the trial or returned to prosecutors for further investigation were always returned to the courts and sentences on them were eventually handed down. 

Lawmakers later introduced seven more new articles from the “military censorship” package into the Criminal and the Code of Administrative Offences. In 2022-2023, 8,797 people have been tried under them.

With the advent of wartime, in addition to the fight against dissenters, the Russian authorities faced many other challenges for which there were simply no suitable articles in the modern Criminal Code – they had to be invented anew or reconstructed from old Soviet practices.

For instance, in the summer of 2022, Article 275.1 “Confidential Cooperation with a Foreign Power, International or Foreign Organisation” was added to the Russian Criminal Code. The reason for that may have been the widely discussed case of journalist Ivan Safronov, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison under the article “Treason” for writing several analytical memos for a Czech client based on open data. Now you can get eight years for any secret contact with a foreigner – roughly the same as you could get in Soviet times for “suspicious connections” with foreigners. In 2023, seven cases have already been brought to court under this article. 

In September 2022, the article for voluntary surrender also returned to the Criminal Code – just like during and after the Great Patriotic War, when Soviet soldiers who returned from German concentration camps were immediately sent to the Gulag. The punishment under this new article is quite in Stalinist fashion: up to 10 years In the Soviet criminal code, the punishment was even harsher – death penalty or 15 years in prison × . However, no one has been tried under this article in 2022-2023. There are also practically no cases under Article 356.1 “Looting”, which was introduced at the same time.

By 2023, one of the main problems was the mass refusal of contract and mobilised soldiers to fight in Ukraine. Therefore, in late 2022, the authorities toughened a whole set of articles under which people are tried for breach of discipline in the troops. Harsher penalties were now introduced for offences committed during “mobilisation”, “martial law”, “wartime”, “armed conflict” or “hostilities”.

It didn’t help, though: the number of cases under articles related to dereliction of duty rose sharply in 2023.

In total, 4642 people have been tried under the new, repressive parts of the Criminal Code articles in the army in 2022-2023 – this is the total number of people convicted under the repressive parts of Art. 332 p. 2.1, 2.2; Art. 337 p. 2.1, 3.1, 5; Art. 338 p. 3; Art. 339 p. 3 × . The courts are not deterred by the fact that Russia is not formally engaged in any war, martial law has never been introduced in the country, and the mobilisation was described as only “partial”. Sentences under the pretext of “armed conflict or hostilities” are handed down in the harshest terms. 

For example, in 2023, soldier Roman Egorov escaped four times from a unit located in the Khabarovsk Krai. Three times he, after taking a break from service, “domestic problems” and “quarrels with his wife”, would voluntarily come to turn himself in at the military commandant’s office, and on the fourth time the military police found him earlier. Egorov was drinking at the house of his acquaintance L. when he heard a knock on the door. Frightened, he jumped out of the window, but was caught in the street and taken into custody. Apparently, the prospect of being sent to war in Ukraine did not frighten Egorov: in his last word he asked for a non-custodial sentence “so that he could prove his correction by continuing his military service in the zone of [the special military operation]” , the verdict says × . But the court, located 6,500 kilometres from the front line in Ukraine, cited a “period of partial mobilisation” sentencing Egorov to ten years in a strict regime penal colony.

Even the servicemen who escaped in November 2022 from a firing range in the Luhansk region with their service weapons received a lesser sentence of 6.5 to 7 years in a strict regime penal colony. Drafted from the Kaliningrad region during the “partial mobilisation”, the eight men initially tried to challenge the conscription in court. But after being sent to the Donbas, on the eve of their deployment to the combat zone, they escaped from the unit together with the weapons they had been issued. The first thing they did was to go to the market, buy some civilian clothes and change into them. Then they hitchhiked to the Moscow Oblast, where “realising the impossibility of leaving for the Kaliningrad Oblast due to the geographical peculiarities of its location”, they went to the police and handed over their entire “arsenal”:

— three AK-74 assault rifles with 10 magazines;

— one PK machine gun with 4 magazines; 

— one PKM machine gun with a spare barrel;

— one bayonet knife.

