Summary

It’s not just public criticism that’s banned, but any independent thought. Even actions seemingly unrelated to politics or criticism of the authorities can be punished. There is no field of art where free artistic expression is possible, there is no academic freedom in the humanities, there is no more private life.

–Oleg Orlov, former co-chair of Human Rights Defense Center Memorial, closing statement at his trial, February 26, 2024

The Russian government’s evisceration of civic space in the country after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 did not happen overnight. It was preceded by the Kremlin’s escalating assault on fundamental freedoms for more than a decade.

At least since 2012, Russian authorities strove to suppress internal dissent and incapacitate civil society. These efforts intensified in the fall of 2020 against the backdrop of three developments: mass protests in neighboring Belarus; opposition to constitutional reform in summer 2020 that, among other things, made it possible for President Vladimir Putin to run for two more terms of office; and an imperative to weaken the political opposition and civil society groups before the 2021 electoral campaign. Russian authorities responded by adopting a series of laws designed to crush potential mobilization, opposition, and dissent against government policies. These policies eventually came to include the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Since then, the Russian government has increased its stranglehold over independent voices, tightening draconian laws that restrict the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly, adopting new laws that impose a state-enforced historical narrative, and permitting almost no room for public dissent. Kremlin-controlled courts have also slapped lengthy prison terms on prominent Russian opposition figures, including the late Alexei Navalny, Ilya Yashin, and Vladimir Kara-Murza. 

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This report focuses on the wave of repressive legislation and policies that the Kremlin has put in place since fall 2020, and how the government under Putin has used such legislation to target critical or dissenting voices in Russia. This legislation relates to eight broad areas: “foreign agents,” public assembly, electoral rights, freedom of expression, sexual orientation and gender identity, treason and adjacent concepts, historical truth, and education.

“Foreign Agents”

The signature legislation in the government’s campaign of repression is the “foreign agents” law. The “foreign agent” concept seeks to smear anyone or any entity that is independently critical of the government as “foreign” and therefore suspicious, subversive, or even traitorous. First enacted in 2012 and repeatedly expanded and made harsher since, Russia’s foreign agent provisions have been used to stigmatize and harass a wide range of activists and critical voices and as a pretext for shutting down some of the country’s leading human rights groups.

Over the years, provisions first targeted nongovernmental organizations, then unregistered groups, media outlets, journalists and certain categories of individuals and, by 2022, all people the state deemed to be “under foreign influence.” Penalties have stiffened over time and have included fines, criminal punishments, and stripping of citizenship for naturalized citizens. By 2022-2023, amendments also excluded alleged “foreign agents” from many aspects of public life, as the authorities sought to create, in the words of one activist, “a caste of untouchables.” By 2023, penalties also extended to third parties who provide “assistance” to people designated as foreign agents.

Electoral Rights

Russian authorities have used the “foreign agent” framework to weaken electoral rights. Allegations of foreign interference in elections have been a constant feature of Russia’s nationwide election cycle since at least 2011. Beginning in 2018, they dominated the political leadership’s rhetoric in response to Alexei Navalny’s “Smart Voting” project, which called on people to vote for any candidate who stood a chance of defeating a candidate from the ruling party, United Russia.

In this context, members of parliament adopted a bill in April 2021, attaching the “foreign agent” label to candidates running for elected positions. The law enables authorities to smear opposition candidates with the foreign agent and the innovative “affiliated with a foreign agent” labels. In May 2024, the Duma adopted a law banning individuals labeled “foreign agent” from running for public office altogether and from serving on election commissions.

Public Assembly

From early 2020 through 2022, Russian authorities shredded what remained of freedom of peaceful assembly nearly a decade after laws had been adopted and enforced allowing authorities to ban all public assemblies at a considerable number of sites, increasing organizers’ liability, and introducing tougher fines and new penalties, including greater use of prison terms, for repeated violations. 

Amendments adopted in the period covered in this report further restrict public assemblies, effectively rendering legitimate protest illegal. Coupled with the criminalization of anti-war speech and protest, they have led to the prosecution of hundreds of Kremlin and Ukraine war opponents, resulting in numerous lengthy prison sentences and an exodus from the country of activists and journalists vulnerable to prosecution.

The amendments consolidated in legislation a prohibitive permission-seeking licensing system through which protest organizers must request and receive explicit authorization for a public assembly. They equated public strolls and a series of single-person pickets with mass protests, closing the few options that people had used to peacefully exercise the right to freedom of assembly and avoid Russia’s repressive public assembly provisions. They expanded obligations for organizers and the grounds for explicitly forbidding an assembly or withdrawing previously issued permission. The amendments introduced disproportionately burdensome and prohibitively unrealistic requirements for verifying the origins of funds and donations for public events and for reporting on their management. And they banned a range of persons and entities from sponsoring public events.

The government also instrumentalized restrictions related to Covid-19 to prohibit unwanted public gatherings, including single-person pickets, and continued to misuse such provisions long past the pandemic.

Censoring Free Expression, including Anti-War Speech

The Russian parliament adopted laws that silence free speech within a larger context of developments in Russian society and globally that the Kremlin perceives as threatening. Most dramatic are the laws that introduced war censorship, which have resulted in the countrywide prosecution of people peacefully expressing their opposition to the war against Ukraine. This legislation, hastily adopted after Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, bans spreading information or views about the conduct of Russian armed forces that deviates from official information, which includes so-called “fakes” and “discrediting” Russia’s armed forces as well as government agencies abroad. Penalties include long prison sentences, stripping naturalized Russians of their citizenship, and confiscation of property. At time of writing more than 480 people have faced criminal prosecution on war censorship charges.

