29 Sep, 2024

List of those who died as victims of politically motivated persecution

The number of political prisoners and other victims of politically motivated criminal prosecution in Russia is steadily increasing. In 2024, another alarming trend became clear: more and more people deprived of their liberty for political reasons are dying in captivity. Such tragedies have occurred before, but now there are more of them. As repression has become more widespread, sentences have become longer, and, in addition, seriously ill and elderly people are being detained more often.

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Naturally, this list does not include all victims of repression who died at the hands of the Russian state. We only include people who died in custody (or who died shortly after release as a result of their imprisonment) and who were either included in our lists during their lifetime or whose persecution was highly likely to have been politically motivated and involved serious violations of the law.

Here are some categories of people that we cannot include by name in this list, but we believe are important to mention:

Those who died as a result of illegal actions by Russian security forces in places of detention and prisoner-of-war facilities during armed conflicts within Russia and beyond its borders since 1992, including:
- Ukrainian prisoners of war, against whom no criminal cases have been brought, in particular, 53 prisoners who died on the night of 29 July 2022 in the penal colony in Olenivka, whose murders may have involved Russian security forces. Overall, by mid-2025, at least 221 Ukrainian citizens had died in Russian captivity, including 206 prisoners of war and 15 civilian hostages.
- Victims of enforced disappearances. According to human rights advocates, the number of such deaths in the North Caucasus alone is estimated at up to 8,000 (you can learn about the fates of 332 of them on “The Memory Project” website). Some of them were recognised as political prisoners during their lifetime.
Victims of political assassinations who were at freedom, in relation to whom there are strong grounds to suspect that the state was involved in their deaths.
Victims of human rights violations in places of detention whose criminal cases had no obvious political motive.

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List of those who died as victims of politically motivated persecution

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