Human rights in Russia

• 1. Introduction

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  Human rights in Russia, in early 2024, were measured in court by a sum of $51.80. A woman named Ksenia Karelina had sent that amount to Razom, a New York City nonprofit delivering humanitarian aid to Ukraine. It was enough to earn her a treason charge in Yekaterinburg. Her trial opened on the 20th of June 2024. She admitted guilt on the 7th of August. On the 15th of August, regional courts of Sverdlovsk and Yekaterinburg sentenced her to 12 years in prison.

  In 2024, the investigative outlet Proekt estimated that Russian authorities had prosecuted more than 116,000 activists in the previous six years. That figure, researchers said, surpassed the levels of political repression under Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev.

  Article 15 of the 1993 Constitution stipulates that Russia's international human rights commitments take precedence over domestic legislation. The country ratified the European Convention on Human Rights in the late 1990s. From 1998 onwards, Russian citizens could bring cases to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

  How did a country with these written guarantees arrive at such an outcome? What happened to those who tried to hold the state accountable? And what do Russia's courts, prisons, and press freedom rankings reveal about the true condition of these rights?

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• 2. A Measured Decline

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  In 2006, The Economist ranked Russia 102nd among 167 countries in its democracy survey. The publication described Russia as a "hybrid regime with a trend towards curtailment of media and other civil liberties." That label tracked a pattern Freedom House had been documenting for years.

  During Vladimir Putin's first presidential term, from 2000 to 2004, Freedom House rated Russia as "partially free." It scored a 4 on both political rights and civil liberties, on a scale where 1 is most free and 7 is least. By 2005, that status had slipped to "not free," with a 6 for political rights and a 5 for civil liberties.

  After Putin's re-election for a third presidential term in May 2012, new legislation reshaped the rules for civil society. All NGOs receiving foreign funding and engaged in "political activities" had to register as "foreign agents" with the Ministry of Justice. By September 2016, 144 NGOs appeared on that register, including many of Russia's oldest and most respected organizations. The government also acquired the power to brand groups as "undesirable," and to fine or imprison their members.

  A 2016 report by Human Rights Watch found the Kremlin continuing a crackdown on civil society. It branded the US-based National Endowment for Democracy and two groups backed by philanthropist George Soros as "undesirable organizations." The media landscape was simultaneously saturated with nationalist propaganda while the most popular independent voices were suppressed.

  In December 2015, a new law handed Russia's Constitutional Court the power to review rulings from international bodies. It could now determine whether judgments from the European Court of Human Rights would be enforced inside Russia or simply ignored.

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• 3. Inside the Prisons

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  In 2021, a former inmate named Sergei Savelyev leaked thousands of hours of video from Russian prisons and penal colonies to the NGO Gulagu.net. Savelyev had been assigned to manage the video recording system as an IT specialist. The footage, covering the years 2015-2020, documented systematic torture by prison officials, including rape and penetration with foreign objects. Russian authorities fired a few incriminated officials and placed Savelyev on a wanted list, accusing him of illegally accessing sensitive information.

  Human rights Ombudsman Oleg Mironov estimated in 2000 that half of all prisoners he spoke with claimed to have been tortured. Documented methods include electric shocks applied to the genitals, nose, and ears; stress positions; cigarette burns; and sleep deprivation. These techniques carry colloquial names passed among their practitioners. The "Elephant Method" involves beating a victim wearing a gas mask with its airflow cut. The "Supermarket Method" uses a plastic bag instead. The "Television" forces a victim to hold a stool, sometimes two, at arm's length while squatting midway.

  A former serviceman named Andrei Sychev underwent the Television treatment. Both his legs and genitals were subsequently amputated due to gangrene caused by restricted blood flow.

  The "Pressing Room," also called the "Press Hut," employs trusted inmates to beat and sexually assault fellow prisoners; those who comply receive special privileges. Police have also applied similar methods outside prison walls. In towns including Blagoveshensk and Nefteyugansk, residents were arbitrarily arrested, beaten, and raped by special police units.

