Fully Authoritarian
World’s Population
Population
HRF classifies Russia as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
The Russian Federation is a presidential republic that reemerged as a separate political entity following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. Under the Russian Constitution, adopted in 1993, the president holds extensive executive authority, including the power to appoint judges and key public officials in other institutions. Legislative power rests with a 620-member Federal Assembly, comprised of the Federation Council (170-member upper house) and the State Duma (450-member lower house). Vladimir Putin has been the de facto ruler of Russia since the ailing then-President Boris Yeltsin directly appointed him as acting prime minister in August 1999. Since first assuming office, Putin has consolidated an entrenched authoritarian regime by arbitrarily prolonging or resetting his terms, systematically persecuting political rivals and dissidents, heavily manipulating electoral outcomes, and dismantling the independent media and civil society. A controversial 2020 referendum allowed him to extend his grip on power until 2036.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched in 2022, supercharged the regime’s latest efforts to stifle domestic dissent, from repressive news laws on wartime reporting to further restrictions on the freedom of assembly. Within the sovereign territories of Ukraine under de facto Russian occupation, Russia has committed war crimes, including the forced deportation of civilians, extrajudicial mass killings of non-combatants (in Bucha and Mariupol), and indiscriminate shelling of civilian infrastructure.
In Russia, national elections are a sham, to the point where the real, mainstream political opposition does not have a realistic chance to meaningfully compete and possibly win. The main opposition leaders have been consistently prevented from competing in elections through various tactics, including attempts on their lives or unfounded denials of their right to run by the Central Election Commission (CEC). Despite the virtual absence of viable competition, the regime has also systematically manipulated election results to maintain a veneer of legitimacy and stymied independent observation to obscure the full extent of its electoral fraud.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and regular people face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize Vladimir Putin’s regime. The regime took it upon itself to dismantle the few critical, unbiased islands of political coverage as early as Putin’s first presidential term, targeting prominent newspapers and TV programs that criticized or mocked those in power. Draconian laws have increasingly circumscribed civic space, while summary detentions and police violence against peaceful demonstrators have rendered the freedom of assembly nil.
Reflecting the thorough concentration of executive power in the presidency and Putin’s close personal circle, institutions fail to check the regime. On the contrary, the courts have rubber-stamped dubious referenda and constitutional amendments intended to entrench Putin’s grip on power and enable the persecution of dissidents, from political opponents to prominent civil society leaders.
In Russia, elections are a sham, to the point where the real, mainstream political opposition does not have a realistic chance to meaningfully compete and possibly win against the ruling United Russia party. The regime has systematically persecuted or otherwise disqualified any viable challengers, allowing only regime-friendly parties to preserve a façade of pluralism. Despite the near certainty of outcomes, elections are heavily and strategically manipulated through a variety of tactics, from ballot tampering to illicit voter mobilization. To conceal the true extent of these irregularities, on the other hand, officials have effectively barred both domestic and international independent election observers.
The regime has systematically and unfairly barred real, mainstream opposition parties or candidates from competing in elections, while allowing sham candidates it has co-opted, such as the Communist Party (KPRF), to run to maintain a veneer of competitiveness. Individuals or organizations labeled “foreign agents” under the eponymous draconian law, considered “extremist” (an overly vague designation), dual citizens, and felons (in a context where many opposition leaders are wrongfully convicted on politically-motivated charges) are automatically prohibited from running for office by law. In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, the CEC eliminated any real alternatives from the ballot, disqualifying the only candidate with a platform substantively different from Putin’s, Boris Nadezhdin, citing technical errors in the supporting citizens’ signatures. In December 2020, Yulia Galyamina, a prominent member of the Moscow Municipal Council critical of the regime, received a two-year suspended sentence for participating in a peaceful, but “unauthorized” demonstration earlier the same year. As a result, she was automatically barred from running in the upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled for the fall of 2021. It was under these restrictions that the Central Election Commission (CEC) denied the registration request of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s main rival for the 2018 presidential election, citing a 2017 corruption conviction that was widely considered politically motivated. At the time, this wasn’t the first time the regime had retaliated against Navalny. In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) had overturned a different 2013 conviction for corruption-related offenses, finding that he had not received a fair trial. Far from isolated instances, such cases suggest the regime is systematically abusing electoral laws to preempt any viable electoral challenges.
