Russia adds almost 700 individuals, including 17 minors, to the list of ‘terrorists and extremists’ in first 3 months of 2024

Since the beginning of 2024, the register of terrorists and extremists maintained by Rosfinmonitoring, Russia's state financial intelligence agency, has been expanded to include an additional 669 individuals, 17 of whom are minors. Estimates by Novaya Europe suggest this number is the highest in at least six years. To compare, 480 people were added to the list from January to March 2023, and only 378 were added in all of 2022. As of today, the register contains 14,294 names.

Aside from the perpetrators or alleged perpetrators of serious violent crimes (such as the Crocus City Hall attack suspects, who were added to the list on Mar. 28), the list features best-selling author Boris Akunin, co-founder of the anti-plagiarism community Dissernet Andrey Zayakin, and professor of the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences Boris Kagarlitsky. On Mar. 30, the list came to include two employees of Pose, a gay bar in the southwestern Russian city of Orenburg. They became the first defendants in a case centered on participation in an “extremist community” following Russia’s designation of the “international LGBT movement” as “extremist.” (Since the “movement” as such does not actually exist as a formal entity, the law may be applied to anyone who openly supports the rights and freedoms of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people.)

The list of terrorists and extremists was created in 2001. Since 2013, the individuals who are placed on the list are banned from making financial transactions involving property or from receiving an inheritance. Their bank cards are also blocked. A person labeled as an “extremist” or “terrorist” is permitted to work, but the portion of their monthly salary that is handed over to them — in cash — is not to exceed $108 per family member.