The charges of ‘public calls for terrorist activities’ and ‘organisation of extremist activity’ replacing those of ‘fakes’.

The proportion of the war-related cases is in decrease

Throughout the first six months of 2025 law enforcement officers initiated politically motivated criminal cases against at least 173 individuals. This data may not presently be compared to the similar period of the last year as in some cases the month when persecution started is yet unknown. Moreover, for some cases the data might be totally unavailable so the current information on repressions is obviously incomplete. Nevertheless, it may be stated with certainty that the numbers of the new defendants in politically motivated criminal cases continue to decrease after their rapid surge in 2022. This is most likely related to the increase of self-censorship due to harsh sentences received by the defendants of the ‘anti-war’ cases during the first years of the war.

The number of the defendants in the cases particularly related to the war in Ukraine is also decreasing. Whereas throughout the first two years of the war over a thousand individuals faced this sort of persecutions, these numbers have subsequently been dropping. By the end of 2024 the share of ‘anti-war’ and war-adjacent persecutions had dropped to 43% whereas in 2023 it comprised more than 60%. By the summer of 2025 the share of the new essentially war-related persecution cases was at 37%. For instance, in May a local resident Alexander Shevtchuk was remanded to a pre-trial detention centre by the Blagoveshchensk (Far East) city court for leaving a comment in a Telegram channel concerning ‘shell famine’ at the front.

Amongst the war-related cases lead those initiated by the actions estimated by the prosecutors as support to the ‘Russian Volunteer Corps’ or to the ‘Freedom of Russia’ Legion (for instance, in the form of the comments on social networks). Out of 138 cases overall for different political reasons in 2025, the acts of persecution directly connected to the anti-war statements and other forms of protest against the military actions in Ukraine only concerned 35 individuals.