Even though the virtual absence of a viable opposition all but guarantees the outcome, the regime has engaged in systematic, significant voting irregularities and electoral fraud. In both the 2016 Duma elections and the 2018 presidential vote, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) noted numerous violations, from pressure upon voters on election day to multiple voting and ballot stuffing. It characterized vote-counting procedures as “bad” or “very bad” in nearly a third of polling stations monitored. Referencing the OSCE’s observations and precinct-level data, political scientists have argued that the 2016 election exhibited previously unprecedented, systemic, electoral fraud. Data from local watchdogs suggests that the regime was also strategically abusing electronic and three-day voting, first introduced in the 2020 constitutional referendum, to carefully engineer results and, simultaneously, make irregularities more challenging to ascertain.
To obscure the true extent and impact of its electoral fraud, the regime has also seriously undermined independent electoral oversight. Ahead of the 2021 parliamentary elections, the regime cut down the number of independent observers the OSCE could deploy as part of its mission in Russia, citing COVID-19 restrictions. The leadership of the organization disputed Russia’s official rationale and ultimately did not send observers at all. This was an unprecedented decision, given that the OSCE had observed all of the country’s elections since 1993.
Reflecting the eradication of the mainstream opposition and the systemic electoral manipulation outlined above, Putin generally wins elections with exorbitant vote shares. In 2024, a reported 87.3% of voters supported his bid for the presidency, breaking his previous record (76.7%), set in the 2018 presidential election. The runner-up is typically a member of the façade opposition, epitomized by the Communist Party, which has been thoroughly co-opted by the regime.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize Putin’s regime. The onset of the war in Ukraine in 2022 ushered in the arguably most intense persecution and jailing of prominent regime critics in the post-Soviet period. The regime has simultaneously dismantled independent civil society and media through repressive “foreign agents” legislation, forced liquidations or hostile takeovers, and draconian censorship laws that have driven critics into exile. Beyond judicial and administrative repression, the regime has been credibly implicated in the extrajudicial killings of prominent dissidents, including the opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
The regime has systematically and seriously intimidated and obstructed the work of independent dissenting media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, or members of the general public, notably through assassinations and the jailing of dissidents on bogus charges. Reputable human rights watchdogs, such as Memorial and OVD-Info, have placed the number of political prisoners at the end of 2025 at about 1,700. The 2022 introduction of laws criminalizing the spread of “false information regarding Russian state bodies operating abroad,” a thinly veiled effort to censor criticism of the country’s invasion of Ukraine, further exacerbated this trend. In 2023, Vladimir Kara-Murza received a 25-year sentence under the new laws as a result of a series of speeches critical of the war. Kara-Murza served over two years in a Siberian penal colony before his release in the largest prisoner swap between the West and Russia since the Cold War in August 2024. International watchdogs estimated that, by mid-2023, at least 7,200 individuals had been fined under these provisions, while 60 had received criminal convictions leading to imprisonment or corrective labor.
Even before the latest criminalization of legitimate criticism, the regime had systematically abused the broadly criticized “Federal Law on Combating Extremist Activity” (first adopted in 2002 and repeatedly expanded in scope through the 2010s and 2020s) and, albeit less frequently, anti-corruption regulations to target dissidents. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who had barely survived a nerve agent poisoning on a domestic flight in Russia and flown to Germany for treatment (most likely perpetrated by the regime), was promptly apprehended upon his return to Russia in January 2021 and sentenced to nine years for fraud the following year. In 2023, an additional 19 years’ imprisonment were added to his term following a sham trial, in which he was found guilty of “inciting and financing extremism” and “creating an illegal CSO.” Throughout his detention, the regime deliberately subjected him to progressively harsher conditions, culminating in his transfer to one of Russia’s most remote detention facilities, north of the Arctic Circle, in December 2023. The extreme climate (with temperatures falling to -30C/-22F) and punitive carceral regime he endured, including protracted solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and denial of proper medical care, exacerbated his pre-existing medical conditions. He died, aged 47, on February 12, 2024, ostensibly from a heart attack. Nonetheless, Navalny’s rapid physical deterioration following his transfer and prison officials’ initial refusal to release his body to his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, raised serious concerns about the circumstances of his death. In light of the regime’s previous attempt to assassinate Navalny and the well-documented pattern of ill-treatment of political prisoners in Russia, numerous foreign officials and international experts publicly held the Russian state, and Vladimir Putin specifically, responsible for his death.
The 2021 blanket designation of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), founded by Navalny in 2011, as “extremist” enabled not only its forceful liquidation, but also the regime’s judicial persecution of multiple associates of the late opposition leader. In August 2023, Daniel Kholodny, the FBK’s YouTube Director, received an eight-year sentence for “organizing an extremist group.” Navalny’s legal defense team was also targeted under the same law. In January 2025, a district court sentenced lawyers Vadim Kobzev to five years and six months, Alexei Liptser to five years, and Igor Sergunin to three years and six months in prison. They were first arrested in 2023 for “acting as intermediaries” and “facilitating the communications of an extremist network.”
