Political repression in Russia in 2025: our Annual Report is out
Political Prisoners Memorial has published its Annual Report 2025 on political repression in Russia. Key findings are below. The full report, including our methodology and category-by-category analysis, is available online here and as a PDF here: EN Annual report 2025.pdf
The context
Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine has now passed the four-year mark. Throughout that period, it has shaped the nature and dynamics of most politically motivated prosecutions in the country. According to the Conflict Intelligence Team, 2025 was the deadliest year yet for civilians on both sides of the front line. Online discussion of Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory and Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine has increasingly led to prosecutions for public justification and propaganda of terrorism, while accusations of passing information to Ukrainian intelligence or arson attacks on infrastructure have become routine features of these cases.
Scale
Our database of people deprived of their liberty in politically motivated criminal cases stood at 4,843 by the end of 2025. It is considerably broader than our official list of political prisoners, as it also includes people whose cases have not yet been reviewed or who do not meet the formal criteria for that status.
New prosecutions
2024 remains the confirmed record year for new defendants, with 2,348 people prosecuted. Data for 2025 is still incomplete: as of 31 December, prosecutions had been confirmed for 1,640 people, but we estimate the final total will reach around 2,745. If that estimate holds, growth will have slowed to roughly 17% in 2025, down from 63% the previous year.
Charges
Since 2023, the three most-used charges in politically motivated prosecutions have consistently been
- Terrorist act (Article 205)
- High treason (Article 275)
- Public justification and propaganda of terrorism (Article 205.2)
All three are growing faster than such cases overall. 2025 also saw a sharp rise in prosecutions for financing extremism (Article 282.3), driven by a campaign against donors to the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK).
Recognised political prisoners
Memorial‘s list of recognised political prisoners grew from 803 to 1,265 during 2025, the fastest annual increase we’ve recorded. The ‘general’ list (prisoners recognised for reasons unconnected to religion) more than doubled within the year, a first. It has also overtaken the religious list for the first time in years: 796 against 469, a list that had long been several times larger, driven mainly by mass, near-identical prosecutions of Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Even so, recognised political prisoners still account for 26% of everyone in our database. Recognition continues to lag well behind the pace of repression: 80% of those recognised during 2025 had in fact been prosecuted in earlier years.
The war as the defining context
More than 60% of people recognised as political prisoners in 2025 were prosecuted in connection with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine: Ukrainian prisoners of war, civilians from occupied territories accused of treason or terrorism, and donors and volunteers. Repression in the occupied territories remains particularly severe, reflecting the Russian authorities’ fear of resistance from the local population.
International context
Prisoner exchanges and returns of Ukrainian civilians continued in 2025, including journalist Dmytro Khyliuk and former Kherson mayor Volodymyr Mykolayenko. No political prisoners holding only Russian citizenship were released through exchanges this year; the only releases were foreign nationals: US citizen Ksenia Karelina and French citizen Laurent Vinatier (released in early 2026).
In January 2025, Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Memorial and the Center for Civil Liberties (Ukraine), launched the People First campaign calling for the release of unlawfully held civilians and political prisoners. A similar resolution was adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on 27 January 2026.
Full report is available here.