FSB videos: behind the scenes of dramatic arrests
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the share of posts mentioning the FSB on the Telegram channels of the state news agencies RIA Novosti and TASS has increased two- to threefold. The share of those posts that include video has risen from 23% in 2021, the year before the invasion, to 40% in the first half of 2026. Yet the videos the FSB publishes about politically motivated cases have little to do with genuine criminal investigations. They are mass-produced to intimidate the public.
Political Prisoners Memorial examined 70 politically motivated criminal cases to find out what goes into a typical FSB video. Here is what we found.
1. Entrapment instead of surveillance
Footage of the ‘crime’ shot by FSB operatives before an arrest appears in only six of the 70 cases, and every one of them involved entrapment. The security forces make contact themselves, persuade people to carry out an action, film it and then stage an ‘exposure’.
2. Brutality and humiliation for the camera
Almost two-thirds of the videos contain footage of forcible arrests. In many of them, men are thrown to the ground, held with their heads clamped between officers’ legs, and then have their heads forcibly pulled up by the hair for the camera. Another recurring format is the early-morning raid, in which people are filmed half-dressed in bed, apparently to humiliate them.
3. Retakes and stage direction
Around a quarter of the arrest scenes show signs of being staged:
- Ruslan Sidiki says he was stopped by a police officer and agreed to go to the police station. He was then tortured with electric shocks and beatings, after which the FSB filmed a staged ‘arrest’ by special forces near some garages.
- Yurii Kaiov, a resident of Kherson, was tortured for a week after his arrest. About a month after he was detained, he was cleaned up, taken out into the street and ordered to take part in a staged ‘arrest’. He was told to fall in front of the camera without injuring his face. It took one take.
- Bohdan Ziza, a graffiti artist from occupied Crimea, says he was forced to record at least five video ‘apologies’. He says the one shown on Russian television was not the one that ended up in his case file: that one was re-recorded so that he would quote the article of the Russian Criminal Code so they could charge him with terrorism.
The purpose is to create an illusion of total control, to demoralise citizens the FSB considers disloyal, and to make the public believe in the ‘omnipotence’ of the security services.