Putin’s regime has systematically and unfairly shut down independent, dissenting organizations. The majority of these liquidations are carried out under the anti-extremism legislation outlined above and a controversial 2012 “foreign agents” law, which the regime has also repeatedly expanded. Officially designated as extremist in 2021, the FBK became illegal overnight and had its assets confiscated by regime officials. The 2012 law imposed onerous reporting requirements on all CSOs receiving foreign funding and empowered financial oversight institutions to conduct unlimited and often unannounced audits of such organizations’ activities. It was under this law that the Supreme Court ruled in 2021 to “liquidate” Memorial, the country’s most prominent human rights group that was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Hostile corporate takeovers and insurmountable barriers to objective reporting were among the other tactics deployed by the regime to indirectly smother dissenting media outlets. In 2001, during Putin’s first presidential term, NTV, a popular channel famous for its satirical puppet show mocking politicians, including the president himself, was taken over by the majority state-owned multinational gas and oil company Gazprom, and the show itself was shut down by 2002. The abovementioned speech laws effectively criminalizing criticism of the war in Ukraine also spurred an exodus of independent outlets in 2022, from CNN to the critical newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which suspended its operations in Russia.
The regime has systematically, seriously, and unfairly repressed peaceful protests or gatherings. Citing vague “prior notice” regulations, officials routinely deny citizens the right to protest. Anti-war demonstrations were also effectively criminalized following the invasion of Ukraine. The Russian civil society organization (CSO) OVD-Info estimates that more than 20,000 citizens were detained for protesting the invasion by early 2025, many of whom have suffered inhuman and degrading treatment, including beatings and sexual assault, while in detention. Local watchdogs also noted that those convicted of “anti-war” activities (including peaceful protests) face relatively long sentences, ranging between three and seven years in prison. Oleg Ovlov, a co-chair of Memorial, was repeatedly targeted by the regime for protesting the invasion between 2023 and 2025. In 2023, security services raided his apartment and briefly detained him for interrogation, with the ostensible justification that he was “exonerating Nazism” (Article 354 of the Criminal Code). In October of the same year, the Golovinsky District Court of Moscow fined him 150,000 roubles (approx. $1,500) for “public actions aimed at discrediting the use of armed forces of the Russian Federation” in a separate case. When his defense team appealed the fine, the prosecution argued the initial sanction was too lenient. As a result, in February 2024, a Moscow court sentenced Orlov to two-and-a-half years’ imprisonment in a penal colony. He spent nearly 5 months in detention before his eventual release in the prisoner exchange discussed above.
The regime has also engaged in transnational repression against dissidents abroad. In 2006, Aleksander Litvinenko, a former Federal Security Bureau (FSB) agent who vehemently criticized Putin’s regime after fleeing Russia and seeking asylum in the United Kingdom, died from radiation sickness after he was poisoned with Polonium-210. A 2021 ECtHR judgment found it was “beyond reasonable doubt” that Litvinenko’s assassins acted as “agents” of the Russian state itself, likely authorized by officials at the highest levels of government.
Thoroughly hollowed out and subordinated to the executive, independent institutions fail to check the regime. Putin has concentrated executive power through presidential decrees and dubious referendums, allowing him to sidestep any constitutional constraints on the presidency and reduce key executive and security institutions to means for regime preservation. The judiciary serves merely as a rubber-stamp of the regime, enabling its attempts to skew the electoral playing field and repress dissent. The few magistrates and independent officials who have denounced this institutional capture have faced retaliation, reinforcing the judicial branch’s subservience to the executive.
By centralizing the executive power and detaching it from reasonable constitutional limits, Putin has thoroughly weakened the legislative branch’s independence and operational effectiveness. Adopted in extremis by Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, the 1993 Constitution had already established a presidential system with few checks: the president could appoint the cabinet unilaterally, with little to no oversight by parliament, and also dissolve the Duma at will. The president also enjoys broad “management powers” to oversee functions of the state bureaucracy. While Yeltsin arguably exercised these extensive prerogatives with restraint, Putin, by contrast, made full use of them to centralize power, remaking federal governance and multiple state institutions in the process. Six days after his presidential inauguration in 2000, he signed a decree that established seven supra-regional districts (“okrugs”) and placed the appointment of their governors in the president’s hands. These governors were tasked with directly overseeing the operations of federal institutions at the local level and also had the authority to investigate and report on officials. The latter enabled the effective subjugation of these local representatives to the centralized regime, in contrast to the limited, but functional, autonomy they had enjoyed during the Yeltsin era. In 2024, Putin further diminished that autonomy, announcing that direct appointment by Moscow would replace gubernatorial elections.