Other laws made criminal defamation charges and penalties harsher. They followed investigations by Alexei Navalny and the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) into high-level corruption and embezzlement in Russia that attracted millions of viewers on YouTube. Amendments also specifically penalized insulting veterans, following Navalny’s outburst against attempts to co-opt the Soviet Union’s victory in the Second World War to legitimize anti-democratic constitutional amendments. 

Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity

LGBT people have long faced discrimination, harassment, and violence in Russia, particularly in the context of the 2013 anti-gay “propaganda” law. Over the past decade, Russian authorities have increasingly used “traditional family values” discourse to enforce social conformity and position themselves on the global stage as the protector of “traditional values” in what they call a standoff against the collective West. This law has had a corrosive global impact, inspiring similar laws in other countries. Putin eventually used “traditional values,” among other things, to legitimize the war against Ukraine, claiming that Russia was defending itself against “false” values that the West was “aggressively imposing.”  

***

Legislative amendments adopted since 2022 mark a full-on attack on LGBT people in Russia. They expanded the propaganda law to effectively ban public discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity, pushing LGBT people even further to the fringes of society; bylaws clarified that “propaganda” entails any positive or even neutral information about queer people or relationships. The amendments restrict any depiction of so-called “non-traditional relationships” to people under the age of 18. Even images showing a same-sex couple holding hands can be shown only subject to new restrictions. Bookshops have started covering books that could potentially trigger a violation under the new laws or have pulled them from shelves altogether.

A 2023 law bans gender-affirming healthcare and changing gender markers in identification documents, dissolves the marriages of transgender people, and bans them from adopting or fostering children.

A Supreme Court ruling in November 2023 designated the “International LGBT Movement” as an “extremist organization.” The ruling, which, among other things, prohibits the rainbow flag as an extremist symbol, opened the floodgates to allow arbitrary prosecution and imprisonment of LGBT people and of anyone who defends their rights or expresses solidarity with them.

High Treason, Espionage, Undesirable Foreign Organizations

New laws expand the definitions of treason to cover people without access to state secrets, and of espionage to cover the act of transferring information to a widened definition of “hostile agents” that includes foreign and international organizations. Criminal code articles adopted several months after the full-scale invasion criminalized involvement with foreign actors in “confidential cooperation” against Russia’s national security.

These laws, which appear intended to intimidate critics of the government, are reminiscent of the Soviet-era ban on foreign contacts. The legislators behind the treason amendments did not conceal their intent to instrumentalize the new provisions to target civil society groups, which they claimed foreign intelligence services supposedly use to access official secrets. Adjacent laws criminalize cooperation with international bodies, “to which Russia is not a party,” such as the International Criminal Court, and involvement in organizations designated by the authorities as “undesirable” such as foreign and international foundations and civil society groups.

In 2023, authorities sent to Russian courts 101 cases for treason, espionage, and confidential cooperation, five times as many as they had in 2022, according to a media report based on Russian court data. Criminal prosecutions for involvement in “undesirable” organizations have been on the rise, and the prosecutor general’s regular, new designations of foreign organizations as “undesirable” widens the risk of civic activists being criminally prosecuted.

“Historical Truth”

Russian authorities have used new laws to restrict meaningful historical debate about the Soviet Union and Russian history and to monopolize the field with state-controlled narratives, suppressing dissenting voices.

From 2020 to 2022, Russian authorities notably revamped efforts to monopolize the narrative about the victory of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) over Nazi Germany in World War II and seal it in legislation—part of wider official efforts to suppress legitimate speech at odds with official narratives about World War II, and Russian and Soviet history more broadly.

The 2020 amendments to the constitution emphasized that Russia is the successor state of the USSR and enshrined in law the notion of “historical truth” that Russia undertakes to “protect.” In 2021, the Federal Assembly (parliament) adopted laws that ban comparisons between the USSR and Nazi Germany and criminalize insulting the memory of World War II veterans.

The broader context for this legislation is the authorities’ intentional imposition of an official historical narrative glorifying Soviet-era achievements while downplaying, justifying, or in some cases contesting the facts of Joseph Stalin’s Great Terror and other Soviet-era atrocities.

Education

The Russian government has imposed stricter oversight over education, further restricting Russians’ access to information, eliminating alternatives to the historical, social, and political narratives that the government is promoting, and controlling interactions with foreigners.

A 2021 law bans unauthorized extracurricular educational activities that broadly encompass a wide range of human interaction. It gives the Russian government full control over all aspects of extracurricular education. It also authorizes the Education Ministry and Ministry of Science and Higher Education to control international initiatives—participation in conferences and the like—undertaken at all educational institutions.

Amendments explicitly ban educational activities on various grounds. Some of the grounds listed can be legitimate, such as preventing the spread of racial, ethnic, or religious enmity or superiority. But the list also includes “imparting false information about historical, national, religious, and cultural traditions of nations.” Organizations and persons designated as “foreign agents” are prohibited from teaching or carrying out other educational activities.

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The new laws detailed in this report have inflicted further blows to an already devastated civil society in Russia, and further diminished space for peaceful protest and dissent. They have resulted in purges of shelves in bookstores to remove books by authors critical of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine or that have LGBT-themed content, signaling a dangerous curtailment of people’s freedom to receive and disseminate information.