Their sentence is a document of an epoch. It shows how things really are in the Russian army: the mobilised men were issued weapons manufactured in the 1970s and 1980s with a very meagre supply of ammunition. The expert acknowledged that the machine gun, which was supposed to have a spare barrel, was inoperable and only capable of firing single shots.

Another interesting observation is that Russian courts impose relatively mild penalties for an open refusal to fight in Ukraine, voiced at a formation when an order is given. The average sentence in such cases is two years and three months in a penal colony . This conclusion can be drawn from 76 sentences handed down in 2023 under Article 332 “Disobeying an Order” and posted on court websites. Three quarters of them are for publicly refusing to fight in Ukraine, The remaining 25% may also have done so, but this is impossible to establish: the sentences have been censored × . Before the war, the number of cases for disobeying orders was negligible: between 2018 and 2021, only five such cases were brought to the courts, resulting in fines ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 rubles – such amounts are listed in the sentences of four of the five pre-war cases under this article × . 

Among those who were tried for disobeying orders in 2023, only one serviceman, fearing criminal punishment, changed his mind and went to war after all. Adilkhan Magomedov, a contract serviceman from Buryatia, twice refused to be sent to Ukraine for health reasons. However, experts deemed Magomedov fit for military service with minor restrictions, and in December 2023 he went to the front, after which the criminal case against him was dropped. 

There are probably many more repressive cases related to the war: not only do the courts conceal information about the defendants and do not publish sentences on repressive articles of the Criminal Code, but also not all cases in general appear in the records of Russian courts.

Conclusion Four

Pillars of society

The number of cases for insubordination, insult and violence towards law enforcement officers is growing in Russia – over the past six years the courts have received almost 600,000 cases involving such offences.

6 May 2012. One of the largest street protests of the entire period of Vladimir Putin’s rule. During the rally on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, the police provoked a crowd crush, which turned into clashes, followed by mass detentions and the so-called “Bolotnaya case”, i.e. a series of criminal cases against opposition activists designed to dampen the fervour of anti-Putin protests. 

In the May clashes on Bolotnaya Square, only law enforcement officers were injured – one of the articles of the Criminal Code under which defendants in the “Bolotnaya case” were tried was for violence against law enforcement officers (CC Art. 318). For example, Maksim Luzyanin was sentenced to 4.5 years in a penal colony under this article and also under CC Art. 212 for participation in mass riots × . According to the prosecution, he “broke through the cordon”, “kicked police officers” and “used strangulation techniques”. The only documented damage to health was “chipped tooth enamel” of a policeman with whom Luzyanin got into a scuffle. The phrase “chipped tooth enamel” became a symbol of police brutality at that time. Now such cases no longer surprise anyone. 

CC Articles 319 and 318 (insult and violence against a law enforcement officer), as well as CAO Article 19.3 (failure to follow a lawful order of a law enforcement officer) were and still are used to punish not only and not so much “political criminals”. The bulk of those convicted under these offences are ordinary debauchees, drivers who cause traffic accidents, and those who resist arrest. Here is a typical example of one of the published verdicts. In 2018, a young man surnamed Rzhanitsin was waiting for the night train at the Anapa railway station. Police officers approached him and asked him to show his documents. Rzhanitsin refused, which constituted an offence under CAO Art. 19.3. The police detained the man and took him to the station. There he suddenly “grabbed the uniform shirt of police officer P.I.A. with his hands, and then grabbed him by the neck and threw him to the ground, which caused bodily injuries to P.I.A. in the form of a bruise on the left side of the front surface of the chest and an abrasion on the back surface of the right elbow joint”. This, in turn, constitutes a criminal offence under CC Art. 318. As a result, Rzhanitsin was fined 100 thousand rubles. 

The above-mentioned articles are an important marker of aggravation of relations between citizens and the authorities. 