In addition to the extensive centralization of power in the presidency, the regime has repeatedly sidestepped constitutional term limits. Most recently, in 2020, Putin initiated a plebiscite in which voters could only accept or reject around 200 constitutional changes on diverse subjects as a package. The main provision, however, allowed Putin to reset his previous presidential terms, allowing him to run for two more terms and potentially prolonging his rule until 2036. The referendum was marred by violations, including compromised vote secrecy, ballot falsification, and overt obstruction of election observers. Invoking the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the regime expanded online and early voting options, with no adequate oversight. The overwhelming reported support for the amendments (close to 78%) also raised concerns of systemic falsification of results.
Even before the remaking of the College, however, judges who ruled contrary to regime interests or criticized its policies systematically faced retaliation. For example, in 2001, Judge Sergei Pashin was dismissed for “unbecoming conduct” for criticizing the Kremlin’s political influence over judges. In 2004, Judge Olga Kudeshkina, who had briefly left her post to run in the Duma elections in 2003, was dismissed by the Judiciary Qualification Board of Moscow for “deliberately disseminat[ing] deceptive, concocted and insulting perceptions of the judges and judicial system of the Russian Federation” during her election campaign. The judge had repeatedly criticized instances of corruption and partiality in the judiciary. In a 2009 decision, the ECtHR found Kudeshkina’s dismissal violated Article 10 (“Freedom of Expression”) of the European Convention on Human Rights and was clearly retaliatory. A Council of Europe working document from the same year noted other instances in which judges faced a high “pressure to convict” and overt political interference with their adjudication of cases.
The judiciary has systematically rubber-stamped regime measures to repress criticism or retaliate against those who express open opposition to its most prominent, widely publicized policies. Upon returning to Russia in January 2021, Alexei Navalny was swiftly detained for an alleged parole violation (stemming from his 2014 conviction for fraud and money laundering, widely condemned as arbitrary, including by the ECtHR). A Moscow court then ruled to convert his previous suspended sentence into imprisonment, resulting in the arbitrary and degrading detention outlined in the Freedom of Dissent pillar. In sharp contrast to these speedy convictions, the assassinations of prominent regime critics, such as prominent opposition leader Boris Nemtsov (2015) and investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya (2006), have never been properly investigated.
As the ministries are a de facto extension of the centralized regime, key executive bodies have also undergone reforms that seriously weaken or abolish their independence and effectiveness. During his early years in office, Putin moved to restructure the so-called “silovye ministerstva,” the ministries that ensure the state’s monopoly on violence, and to elevate their apparatchiks, the “siloviki,” into positions of power and preeminence in the state bureaucracy. He effectively reversed the decentralization of Russian intelligence in the 1990s and concentrated power within the FSB, which has always operated with limited, if any, oversight. The FSB would then become the main instrument of the regime’s crackdowns on both political dissidents and overzealous oligarchs who could undermine the state’s economic interests. As indicated in the Freedom of Dissent pillar, FSB operatives have been credibly implicated in the regime’s transnational repression and extrajudicial violence against its opponents at home. Another bureau under the Ministry of the Interior, the Center for Combating Extremism, which the regime established in the late 2000s, has been instrumental in monitoring social media and bringing extremism charges against Russians expressing dissent online.
Reflecting their profound political dependence, judicial and independent oversight institutions have frequently and unfairly failed to hold regime officials accountable. High-level corruption and rent-seeking are pervasive in Russia, fomented in no small part by a culture of impunity. For instance, in 2006, a Zurich arbitration tribunal concluded that then–Minister of Communications Leonid Reiman was the beneficial owner of dubious offshore entities that had acquired telecom state assets reportedly worth billions of dollars. The findings raised serious conflict-of-interest concerns, yet there was no indication that domestic oversight bodies investigated how Reiman acquired these assets or attempted to hold him accountable for potential abuses of office, while Russian media, heavily biased in favor of the regime, largely ignored the incident. Putin also hand-picked the leadership of key majority state-owned conglomerates, from Gazprom to the United Shipyard Corporation, which control a substantial share of Russia’s economy. Largely exempt from external oversight and backed by the state’s coffers, those enterprises have acquired other politically expedient assets, such as newspapers and TV outlets, which in turn have consolidated the regime’s control of the media.