The ruling United Russia party has at times adopted rights-restricting legislation in the Federal Assembly at breakneck speed. For example, the March 2022 amendments that effectively outlawed discussion and reporting on Russia’s war in Ukraine swept through both chambers of parliament and were signed into law with immediate effect by President Putin in just two days.  Other laws appear to reflect longer term efforts to suppress fundamental rights and freedoms.

Two themes emerge in many of these laws. The first is the perceived threat, articulated in many of the new laws’ explanatory notes, of toxic foreign—that is, Western—interference in Russia’s affairs, especially through civic activism. The second is the Russian government’s apparent determination to prevent the emergence of any alternatives to its stated narratives and expressed values.

Russia’s government should end the long-running crackdown on civil society and instead foster an environment in which civil society can thrive. It should repeal the draconian legal provisions and follow recommendations set out by such intergovernmental organizations as the Council of Europe, of which Russia was a member until 2022, and the United Nations to bring legislation and practices into line with Russia’s international human rights obligations, as set out below. The government should also implement all judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, which remain binding on Russia despite its departure, including the general measures on amending legislation following from the judgments.

Civil society groups are now treading dangerously on the legislative minefield that the Russian government has laid before them. Each new law that is a blow to civil society has both an immediate effect—including the imprisonment or flight of activists—and a long term impact to push further into the future any possibility for reform. The resilience of Russian civil society is being tested as perhaps never before. Yet civil society is persisting, It provides hope for the emergence of a government in Russia committed to protecting and promoting fundamental rights.

Relevant International Legal Standards

Russia is a party to core international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which it ratified in 1973.[1] Russia had been 
a high contracting party to the European Convention on Human Rights until September 16, 2022.[2]

Russia has binding obligations to respect the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly,[3] freedoms that are also enshrined in the Russian constitution.[4] The ICCPR allows only those restrictions on these freedoms that are properly provided for by law and “necessary in a democratic society” for a clearly defined set of reasons (including public order and national security).[5]

The right to freedom of expression not only protects both free speech and imparting information, but also the right to seek and receive information.[6]

The right to form and join an association is an inherent part of the right to freedom of association. The United Nations Human Rights Council has repeatedly stressed the importance of freedom of association in a democracy: 

[T]he rights of freedom to peaceful assembly and of association are essential components of democracy, providing individuals with invaluable opportunities to, inter alia, express their political opinions, engage in literary and artistic pursuits and other cultural and social activities, engage in religious observance or other beliefs, form and join trade unions and cooperatives and elect leaders to represent their interests and hold them accountable.[7] 

The UN Human Rights Committee, an independent expert committee that provides an authoritative interpretation of the ICCPR, in its General Comment No. 37, has stated that restrictions on the rights to expression, association and assembly must:

be necessary and proportionate in the context of a society based on democracy, the rule of law, political pluralism and human rights, as opposed to being merely reasonable or expedient. Such restrictions must be appropriate responses to a pressing social need…. They must also be the least intrusive among the measures that might serve the relevant protective function. Moreover, they must be proportionate, which requires a value assessment, weighing the nature and detrimental impact of the interference on the exercise of the right against the resultant benefit to one of the grounds for interfering. If the detriment outweighs the benefit, the restriction is disproportionate and thus not permissible.[8]

The “foreign agent” laws directly give rise to violations of the right to freedom of association, as they are discriminatory and unjustifiably impose disproportionate administrative burdens on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in addition to those already imposed under Russian law.

The treason law’s wide berth for interpretation is inconsistent with the ICCPR’s requirement that restrictions on free speech be only those that are “necessary for a democratic society.”

The law imposing criminal liability for defamation is inconsistent with the conditions set forth in international human rights law. As the United Nations special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression noted in 2008, “[T]he subjective character of many defamation laws, their overly broad scope and their application within criminal law have turned them into a powerful mechanisms to stifle investigative journalism and silence criticism.”[9]

The special rapporteur has emphasized that states should take particular care to ensure that defamation laws—civil or criminal—are not used by public officials regarding matters that relate to their actions in public office, as defamation laws “should never be used to prevent criticism of government,”[10] and “should reflect the principle that public figures are required to tolerate a greater degree of criticism than private citizens.”[11]

Additionally, several international authorities have determined that criminal penalties are always disproportionate punishments for defamation, which is, by definition, a nonviolent offense.[12]

With respect to the new Russian laws regarding “historical truth” and education, the UN Human Rights Committee, in its General Comment No. 34 on freedoms of opinion and expression, has stated:

Laws that penalize the expression of opinions about historical facts are incompatible with the obligations that the Covenant imposes on States parties in relation to the respect for freedom of opinion and expression. The Covenant does not permit general prohibition of expressions of an erroneous opinion or an incorrect interpretation of past events. Restrictions on the right of freedom of opinion should never be imposed and, with regard to freedom of expression, they should not go beyond what is permitted [in the Covenant.][13]

Taken together, the arbitrary, punitive, invasive elements of the laws detailed in this report are contrary to Russia’s obligations under international law to respect the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly and have a chilling effect on the exercise of those rights.
 

Recommendations

To Russian Authorities

Russian authorities have long shown complete disregard for their international human rights obligations and appear determined to totally suppress independent civil society. The Russian government should end its crackdown on civil society by taking the following steps.

Parliament

• Rescind all laws incompatible with fundamental human rights, including the laws regarding “foreign agents,” war censorship, undesirable foreign organizations, confidential cooperation, foreign nongovernmental organizations,  “LGBT propaganda,” and “historic truth;”

• Review national legislation to bring all laws into compliance with international standards.