Criminal cases are often brought to court under two articles at once – for insult and subsequent violence against a law enforcement officer. And there has been a very indicative change here. In recent years, there has been a growing bias in favour of the article on violence against a law enforcement officer over the milder article on insult. In other words, it’s either that citizens have become angrier towards the law enforcers, or that the authorities have started to punish people more often under the heavier article as an admonition to all those who might raise a hand against them.

There is another very likely reason, however, which is the lowering of the threshold of what law enforcers and courts consider violence against themselves. This applies to both everyday and political cases. Since 2018, the number of cases under CC Art. 318, where defendants are tried not for specific actions, but only for verbal threats, has increased. Moreover, a sharp spike in their number occurred in 2021 – after Putin’s presidential term count has been reset.

The criminal case against Samariddin Radzhabov, a participant in protests for the admission of opposition candidates to the Moscow City Duma elections in 2019, is a striking example of the lowering of the threshold of violence against law enforcement officers (at least in relation to political prisoners). Radzhabov was convicted merely for threatening a police officer – he threw a plastic bottle near the law enforcers and thus frightened them. “Linnik D. A., Kombarov A. A. and Vnukov A. Yu. […] perceived the actions of Radzhabov S. S. as a real threat of violence against them, because the bottle thrown by him [Radzhabov S. S.] […] created a sharp impact sound when it fell on the pavement, which mimicked the sound of destruction of an unknown object with the danger of causing bodily harm,” read the files of the criminal case against Radzhabov, who was eventually sentenced to a fine. At the time, this was tantamount to an acquittal – Radzhabov did not even have to pay anything because of the time he had spent in pre-trial detention, and the court handed down the sentence against the backdrop of a widespread public campaign in his support.

Several other disturbing trends have emerged in recent years.  Firstly, courts have become less likely to drop cases under CC Art. 318 The number of dropped cases decreased from 10% in 2018 to 3.5% in 2023 × . 

Secondly, the proportion of women being tried in Russia for insult and violence against law enforcers is growing From 2018 to 2020, the proportion of cases against women increased by 3%, as Proekt calculated by analysing more than 50,000 verdicts where the defendant’s details are uncensored × . In 2023, one in five people tried under this article was female. 

Here is an example of one of the criminal cases. Perm resident Nina Tyurina had a conflict with a traffic police officer near her own home as follows from the verdict published by the Perm District Court × . Tyurina was charged under CC Art. 319 for shouting obscenities at the officer, and under CC Art. 318 for “hitting [the officer] in the chest area”. The patrolman “suffered physical pain”, and neither Tyurina’s repentance, nor compensation for damages, nor a letter of apology to the police chief was enough to mend it. The prosecutor was adamant and objected to closing the criminal case without a verdict, because “in this case the aims of the punishment will not be achieved” as follows from the verdict published by the Perm District Court × . The end result was a 30,000 ruble fine and a criminal conviction for the fact that the woman had an argument with a policeman.

The number of cases under CAO Art. 19.3 “Failure to Follow a Lawful Order of a Law Enforcement Officer” is also growing. Over the past six years, more than 543,000 cases under this article have reached the courts of general jurisdiction.

The punishment under this article was toughened in February 2021, after mass protests in support of Alexei Navalny. Previously, the minimum fine for disobeying a police officer was 500 rubles, but now it is 2,000 rubles. The maximum penalty has increased from 1,000 to 4,000 rubles. Courts still most often impose the minimum penalty – about half of the sentencing orders in both 2018 and 2023 contained the minimum statutory fine, a study of more than 127,000 sentencing orders under CAO Art. 19.3 showed × . For comparison, the fines under the first parts of COA 20.1 “Disorderly Conduct” have not changed in any way during Putin’s most recent term: gross violation of public order is still punishable by a fine of 500-1000 rubles.

The percentage of cases under CAO Art. 19.3 dismissed for various reasons has also decreased in recent years – from a paltry almost 2% to an even more paltry 1%. 