HRF classifies Russia as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
The Russian Federation is a presidential republic that reemerged as a separate political entity following the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. Under the Russian Constitution, adopted in 1993, the president holds extensive executive authority, including the power to appoint judges and key public officials in other institutions. Legislative power rests with a 620-member Federal Assembly, comprised of the Federation Council (170-member upper house) and the State Duma (450-member lower house). Vladimir Putin has been the de facto ruler of Russia since the ailing then-President Boris Yeltsin directly appointed him as acting prime minister in August 1999. Since first assuming office, Putin has consolidated an entrenched authoritarian regime by arbitrarily prolonging or resetting his terms, systematically persecuting political rivals and dissidents, heavily manipulating electoral outcomes, and dismantling the independent media and civil society. A controversial 2020 referendum allowed him to extend his grip on power until 2036.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched in 2022, supercharged the regime’s latest efforts to stifle domestic dissent, from repressive news laws on wartime reporting to further restrictions on the freedom of assembly. Within the sovereign territories of Ukraine under de facto Russian occupation, Russia has committed war crimes, including the forced deportation of civilians, extrajudicial mass killings of non-combatants (in Bucha and Mariupol), and indiscriminate shelling of civilian infrastructure.
In Russia, national elections are a sham, to the point where the real, mainstream political opposition does not have a realistic chance to meaningfully compete and possibly win. The main opposition leaders have been consistently prevented from competing in elections through various tactics, including attempts on their lives or unfounded denials of their right to run by the Central Election Commission (CEC). Despite the virtual absence of viable competition, the regime has also systematically manipulated election results to maintain a veneer of legitimacy and stymied independent observation to obscure the full extent of its electoral fraud.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and regular people face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize Vladimir Putin’s regime. The regime took it upon itself to dismantle the few critical, unbiased islands of political coverage as early as Putin’s first presidential term, targeting prominent newspapers and TV programs that criticized or mocked those in power. Draconian laws have increasingly circumscribed civic space, while summary detentions and police violence against peaceful demonstrators have rendered the freedom of assembly nil.
Reflecting the thorough concentration of executive power in the presidency and Putin’s close personal circle, institutions fail to check the regime. On the contrary, the courts have rubber-stamped dubious referenda and constitutional amendments intended to entrench Putin’s grip on power and enable the persecution of dissidents, from political opponents to prominent civil society leaders.
In Russia, elections are a sham, to the point where the real, mainstream political opposition does not have a realistic chance to meaningfully compete and possibly win against the ruling United Russia party. The regime has systematically persecuted or otherwise disqualified any viable challengers, allowing only regime-friendly parties to preserve a façade of pluralism. Despite the near certainty of outcomes, elections are heavily and strategically manipulated through a variety of tactics, from ballot tampering to illicit voter mobilization. To conceal the true extent of these irregularities, on the other hand, officials have effectively barred both domestic and international independent election observers.
The regime has systematically and unfairly barred real, mainstream opposition parties or candidates from competing in elections, while allowing sham candidates it has co-opted, such as the Communist Party (KPRF), to run to maintain a veneer of competitiveness. Individuals or organizations labeled “foreign agents” under the eponymous draconian law, considered “extremist” (an overly vague designation), dual citizens, and felons (in a context where many opposition leaders are wrongfully convicted on politically-motivated charges) are automatically prohibited from running for office by law. In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, the CEC eliminated any real alternatives from the ballot, disqualifying the only candidate with a platform substantively different from Putin’s, Boris Nadezhdin, citing technical errors in the supporting citizens’ signatures. In December 2020, Yulia Galyamina, a prominent member of the Moscow Municipal Council critical of the regime, received a two-year suspended sentence for participating in a peaceful, but “unauthorized” demonstration earlier the same year. As a result, she was automatically barred from running in the upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled for the fall of 2021. It was under these restrictions that the Central Election Commission (CEC) denied the registration request of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s main rival for the 2018 presidential election, citing a 2017 corruption conviction that was widely considered politically motivated. At the time, this wasn’t the first time the regime had retaliated against Navalny. In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) had overturned a different 2013 conviction for corruption-related offenses, finding that he had not received a fair trial. Far from isolated instances, such cases suggest the regime is systematically abusing electoral laws to preempt any viable electoral challenges.