Government

• Initiate review of existing legislation, ensuring participation of all key stakeholders, in particular civil society groups and human rights defenders, as well as UN special procedures and other international experts;

• Introduce bills to rescind or amend legislation to bring it into compliance with international standards;

• Rescind the bills incompatible with international standards;

• Fully cooperate with the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Russia.

Prosecutor’s Office, Investigative Committee

• Desist from instituting criminal proceedings based on criminal law provisions incompatible with international human rights standards and drop already instituted cases;

• Review all criminal cases and verdicts based on laws not in compliance with international human rights standards with an aim to provide restitution where rights have been violated: quash wrongful convictions, free from prison individuals prosecuted under such laws, and promptly provide a just remedy.

To the United Nations

• Incorporate human rights concerns, including legislation violating human rights, in the agenda of all interactions with the Russian government;

• Ensure eventual discussions and negotiations with the Russian government give priority to promoting and protecting human rights and address transitional justice for the victims of human rights violations;

• Ensure adequate resources are allocated to support the work of the special rapporteur on Russia and other relevant UN human rights mechanisms, in particular the Petitions Section and special procedures, considering the increased use of these mechanisms by Russian human rights defenders and victims of human rights abuses from Russia since Russia’s departure from the Council of Europe.

To Other International Actors, including the European Union and its Member States, and Other Concerned Governments

• Integrate discussions of human rights abuses in Russia into all negotiations not only with the Russian government, but all concerned governments, underlining links between the human rights situation in the country and foreign policy concerns;

• Allocate resources to the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights to ensure that all human rights bodies and special procedures, including the UN Special Rapporteur on Russia, can carry out their work effectively; and allocate adequate resources for other UN human rights mechanisms to accommodate the increased applications and communication emanating from Russia’s departure from the Council of Europe; 

• Allocate resources to support Russian human rights defenders, journalists, and grassroots activists remaining in Russia and those in exile, and who have been negatively affected by the laws described in this report. Provide technical assistance and institutional support to those still in Russia in a manner that minimizes risks to their security;

• Support networks of Russian civil society organizations and activists so that it remains integrated and able to undertake collective activities;

• Speak out forcefully against government repression and human rights abuses in Russia; invoke international human rights law and standards to press Russian authorities to rescind laws and policies incompatible with human rights and seek the unconditional release of all those detained or imprisoned for exercising their fundamental human rights;

• Ensure support for Russian civil society inside the country as well as outside, taking into consideration the risks they face, including when interacting with foreign groups;

• Adapt national visa policies so that Russian human rights defenders, journalists, political opposition, grassroot activists, and others at risk for exercising their fundamental rights are able to leave the country swiftly in case of need. Ensure that those in exile receive requisite visas and work permits and, if requested, access to lodge and pursue asylum claims.

Methodology

This report is based on analysis of numerous bills in Russia that later were signed into law between 2020 and 2024, and interviews with Russian human rights defenders specializing in freedom of expression, assembly, association, and other areas of international human rights law.

The interviews were conducted by telephone, exchange on social media, and email. All interviews were conducted by a Human Rights Watch researcher who is a native speaker of Russian.

Human Rights Watch reviewed publicly available official documents including bills, laws, explanatory notes, and other documents accompanying the respective bills published in the Duma’s official legislative database, as well as reports published by civil society organizations. We extensively reviewed media publications on respective bills and laws, including interviews with government officials, members of parliament, and civil society experts.

Human Rights Watch also incorporated information obtained for previously published Human Rights Watch materials. The report includes information from rulings by the European Court of Human Rights and publications by experts, multilateral organizations, and human rights groups analyzing respective bills and adopted laws.

We also analyzed publications pertaining to individual cases of persecution of activists and civil society groups stemming from these repressive laws, including, where available, trial materials, court proceedings, conviction and sentencing materials, and official statements.

Some Russian governmental websites cited in this report can be accessed outside Russia only with certain types of VPNs. 

The fines that laws specified as penalties are stated in rubles and converted to US dollars using the conversion rate as of early July 2024. Specific fines imposed by courts on individuals are stated in rubles, with the dollar equivalent based on the average conversion rate for the year in which the fine was issued.

I. Smearing Critics as “Foreign Agents”

A signature weapon in the Russian government’s anti-rights arsenal is “foreign agents” legislation. The “foreign agent” concept labels anyone or anything that is critical of the government as “foreign” and therefore suspicious, subversive, or even traitorous. Enacted first in 2012 and repeatedly expanded and made harsher since, Russia’s foreign agent provisions have been used to harass a wide range of activists and critical voices and as a pretext for shutting down some of the country’s leading human rights groups. Over the years, provisions have targeted not only nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) but also unregistered groups, media outlets, journalists, and other categories of individuals, and ultimately, in 2022, all "persons under foreign influence.” Penalties, including fines and criminal punishments, have stiffened over time. By 2022-2023, legislation provided for the exclusion of “foreign agents” from many aspects of public life as the authorities sought to create, in the words of one activist, “a caste of untouchables.” By 2023, penalties also extended to third parties who provide “assistance” to people designated foreign agents.

In 2012, Russia’s parliament adopted the first iteration of a foreign agents’ law, which significantly added to the already considerable reporting requirements with which NGOs in Russia had to comply at the time.

The 2012 law:

• Requires NGOs to register as “foreign agents” if they receive any amount of foreign funding and engage in broadly defined “political activity.”

• Requires NGOs to mark all materials they publish or distribute with a “foreign agent” label.

