Putin signed a law on three years of imprisonment for “denial of the genocide of the Soviet people”

Vladimir Putin signed a law criminalizing “denial of the fact of genocide of the Soviet people.” The document was published on the portal of legal acts.

The law added a line to the article on the “rehabilitation of Nazism” (Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code): “denial of the fact of genocide of the Soviet people or approval of the genocide of the Soviet people.” Now this will be punishable by up to three years in prison.

In addition, the law introduces a new part to the article on damage to military monuments (Article 243.4 of the Criminal Code). Now, desecration of the graves of victims of the genocide of the Soviet people will be punishable by imprisonment for up to five years.

“Genocide of the Soviet people” is a concept unknown in Soviet times and without legal definition, promoted by the head of the Investigative Committee and Putin’s longtime friend Alexander Bastrykin.

Since 2020, the Investigative Committee, on his initiative, has initiated dozens of cases of genocide of civilians during the Great Patriotic War throughout Russia. This campaign ended with the fact that in 2025, Vladimir Putin, after calls from Bastrykin, signed the law on “Perpetuating the memory of the victims of the genocide of the Soviet people.”

Bastrykin does not deny that the goal of the campaign is to respond to accusations against the USSR of starting World War II together with the Third Reich.

Bastrykin himself constantly “flirts” with the ultra-right. He regularly makes migrant-phobic statements and manipulates crime statistics among migrants, and also advocates for tightening immigration policy.

Earlier in Moscow, instead of the closed Gulag Museum, they decided to open an exhibition about the “genocide of the Soviet people” during the war with Nazi Germany. The exhibition will begin on June 22.

“The museum will become a center for studying and perpetuating the memory of a significant and sorrowful page in the history of our country, which unites the fates of millions of compatriots. One of its key tasks is to form a strong rejection of Nazism in all its manifestations among the modern generation,” said the future head of the museum, Natalya Kalashnikova.