Even though the virtual absence of a viable opposition all but guarantees the outcome, the regime has engaged in systematic, significant voting irregularities and electoral fraud. In both the 2016 Duma elections and the 2018 presidential vote, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) noted numerous violations, from pressure upon voters on election day to multiple voting and ballot stuffing. It characterized vote-counting procedures as “bad” or “very bad” in nearly a third of polling stations monitored. Referencing the OSCE’s observations and precinct-level data, political scientists have argued that the 2016 election exhibited previously unprecedented, systemic, electoral fraud. Data from local watchdogs suggests that the regime was also strategically abusing electronic and three-day voting, first introduced in the 2020 constitutional referendum, to carefully engineer results and, simultaneously, make irregularities more challenging to ascertain.
To obscure the true extent and impact of its electoral fraud, the regime has also seriously undermined independent electoral oversight. Ahead of the 2021 parliamentary elections, the regime cut down the number of independent observers the OSCE could deploy as part of its mission in Russia, citing COVID-19 restrictions. The leadership of the organization disputed Russia’s official rationale and ultimately did not send observers at all. This was an unprecedented decision, given that the OSCE had observed all of the country’s elections since 1993.
Reflecting the eradication of the mainstream opposition and the systemic electoral manipulation outlined above, Putin generally wins elections with exorbitant vote shares. In 2024, a reported 87.3% of voters supported his bid for the presidency, breaking his previous record (76.7%), set in the 2018 presidential election. The runner-up is typically a member of the façade opposition, epitomized by the Communist Party, which has been thoroughly co-opted by the regime.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize Putin’s regime. The onset of the war in Ukraine in 2022 ushered in the arguably most intense persecution and jailing of prominent regime critics in the post-Soviet period. The regime has simultaneously dismantled independent civil society and media through repressive “foreign agents” legislation, forced liquidations or hostile takeovers, and draconian censorship laws that have driven critics into exile. Beyond judicial and administrative repression, the regime has been credibly implicated in the extrajudicial killings of prominent dissidents, including the opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
The regime has systematically and seriously intimidated and obstructed the work of independent dissenting media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, or members of the general public, notably through assassinations and the jailing of dissidents on bogus charges. Reputable human rights watchdogs, such as Memorial and OVD-Info, have placed the number of political prisoners at the end of 2025 at about 1,700. The 2022 introduction of laws criminalizing the spread of “false information regarding Russian state bodies operating abroad,” a thinly veiled effort to censor criticism of the country’s invasion of Ukraine, further exacerbated this trend. In 2023, Vladimir Kara-Murza received a 25-year sentence under the new laws as a result of a series of speeches critical of the war. Kara-Murza served over two years in a Siberian penal colony before his release in the largest prisoner swap between the West and Russia since the Cold War in August 2024. International watchdogs estimated that, by mid-2023, at least 7,200 individuals had been fined under these provisions, while 60 had received criminal convictions leading to imprisonment or corrective labor.
Even before the latest criminalization of legitimate criticism, the regime had systematically abused the broadly criticized “Federal Law on Combating Extremist Activity” (first adopted in 2002 and repeatedly expanded in scope through the 2010s and 2020s) and, albeit less frequently, anti-corruption regulations to target dissidents. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who had barely survived a nerve agent poisoning on a domestic flight in Russia and flown to Germany for treatment (most likely perpetrated by the regime), was promptly apprehended upon his return to Russia in January 2021 and sentenced to nine years for fraud the following year. In 2023, an additional 19 years’ imprisonment were added to his term following a sham trial, in which he was found guilty of “inciting and financing extremism” and “creating an illegal CSO.” Throughout his detention, the regime deliberately subjected him to progressively harsher conditions, culminating in his transfer to one of Russia’s most remote detention facilities, north of the Arctic Circle, in December 2023. The extreme climate (with temperatures falling to -30C/-22F) and punitive carceral regime he endured, including protracted solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and denial of proper medical care, exacerbated his pre-existing medical conditions. He died, aged 47, on February 12, 2024, ostensibly from a heart attack. Nonetheless, Navalny’s rapid physical deterioration following his transfer and prison officials’ initial refusal to release his body to his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, raised serious concerns about the circumstances of his death. In light of the regime’s previous attempt to assassinate Navalny and the well-documented pattern of ill-treatment of political prisoners in Russia, numerous foreign officials and international experts publicly held the Russian state, and Vladimir Putin specifically, responsible for his death.
The 2021 blanket designation of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), founded by Navalny in 2011, as “extremist” enabled not only its forceful liquidation, but also the regime’s judicial persecution of multiple associates of the late opposition leader. In August 2023, Daniel Kholodny, the FBK’s YouTube Director, received an eight-year sentence for “organizing an extremist group.” Navalny’s legal defense team was also targeted under the same law. In January 2025, a district court sentenced lawyers Vadim Kobzev to five years and six months, Alexei Liptser to five years, and Igor Sergunin to three years and six months in prison. They were first arrested in 2023 for “acting as intermediaries” and “facilitating the communications of an extremist network.”