• Requires NGOs to submit 1) quarterly reports to the Ministry of Justice if designated as foreign agents, explaining expenditures and use of assets; 2) twice annual reports about their activities and composition of governing bodies; and 3) an annual audit report.[14]

• Expands the grounds for unannounced government inspections of NGOs if registered as, or accused of being, foreign agents.

In 2014, after only a few NGOs voluntarily registered as foreign agents, parliament adopted amendments authorizing the Ministry of Justice to designate groups as such without their consent. 

Since then, the government has listed scores of organizations working on human rights, civic education, environmental issues, humanitarian assistance and social welfare issues, media freedoms, and democratization as foreign agents.[15]

The law, as amended again in 2016, provides a definition of “political activities” that covers any attempt to influence public policy, regardless of the group’s mandate. Covered actions include public debates, discussions, meetings, protests, election monitoring, advocacy, public opinion surveys, legal or policy analysis, monitoring the work of government institutions, public opinion surveys, research, and petitioning government officials[16] that aim to “influence” the “formation of government bodies” and state policies or practices. [17] Such activities are considered political regardless of whether organizations are conducting them in the interest of the foreign entity that provides funding.[18]

This definition is so broad and vague that it effectively extends to all aspects of advocacy and human rights work.[19]

For example, over the years, Russian authorities interpreted the law to include submissions to a UN human rights treaty body,[20] an amicus curiae (third-party) submission to the Constitutional Court, reposts of media articles in social media, letters by environmental activists supporting habitats and indigenous peoples’ rights, public opinion surveys and sociological studies, HIV prevention and harm reduction programs,[21] and assisting diabetes patients.[22]

Although the law stated that activities in certain fields—including science, culture, art, health care, social welfare, the environment, and charity—are excluded from the definition, many organizations working in these areas have since been listed and fined for non-compliance.[23]

The law covers funding received from a wide range of sources, including “foreign states … international and foreign organizations, foreign citizens and persons without citizenship; or persons authorized by them and [or] Russian legal entities that receive funds and other property from the same.”[24] However, even declining foreign funding is no safeguard from the foreign agent label[25] and the restrictions and stigma associated with it.[26]

The foreign agents label was originally designed to target Russian organizations. However, successive rounds of amendments have expanded the law to cover individuals and groups operating without legal status and the sources of funding considered “foreign.”

And, as described below, with enactment of the law “On control over persons and entities under foreign influence,” which entered into force on December 1, 2022, authorities no longer even need to prove any foreign funding, merely the existence of vaguely defined “foreign influence.”

Amendments to Russia’s administrative and criminal codes adopted to enforce the foreign agents legislation set a range of harsh administrative and criminal sanctions for designated individuals, organizations and leaders who fail to comply.

In recent years, some groups have spent enormous time and resources in litigation contesting the designation and challenging allegations they had violated the law. Few have been successful. The fines of up to 500,000 rubles (US$5,691) for NGOs and of up to 5 million rubles ($56,915) for repeated violations by mass media companies designated as “foreign agents” have proved extremely burdensome even to large organizations, and fatal for smaller groups with fewer resources.[27] In 2022, foreign agent fines totaled over 230 million rubles (US$3,295,128 at the time).[28]

Many other groups have been forced to shut or self-elected to close.[34] Some of their members left activism altogether; many others have continued their work through other legal means, as individual activists, or by forming a movement or public association for which state registration is not required.

On March 1, 2021, the day draconian foreign agents penalties entered into force, one of Russia’s prominent human rights defenders, Lev Ponomarev, announced that he had no choice but to close his public association, “Za Prava Cheloveka” (For Human Rights), that had operated as an unregistered association since authorities shut his NGO in 2019, partly because it defied the foreign agents requirements.[35] Ponomarev said the association included thousands of members nationwide operating independently and it was impossible to protect them from fines and potential criminal liability.[36]

Other activists noted the impact of the new fines on groups that do not have the resources to pay. Shortly before the amendments were adopted, Irina Protasova, chairperson of the human rights organization “Chelovek I Zakon” (Man and Law), in the Mari El Republic, said the bills would be “deadly” for civil society organizations, especially in the regions, where people may not have the money to pay such fines.[37]

In an earlier example of this challenge, Semyon Simonov, then-director of the Southern Human Rights Center in Sochi, refused to register his NGO as a “foreign agent” and in July 2021 was sentenced to 250 hours of mandatory labor because the group did not have the funds to pay the fine that was assessed against it. Authorities held him personally responsible for the fine imposed on the organization, even after Simonov began proceedings to liquidate it.[38] 

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, “foreign agent” designations have drastically increased, according to Ministry of Justice statistics,[39] and now include well-known public figures, such as opposition politicians, journalists, entertainers, and bloggers vocal in their opposition to the Ukraine war.

The section below describes provisions parliament adopted between 2020 and 2023 that have considerably expanded Russia’s repressive “foreign agent” toolkit.

2020-2021 Laws

Federal Law №481-FZ of December 30, 2020

One of the 2020 bills that added new foreign agents provisions was introduced in Russia’s parliament on November 18, 2020.[40] It amended five different laws,[41] drastically expanding application of the “foreign agents” laws to include individuals and unregistered groups. It also expanded the sources of funding that could trigger a “foreign agent” designation, widened the inspection regime, and introduced new labeling requirements (see below). Parliament adopted the amendments on December 25 and they entered into force on December 30, 2020.[42]

Funding Sources

The law introduced a new category of intermediaries: funding is considered to be foreign if the source is a Russian national or Russian organization that received the funds directly from foreign sources, or from an individual or legal entity authorized by foreign sources, with the express purpose of passing them to a Russian NGO.

