Russia’s prison population stops shrinking after record drop due to Wagner Group recruitment

Russia’s federal penitentiary service (“FSIN”) has published a new report on the country’s prison population. According to the agency’s figures, the number of Russia’s incarcerated people has finally stabilized, after a record drop registered last November.

According to new data, 433,000 people were kept in Russia’s detention centers, jails, and penal colonies as of January 1, 2023. This is only 6,000 people fewer than the November 2022 figure, which marked a drop of 23,000 over just two months. At the time, Mediazona explained the record drop in Russia’s prison population as an effect of Evgeny Prigozhin’s recruitment campaign.