  Dedovshchina, the Russian term for "reign of grandfathers," describes the systematic hazing of new conscripts by longer-serving soldiers in the Russian Armed Forces. Many conscripts are killed, raped, or driven to suicide each year as a result. Some young male conscripts have reportedly been forced to work as prostitutes for outside clients. The Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia was established specifically to combat these abuses.

  The Zona Prava NGO's 2019 report, "Violence by Security Forces: Crime Without Punishment," measured the gap between official acquittal rates and those for law enforcement. When officers faced accusations of violent abuse of power, including cases ending in the suspect's death, their acquittal rate stood at nearly 4%. The overall Russian court acquittal rate was 0.43%. Among those officers who were convicted, almost half received suspended sentences or fines.

  In July 2025, the State Duma passed a law restoring the Federal Security Service's authority to run its own detention centers. Investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan called it "a foundation for a new Gulag." They predicted repressions "on a scale we haven't yet seen," with the FSB holding prisoners accused of treason, espionage, terrorism, and extremism.

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• 4. Targeted Killings

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  In 1998, human rights advocate Galina Starovoitova was shot dead at the entrance of her apartment building in St. Petersburg. Her death opened a wave of unsolved political killings that would draw sustained international scrutiny.

  In 2003, the liberal politician Sergei Yushenkov was shot dead. That same year, journalist Yuri Schekochikhin died under mysterious circumstances, with many suspecting poisoning.

  In 2006, two deaths concentrated international attention on Russia's security services. Investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, known for her coverage of the conflict in Chechnya, was shot dead in Moscow. Alexander Litvinenko, a former intelligence officer and government critic, was poisoned with polonium. A British inquiry later concluded that President Putin had "probably" approved Litvinenko's murder.

  In 2009, human rights advocate Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova were shot dead in Moscow. Six years later, in 2015, opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was shot dead near the Kremlin. In 2017, journalist Nikolay Andrushchenko was beaten to death.

  A 2017 BuzzFeed News report cited current and former US and UK intelligence agents on the broader pattern. They said Russian operatives, possibly on government orders, could be linked to 14 deaths on British soil that police had not classified as suspicious.

  Former KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky argued that the FSB had revived a specific institutional practice. He linked the deaths of Shchekochikhin, Politkovskaya, and Litvinenko to assassination methods once employed by the KGB's Thirteenth Department. In her book Putin's Russia, Politkovskaya described judges who strayed from expected rulings being assaulted or removed from their positions.

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• 5. Prisoners of the State

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  In May 2016, the Memorial Human Rights Centre counted 89 individuals it considered political prisoners in Russia. By May 2017, that number had risen to at least 117 prisoners of conscience. Sixty-six of those 117 were accused of membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami, a Muslim organization banned in Russia since 2010.

  On the 10th of May 2014, Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov was arrested in Simferopol, Crimea. He was taken to Russia and sentenced to 20 years in prison for alleged terrorist activities. Amnesty International called the trial unfair; Human Rights Watch described it as a political show trial. On the 7th of September 2019, Sentsov was released in a prisoner swap.

  Since 2007, loosely written laws against extremism and terrorism have been used to jail youthful activists. Those arrested include people who protested the alleged mass falsification of elections in 2011 and those who objected to the occupation of Crimea after 2014. Political prisoners are routinely subjected to torture in prisons and penal colonies.

  In 2004, acquittals made up just 0.7% of all judgments in Russian courts. Former judge Olga Kudeshkina wrote an open letter in 2005 criticizing the chairman of the Moscow city court. She accused O. Egorova of instructing judges to make "right decisions." She said this pressure had driven more than 80 Moscow judges to retire between 2002 and 2005.

  On the 17th of January 2021, Amnesty International declared Alexei Navalny a prisoner of conscience following his detention after returning to Russia. Per Memorial's accounting at that time, Russia held 380 political prisoners in total. Among them, 245 had been prosecuted for involvement with banned Muslim organizations, and more than 20% were residents of Crimea.