At the same time, amendments also expanded the sources of “foreign funding” to include Russian nationals receiving any funds, in any amount, for any reason, from any “foreign source, no matter how indirectly.”[43]

This effectively puts the burden on recipients of donations, salaries, or grants to trace the source of their funds, seemingly without any limits. Recipients could be held liable if the funds they received are “tainted” by “foreign sources” at any stage. Authorities could, and apparently have been, interpreting this provision broadly and arbitrarily, and in ways that make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for recipients to do reasonable due diligence to reduce their risks of exposure and avoid potential entrapment.

The amendments enabled authorities to potentially label as a “foreign source” a Russian national who works for a foreign company and donated some of their salary to Russian activists.

The amendments also widened the potential for entrapment scenarios, made possible in earlier foreign agents provisions, which would result in a group getting designated as foreign agents.

A 2019 example involving the Foundation Against Corruption, a Russian NGO affiliated with the late Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, illustrated this potential. The Ministry of Justice listed the organization as a “foreign agent” due to donations from abroad that were transferred under circumstances that an independent media investigation found had amounted to entrapment.[46] 

There was no minimum for the foreign donation to trigger the law’s requirements.[47] In October 2020, a voter education group was designated a “foreign agent” because of a 230-ruble ($3) donation supposedly received from a Moldovan national. The group’s director said the foundation had no way to check the nationality of its donors.[48]

Similarly, in August 2021 the public association Golos—an independent election monitoring group operating without a legal entity—was listed as a “foreign agent” based on a transfer from a national of Armenia of approximately 200 rubles (less than $3 at the time).[49]

In June 2022, Russian journalist Maria Borzunova posted online that she was designated as a “foreign agent” for several transfers in small amounts from friends: fellow journalist and US national Evan Gershkovich[50] and Belarus national Nadin Lakhbabi, a former producer of TV Rain.[51] In both cases, according to Borzunova, they were repaying each other for food and drinks.

Expanded Inspection Regime

The amendments significantly expanded grounds for unscheduled government inspections of organizations listed as “foreign agents.” These include vague grounds, such as when authorities receive information that the group’s activities allegedly “do not comply with the aims and purposes outlined in its charter.”[52] The law provided no threshold of credibility for such allegations before they would trigger an inspection, nor did it cap the number of inspections.

The provisions also allow extending such inspections up to 45 days.[53] After adoption of the original 2012 Foreign Agents Law, inspections became a convenient tool for authorities to interfere with, or even stop, the work of affected organizations.[54]

Since 2014, the human rights NGO “Chelovek I Zakon” (Man and Law) based in Russia’s Mari El Republic, has been subjected to 17 inspections.[55] During an unscheduled inspection in December 2022, the authorities’ list of requested information or materials had 27 entries; the NGO reported that it had to submit over 5,500 pages to fulfill the requirements.[56] After the inspection, authorities accused the group of holding an “anti-war position on Ukraine,” of receiving funding from “unfriendly countries;” and of “political activities,” namely, organizing public debates, discussions, and lectures, and issuing public statements addressed to public officials and authorities.[57]

Man and Law sought to challenge these conclusions in court, which dismissed its lawsuit.[58] In January 2023, the Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit seeking to shut down the human rights group on the grounds of operating outside the region where it was registered, non-compliance with the foreign agents label, and alleged discrepancies between its activities and the aims listed in incorporating documents.[59] In February 2023, the proceedings were temporarily suspended, pending legal challenge of the findings of the Ministry of Justice’s inspection of the group. The court ordered the group’s liquidation in August 2023.[60]

Groups with a history of attacking civic activists have also used the inspection regime for the same purpose. For example, in February 2019, For Human Rights and two affiliated human rights groups were listed as “foreign agents” following an unscheduled inspection requested by SERB (Russian Liberation Movement), a far-right group.[61]

In a media interview, Lev Ponomarev, head of For Human Rights, said that shortly before the designation, the ministry conducted a scheduled inspection that found no violations, but then organized the unscheduled inspection based on SERB’s request.[62] SERB, Pomonarev said, had previously disrupted his organization’s office on multiple occasions and had filed complaints against it with the Prosecutor General’s Office.[63]

Any group or individual can request such an inspection.

In 2019, a regional NGO in Saratov that assisted people with diabetes had to shut down after being designated as a “foreign agent” and fined following an inspection triggered by a complaint filed by a “concerned medical student.”[64]

Memorial was particularly hard hit, with reports of at least three prosecutors’ inspections in just one week in 2013.[65] The organization was since subjected to many more inspections until it was shut down by authorities in 2021 (see above). In 2014, another human rights group, Agora, had five inspections in a two-year period; the inspection that related to compliance with foreign agents rules lasted over six months.[66] In 2016, the Russian authorities shut Agora for alleged persistent noncompliance with foreign agents legislation.[67] Agora continued its work without a legal entity as an international human rights project.

Several human rights groups unsuccessfully challenged the inspections in Russian courts. They gained partial success at the Constitutional Court, which in February 2015 ruled that some provisions concerning inspections were unconstitutional and could result in unrealistic demands and liability.[68] The court also suggested the legislation be revised.[69] However, the court’s ruling has had little, if any, impact; attempts by some groups to challenge inspections in court based on the court ruling have been rejected.[70]

Another amendment introduced a requirement for all NGOs to include information on all staff in their regular reports to authorities[71]; foreign agents must report this twice a year; other NGOs, annually.[72] Previously, they were required to provide such information only regarding their management.