Putin’s regime has systematically and unfairly shut down independent, dissenting organizations. The majority of these liquidations are carried out under the anti-extremism legislation outlined above and a controversial 2012 “foreign agents” law, which the regime has also repeatedly expanded. Officially designated as extremist in 2021, the FBK became illegal overnight and had its assets confiscated by regime officials. The 2012 law imposed onerous reporting requirements on all CSOs receiving foreign funding and empowered financial oversight institutions to conduct unlimited and often unannounced audits of such organizations’ activities. It was under this law that the Supreme Court ruled in 2021 to “liquidate” Memorial, the country’s most prominent human rights group that was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Hostile corporate takeovers and insurmountable barriers to objective reporting were among the other tactics deployed by the regime to indirectly smother dissenting media outlets. In 2001, during Putin’s first presidential term, NTV, a popular channel famous for its satirical puppet show mocking politicians, including the president himself, was taken over by the majority state-owned multinational gas and oil company Gazprom, and the show itself was shut down by 2002. The abovementioned speech laws effectively criminalizing criticism of the war in Ukraine also spurred an exodus of independent outlets in 2022, from CNN to the critical newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which suspended its operations in Russia.
The regime has systematically, seriously, and unfairly repressed peaceful protests or gatherings. Citing vague “prior notice” regulations, officials routinely deny citizens the right to protest. Anti-war demonstrations were also effectively criminalized following the invasion of Ukraine. The Russian civil society organization (CSO) OVD-Info estimates that more than 20,000 citizens were detained for protesting the invasion by early 2025, many of whom have suffered inhuman and degrading treatment, including beatings and sexual assault, while in detention. Local watchdogs also noted that those convicted of “anti-war” activities (including peaceful protests) face relatively long sentences, ranging between three and seven years in prison. Oleg Ovlov, a co-chair of Memorial, was repeatedly targeted by the regime for protesting the invasion between 2023 and 2025. In 2023, security services raided his apartment and briefly detained him for interrogation, with the ostensible justification that he was “exonerating Nazism” (Article 354 of the Criminal Code). In October of the same year, the Golovinsky District Court of Moscow fined him 150,000 roubles (approx. $1,500) for “public actions aimed at discrediting the use of armed forces of the Russian Federation” in a separate case. When his defense team appealed the fine, the prosecution argued the initial sanction was too lenient. As a result, in February 2024, a Moscow court sentenced Orlov to two-and-a-half years’ imprisonment in a penal colony. He spent nearly 5 months in detention before his eventual release in the prisoner exchange discussed above.
The regime has also engaged in transnational repression against dissidents abroad. In 2006, Aleksander Litvinenko, a former Federal Security Bureau (FSB) agent who vehemently criticized Putin’s regime after fleeing Russia and seeking asylum in the United Kingdom, died from radiation sickness after he was poisoned with Polonium-210. A 2021 ECtHR judgment found it was “beyond reasonable doubt” that Litvinenko’s assassins acted as “agents” of the Russian state itself, likely authorized by officials at the highest levels of government.
Thoroughly hollowed out and subordinated to the executive, independent institutions fail to check the regime. Putin has concentrated executive power through presidential decrees and dubious referendums, allowing him to sidestep any constitutional constraints on the presidency and reduce key executive and security institutions to means for regime preservation. The judiciary serves merely as a rubber-stamp of the regime, enabling its attempts to skew the electoral playing field and repress dissent. The few magistrates and independent officials who have denounced this institutional capture have faced retaliation, reinforcing the judicial branch’s subservience to the executive.
By centralizing the executive power and detaching it from reasonable constitutional limits, Putin has thoroughly weakened the legislative branch’s independence and operational effectiveness. Adopted in extremis by Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, the 1993 Constitution had already established a presidential system with few checks: the president could appoint the cabinet unilaterally, with little to no oversight by parliament, and also dissolve the Duma at will. The president also enjoys broad “management powers” to oversee functions of the state bureaucracy. While Yeltsin arguably exercised these extensive prerogatives with restraint, Putin, by contrast, made full use of them to centralize power, remaking federal governance and multiple state institutions in the process. Six days after his presidential inauguration in 2000, he signed a decree that established seven supra-regional districts (“okrugs”) and placed the appointment of their governors in the president’s hands. These governors were tasked with directly overseeing the operations of federal institutions at the local level and also had the authority to investigate and report on officials. The latter enabled the effective subjugation of these local representatives to the centralized regime, in contrast to the limited, but functional, autonomy they had enjoyed during the Yeltsin era. In 2024, Putin further diminished that autonomy, announcing that direct appointment by Moscow would replace gubernatorial elections.