The more frequent application of articles on violence against law enforcers cannot be attributed to either demographics or the peculiarities of statistical accounting. Over the five years from 2018 to 2022, Russia’s adult population fell by more than 1 million people.

Almost 90% of the “victims” are Interior Ministry staff (police and traffic police officers) and members of the Rosgvardiya. Their number has hardly changed since 2018, so the increase in cases cannot be explained by the logic that police officers get beaten more often because there are more of them. 

Another hypothesis that could explain the increase in both criminal and administrative cases is that people in Russia have become so angry that they are attacking law enforcement officers more often. To test this hypothesis, we examined the number of cases under another common administrative article – CAO Art. 20.1 “Disorderly Conduct”. More than 1.03 million cases have been initiated under it over the past six years. And, as you can see from the graph below, there is now less “disorderly conduct” in Russia compared to 2018.

Moscow stands out in particular: the capital, where almost one seventh of the country’s population lives, has almost no cases of disorderly conduct. It accounts for about 2% of cases brought to the courts under CAO Art. 20.1. 

Thus, the absolute number of hooligans has decreased since 2018, while the number of administrative cases for disobedience to law enforcement officers under CAO Art. 19.3 and criminal cases for violence against law enforcement officers under CC Art. 318 has increased.

Conclusion Five 

The land of never-ending COVID

Up until recently, Russia continued to try citizens for violating COVID restrictions – between April 2022 and December 2023, courts have handed down sentences in 159,000 such cases.

In mid-August 2022, Ksenia Serebryakova returned home to Magadan from Turkey. Almost a year later, in June 2023, she was summoned to court for violating COVID restrictions. It turned out that before flying to Russia, Ksenia had forgotten to fill out a questionnaire from the Russian Federal State Agency for Health and Consumer Rights (Rospotrebnadzor) for Russians arriving from abroad. 

By the time the judgement was handed down, COVID restrictions had already been lifted for over a year in both the Magadan Oblast, where Ksenia lives, and in Moscow, where she made a transfer (in both regions this happened in early March 2022). And in May 2023, a month before the trial, the World Health Organisation announced that COVID-19 was no longer a worldwide emergency threat. Despite all this Serebryakova was fined 15 thousand rubles.

Rospotrebnadzor, police and courts continued to penalise Russians for violating quarantine measures across the country until last summer (and legal entities are still being fined to this day). Between April 2022 and the end of 2023, about 159,000 individuals and legal entities have been penalised in Russia in cases related to COVID-19 – Proekt calculated this based on data from the courts of general jurisdiction and Moscow City Court on trials under CAO Art. 20.6.1 “Failure to Comply With the Rules of Conduct during an Emergency or Threat of Emergency” and CAO Art. 6.3 “Violation of the Law in the Area of Securing the Sanitary-and-Epidemiological Well-Being of the Population” × .

Naturally, the authorities used anti-COVID measures to combat civil activity. For instance, in March 2023 a court in Krasnoyarsk fined a local resident Pavel Emelyanov, who in autumn 2022 went out on a solitary picket with a poster “Hug me if you feel bad”. After only 20 minutes, local police patrols received instructions to “check the citizen”. Emelyanov was detained under the ban on public events due to COVID-19. At the same time, just three weeks before the picket, a rally in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was held in Krasnoyarsk – and no one even raised an eyebrow at such an event.

* * *

In 2013, Alexei Navalny received his first politically motivated conviction in the Kirovles case under the “economic” Article 160 (“Misappropriation or Embezzlement”). Had he not later been prosecuted for extremism and rehabilitation of Nazism, he would not have been included in our statistics – politically motivated cases under economic and violent articles were not included in our study. But they do exist. And we can only guess how many political prisoners are actually sitting in Russian pre-trial detention centres and penal colonies on far-fetched and most unexpected charges. Only one thing is clear: in terms of repression, Putin has long ago surpassed almost all Soviet general secretaries, except for one – Joseph Stalin.

Editors – Mikhail Rubin, Roman Badanin
Factchecker – Vitaly Soldatskikh