Labeling Requirements

Any person or group designated as a “foreign agent” must prominently display this label on all their publications and materials. The 2020 amendments expand these labeling requirements in two ways:

• They require all media outlets to include this label whenever they mention a designated “foreign agent”[73] or publish their materials.[74]

• Any materials produced or disseminated by “foreign agent” groups’ founders, members, leadership, board, or staff members, if produced or distributed as part of “political activities,” must also be labeled as “foreign agent.”[75] 

On March 1, 2021, the day the new penalties for this offense entered into force (see below), some of Memorial’s staff began putting “foreign agent” disclaimers on their personal social media accounts. In a Facebook post, a Memorial lawyer compared the process to stitching on a yellow Star of David during the Nazi era. She also said that the law provides no clarity about how and where exactly to do this labeling—for example, on Facebook pages, and X (formerly Twitter) accounts, and that they do so “at their own peril.”[76]

Due to the law’s lack of certainty and clarity, Memorial’s lawyers felt compelled to interpret all foreign agent norms to “absurd fastidiousness” to avoid the organization’s experience in 2019, when it accrued several million rubles in fines for failing to label its social media posts.[77]

Expansion of Applicability to Individuals

The 2020 amendments extended the applicability of the “foreign agent” label to individuals by amending a 2012 law that allegedly aimed to take measures against those responsible for human rights violations against Russian citizens.[78]

Pre-Existing Provisions: Foreign Agent Media

This was not the first time Russian lawmakers expanded the foreign agents regime to individuals. In 2017, they adopted a law seemingly targeting foreign media, including those operating in Russia without a registered legal entity. This was done in response to the US government’s demand that Russian state media company RT register with the US Justice Department under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act.[79]

Although observers initially understood this law to be applicable only to mass media, the amendments stated that any foreign entity disseminating any materials and receiving funds from foreign sources are foreign mass media and must comply with all requirements of the foreign agents legislation.

In 2019, additional amendments to the same body of law expanded the application of the “foreign agent media” concept to individuals, including Russian nationals and organizations.

With these two sets of amendments in place, any individual or group that engages in the broadly construed “political activity” described above, receives any amount of foreign funding, and posts any materials or information about their work online could be listed as foreign agent.

The 2019 amendments remained unenforced until December 2020, when the Ministry of Justice listed five individuals in one day. The first individual to be added to the “foreign media foreign agents” list was Lev Ponomarev, followed by a feminist activist, a performance artist, and three journalists.[80]

In 2021, the registry grew exponentially with 108 new entries. New entries nearly doubled in 2022 with over 188 new entries, including foreign media outlets and journalists, prominent Russian human rights defenders and civic activists, opposition politicians, and popular videobloggers.[81]

Additional Foreign Agents Regime for Individuals

The 2019 amendments left a loophole for individuals who manage to avoid disseminating information online or in print. But the 2020 amendment closed it by creating a designated registry for such individuals as well, regardless of their nationality.[82]

This provision lay dormant until April 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. All individuals included in this registry by early September 2022, according to the Ministry of Justice, received support from Ukraine.[83] Reporting on the results of the year, the ministry explicitly stated that the main political activity of those who were designated as foreign agents in 2022 was active involvement in disseminating “discreditation about Russian Armed Forces” in the context of the armed conflict in Ukraine.[84]

Otherwise, the substantive difference between the new registry and the earlier “foreign agent foreign media” registry was unclear, as the profiles of individuals included in one or the other often overlap and those included in the “individuals” registry mostly have a similar public presence as those equated with “foreign media.”

Under the 2020 amendments, the “foreign agent” label became applicable to any individual receiving money or other support from a foreign source and, acting in their interest, engaging in “political activity” or deemed to gather information on Russian military activities or technologies that “can be used against Russia’s security or interests.”

Individuals could trigger the “foreign agent” label by allegedly acting in the interest of a range of “principals,” including foreign states, international or foreign organizations, foreign nationals, or stateless persons.

The types of support that trigger the foreign agent label for individuals included not only funds or property, as is the case for other categories of foreign agents, but also the broad notion of “organizational and methodological” support, which could presumably include participation in any training or capacity-building program.

This definition gave authorities wide discretion to designate as a “foreign agent” almost any Russian activist, the staff of international and foreign organizations and entities, and their organizations’ supporters and members.

The registration, reporting, and labeling requirements for individuals designated as foreign agents under the new provisions are like those for groups. For example, mass media are obligated to note the “foreign agent” status whenever they mention the individual or cite their materials.

The Ministry of Justice listed these individuals on a separate, online register.[85] If the person meeting the criteria does not voluntarily register themselves, authorities can penalize them for failing to do so (see below) and register them.[86]

The experience of numerous NGOs that the authorities added to the foreign agents registry indicates that contesting the designation is burdensome, costly, and rarely successful.[87]

The 2020 amendments banned designated individuals from holding government positions[88] and accessing state secrets.[89] They also required all foreigners to inform Russian authorities, ahead of arriving in the country, of any intent to engage in “foreign agent” activities.[90] Given the breadth and vagueness of what authorities may consider to constitute such activities, this provision as replicated in the 2022 law (see below) created additional risk and vulnerability for foreigners engaging with civil society in Russia.

The law exempted diplomatic personnel, accredited foreign journalists, and other unspecified individuals.[91] But foreign journalists who engage in “foreign agent” activities “incompatible with their professional journalistic activities” can be designated.[92]

The provisions of this law were superseded by 2022 amendments discussed below.