In addition to the extensive centralization of power in the presidency, the regime has repeatedly sidestepped constitutional term limits. Most recently, in 2020, Putin initiated a plebiscite in which voters could only accept or reject around 200 constitutional changes on diverse subjects as a package. The main provision, however, allowed Putin to reset his previous presidential terms, allowing him to run for two more terms and potentially prolonging his rule until 2036. The referendum was marred by violations, including compromised vote secrecy, ballot falsification, and overt obstruction of election observers. Invoking the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the regime expanded online and early voting options, with no adequate oversight. The overwhelming reported support for the amendments (close to 78%) also raised concerns of systemic falsification of results.
Even before the remaking of the College, however, judges who ruled contrary to regime interests or criticized its policies systematically faced retaliation. For example, in 2001, Judge Sergei Pashin was dismissed for “unbecoming conduct” for criticizing the Kremlin’s political influence over judges. In 2004, Judge Olga Kudeshkina, who had briefly left her post to run in the Duma elections in 2003, was dismissed by the Judiciary Qualification Board of Moscow for “deliberately disseminat[ing] deceptive, concocted and insulting perceptions of the judges and judicial system of the Russian Federation” during her election campaign. The judge had repeatedly criticized instances of corruption and partiality in the judiciary. In a 2009 decision, the ECtHR found Kudeshkina’s dismissal violated Article 10 (“Freedom of Expression”) of the European Convention on Human Rights and was clearly retaliatory. A Council of Europe working document from the same year noted other instances in which judges faced a high “pressure to convict” and overt political interference with their adjudication of cases.
The judiciary has systematically rubber-stamped regime measures to repress criticism or retaliate against those who express open opposition to its most prominent, widely publicized policies. Upon returning to Russia in January 2021, Alexei Navalny was swiftly detained for an alleged parole violation (stemming from his 2014 conviction for fraud and money laundering, widely condemned as arbitrary, including by the ECtHR). A Moscow court then ruled to convert his previous suspended sentence into imprisonment, resulting in the arbitrary and degrading detention outlined in the Freedom of Dissent pillar. In sharp contrast to these speedy convictions, the assassinations of prominent regime critics, such as prominent opposition leader Boris Nemtsov (2015) and investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya (2006), have never been properly investigated.
As the ministries are a de facto extension of the centralized regime, key executive bodies have also undergone reforms that seriously weaken or abolish their independence and effectiveness. During his early years in office, Putin moved to restructure the so-called “silovye ministerstva,” the ministries that ensure the state’s monopoly on violence, and to elevate their apparatchiks, the “siloviki,” into positions of power and preeminence in the state bureaucracy. He effectively reversed the decentralization of Russian intelligence in the 1990s and concentrated power within the FSB, which has always operated with limited, if any, oversight. The FSB would then become the main instrument of the regime’s crackdowns on both political dissidents and overzealous oligarchs who could undermine the state’s economic interests. As indicated in the Freedom of Dissent pillar, FSB operatives have been credibly implicated in the regime’s transnational repression and extrajudicial violence against its opponents at home. Another bureau under the Ministry of the Interior, the Center for Combating Extremism, which the regime established in the late 2000s, has been instrumental in monitoring social media and bringing extremism charges against Russians expressing dissent online.
Reflecting their profound political dependence, judicial and independent oversight institutions have frequently and unfairly failed to hold regime officials accountable. High-level corruption and rent-seeking are pervasive in Russia, fomented in no small part by a culture of impunity. For instance, in 2006, a Zurich arbitration tribunal concluded that then–Minister of Communications Leonid Reiman was the beneficial owner of dubious offshore entities that had acquired telecom state assets reportedly worth billions of dollars. The findings raised serious conflict-of-interest concerns, yet there was no indication that domestic oversight bodies investigated how Reiman acquired these assets or attempted to hold him accountable for potential abuses of office, while Russian media, heavily biased in favor of the regime, largely ignored the incident. Putin also hand-picked the leadership of key majority state-owned conglomerates, from Gazprom to the United Shipyard Corporation, which control a substantial share of Russia’s economy. Largely exempt from external oversight and backed by the state’s coffers, those enterprises have acquired other politically expedient assets, such as newspapers and TV outlets, which in turn have consolidated the regime’s control of the media.
