Political prisoners support.
Memorial

At least 5,828 people in Russia and the occupied Ukrainian territories have been deprived of liberty with signs of political motivation

Aleksandr Kondratov, a production designer who won Golden Eagle and TEFI awards for the 2007 Russian television series Liquidation, has died in Moscow while facing a treason charge.

As part of the latest stage of a ‘combined prisoner exchange’, 270 Ukrainians have returned to Ukraine. At least 58 of those released had been convicted by Russian courts on criminal charges.

Jehovah’s Witness Aleksandr Kutin, 44, was released on 16 October 2026 after completing his term.

A resident of occupied Nova Kakhovka Nadiia Berezhna has been sentenced to 12.5 years on charges of high treason. Her husband Andrii Berezhnyi was previously sentenced to 11 years.

According to publicly available sources, Oleg Gulik, 42, worked as an athletics coach for the Moscow City branch of the Dynamo sports society

Political Prisoners Memorial examined 70 politically motivated criminal cases to find out what goes into a typical FSB video

Vitaliy Syrykh, a Jehovah’s Witness, has been sentenced to six years in a general-regime penal colony on charges of organising the activities of a banned religious association

Vladimir Putin has released U.S. citizen Stephen Hubbard, who had been convicted by a Russian court on mercenary charges

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Russian law enforcement authorities detained a German citizen who allegedly signed a contract with the Ukrainian army and deserted.

Scientists and university faculty in Russia are increasingly facing prosecution for financing “extremism” through donations to the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), Mediazona reported.

In July 2025, Russian soldiers took 68-year-old Halyna Bekhter from her home in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. She was soon convicted of treason: according to investigators, she had transferred money to the Ukrainian army.

Semyon Krasotkin, a 27-year-old mathematician and journalist from Moscow, has been jailed on treason charges, the news outlet Vot Tak reported.

The Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don has handed down sentences to four defendants in a case involving a series of explosions in occupied Melitopol.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Japanese authorities do not engage in espionage in Russia, responding to the detention of Hokkaido Shimbun correspondent Yuki Imai in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

Russia’s Federal Security Service says it detained a Swedish citizen in the Pskov region, alleging he fought on the side of Ukraine’s armed forces in the Russia–Ukraine war.

Political scientist Alexander Kynev, who was arrested in connection with an alleged attempt to sell drugs, was due to be transferred from the Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention center to another detention facility on October 14, his lawyer Mikhail Biryukov said.