  On the 17th of January 2025, three lawyers from Navalny's opposition party were convicted by a Russian court. Igor Sergunin, Alexei Lipster, and Vadim Kabez were sentenced to a total of five years in prison. They were accused of helping Navalny execute illegal activities from outside prison walls.

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• 6. The Chechen Experience

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  During the Second Chechen War, which ran from September 1999 to 2005, summary executions and forced disappearances of civilians were extensively documented.

  As of March 2007, Nurdi Nukhazhiyev, the ombudsman of the Chechen Republic, said the most painful problem was tracing more than 2,700 abducted citizens. Two years before his statement, most complaints had centered on violations of the right to life. By 2007, social problems were moving to the foreground.

  Memorial's reports described what they called a "conveyor of violence" operating in the Chechen Republic and neighboring Ingushetia. People suspected of links to separatist groups were unlawfully detained by security forces. Some resurfaced in detention centers; others disappeared permanently; others were tortured into confessions or forced to incriminate third parties.

  Numerous journalists were killed in Chechnya for reporting on the conflict. Those killed include Cynthia Elbaum, Nadezhda Chaikova, Paul Klebnikov, and Natalya Estemirova, among many others. Anna Politkovskaya documented the detention system in Chechnya extensively. She compared it to the Gulag and claimed the number of documented cases ran into the hundreds.

  By the 2010s, Ramzan Kadyrov was ruling the Chechen Republic by methods that observers described as despotic. Gay concentration camps in Chechnya held homosexuals who were tortured and executed for their sexual orientation. In September 2017, Tatyana Moskalkova, the government's official representative on human rights, met with Chechen authorities. The subject of the meeting was a list of 31 people recently killed outside any judicial process in the republic.

  Memorial recorded 42 documented abductions across all of Chechnya in 2008. In just the first four months of 2009, that count had already reached 58. Of those 58, 45 were eventually released, 2 were found dead, 4 remained missing, and 7 were discovered in police detention units.

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• 7. The Muted Press

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  According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 47 journalists were killed in Russia for their professional work between 1992 and January 2008. Thirty of those deaths occurred during Boris Yeltsin's presidency; the rest came under Vladimir Putin.

  Reporters Without Borders placed Russia 147th out of 168 countries in its World Press Freedom Index. The Glasnost Defence Foundation's tally for 2005 alone documented 7 suspicious journalist deaths, 63 assaults on journalists, and 12 attacks on editorial offices. That same year also saw 42 criminal prosecutions, 47 police detentions, and 382 lawsuits against journalists.

  Opposition journalist Yevgenia Albats described the Kremlin's mechanism of editorial control. Television directors and newspaper editors were summoned every Thursday to the office of Vladislav Surkov, the deputy head of the presidential administration. There they learned what news to present and where. Albats added that journalists were "bought with enormous salaries."

  On the 1st of March 2022, Russian authorities blocked access to Echo of Moscow and TV Rain. TV Rain had been Russia's last independent television channel. Roskomnadzor, the state media regulator, ordered outlets to delete any stories calling Russia's military operation an "assault," an "invasion," or a "declaration of war." Investigations were launched against outlets including Novaya Gazeta, Echo of Moscow, TV Rain, and MediaZona for publishing reports on civilian casualties in Ukraine.

  On the 6th of July 2020, journalist Svetlana Prokopyeva was fined 500,000 rubles, roughly $7,000. The charge stemmed from a November 2018 radio broadcast in which she criticized the government's crackdown on free assembly and free speech. Russian authorities had listed her as a terrorist and extremist in July 2019 and frozen her assets.

  On the 5th of September 2022, journalist Ivan Safronov was sentenced to 22 years in prison on treason charges. The newspaper Kommersant, where he had worked, called those charges "absurd." More than 1,000 Russian journalists had fled the country since February 2022, leaving a media landscape almost entirely under state control.

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