Designations Linked to “Information on Military Activities and Technologies”

The law enabled the Federal Security Service (FSB) to determine what would constitute information on military activities and technologies that “can be used against Russia’s security and interests.” Given that information pertaining to FSB decisions tends to be classified, there have been serious concerns that grounds for this designation would be arbitrary.[93]

In October 2021, an FSB order entered into force that listed the categories of such information.[97] The list comprises 60 entries, using at times extremely broad and mostly vague wording, such as “information on building and developing the [armed] forces” or “information on international cooperation in space programs.” A corresponding bylaw explicitly indicates that these categories are “not classified.”[98]

Despite this, the FSB designates them as constituting information that Russian authorities consider to pose sufficient risk to the country’s interests as to require not only a “foreign agent” designation for individuals who gather such information, but also criminal sanctions for people who do not comply with the requirements of the Foreign Agents Law (see below). This can chill efforts for public transparency about a wide range of defense-related issues that are of legitimate public interest. One of the categories listed is “information about material, technical and financial provisions” for the armed forces.[99] This may effectively ban any independent anti-corruption investigations into army provisions, even peacetime food procurement.

For example, in 2018, the Foundation Against Corruption (FBK), affiliated with Alexei Navalny, published an investigation alleging that a company was supplying food to the Russian National Guard at prices considerably higher than the market rate, reportedly owing to a monopoly that then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev granted to a supplier.[100] In 2019, a Russian court ruled against Navalny in a defamation lawsuit and ordered him to take down publications about this investigation.[101]

Similar concerns relate to other listed categories, such as “information about purchases of goods, works and services” for the military, including concerning “the single suppliers” of such goods, works or services;[102] information about finances and logistics, and implementation of timeframes by Roskosmos, the Russian space corporation.[103] 

The FSB bylaws are likely to jeopardize human rights defenders and have a chilling effect on human rights reporting. For example, among the topics listed that would trigger foreign agent designation is “information on observance of legality and morale in the armed forces.”[104] This raises serious concern that authorities could use this provision to censor information about bullying (“dedovshchina”) in the army—a notorious and extensively documented problem that authorities claim, contrary to findings of human rights experts—has been addressed.[105]  

In October 2021, the Soldiers’ Mothers of St. Petersburg suspended work assisting servicemen because the new FSB bylaw made disclosing information about the mood in the military, among other things, grounds for designation as a “foreign agent.”[106]

Another potentially highly problematic category is “information about preparation, accession/ratification, contents, implementation, denunciation or suspension of international treaties and agreements.”[107] The order is not limited to treaties and agreements pertaining to the military sphere and may potentially equally apply to international human rights agreements or to bilateral or multilateral agreements that may have a direct and detrimental effect on human rights protection.

As a result, human rights defenders who may raise these concerns and discuss information about such plans or treaties can be targeted by foreign agents provisions with subsequent liability, even though these activities should be considered core human rights work and protected.

The only vaguely formulated exception exists for situations “provided for by obligations of the Russian Federation in connection with participation in international treaties and agreements.” But given the authorities’ practice of applying other foreign agents clauses to the disadvantage of affected organizations or individuals, this exception seems extremely unlikely to stop authorities from applying this charge against human rights defenders and civic activists who are providing such information as part of their work reporting on Russia’s alleged violations of its international obligations.

The FSB order does not define what constitutes military activities, leaving open the possibility that authorities could apply this term to a wide range of activities not military-related. This makes the category in paragraph 22—“information on processing complaints or information about crimes and their outcomes”—especially worrying. It encompasses any preliminary investigation the FSB and the Investigative Committee conducts, except for information authorities have made publicly available.[108]

In theory, anyone who publicizes information about FSB or Investigative Committee home raids and interrogations on what are deemed to be unfounded charges could be designated a foreign agent. The paragraph 22 clause could also apply, for example, to anyone who posts online about any refusal by the FSB or the military investigators of the Investigative Committee to register a complaint or to investigate well-founded allegations of torture committed by their officers.

The “foreign agent” designation would add to the tools, including baseless criminal charges, the FSB already uses against human rights defenders who speak about its abuses.

Finally, the FSB order could also potentially jeopardize NGO reporting on international human rights and humanitarian law violations by Russian forces in the armed conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, and elsewhere. And it could result in targeting civic activists and experts who raise alarms about the dangerous aftermath of military testing or incidents, such as the 2019 explosion at a military weapons testing site in northwest Russia.[113]

Expansion of Applicability to Unregistered Groups

The 2020 law also closed the loophole left by the original Foreign Agents Law, through which people in Russia could avoid the toxic label and continue their work through unregistered public associations.[114] The bill’s explanatory note clearly indicates that closing this loophole was one of the bill’s key purposes.[115]

Russian law envisages unregistered public associations, such as public movements and loose associations, that have a common purpose but that do not have a legal personality and so do not have to report to authorities. Following the enforcement of the first 2012 Foreign Agents Law, this format became a haven of sorts for civic groups—including several prominent human rights groups—that either chose to close their registered NGO to avoid the “foreign agent” label or that authorities shut down for refusing to comply with the law.

Under the 2020 law, they too are obligated to comply with “foreign agent” registration, reporting, and labeling rules. The definition of foreign funding and its link to “political activities" is even looser for unregistered public associations than for registered NGOs.

The amendments added two tripwires for unregistered NGOs, possibly to ensure that people do not try to use this format to avoid “foreign agent” registration requirements. As noted above, under the 2012 law NGOs are considered foreign agents if they “act in the interests” of a foreign donor. Unlike registered NGOs, under these amendments unregistered groups had to register as foreign agents even if they merely intended to receive foreign funding and engage in what authorities consider to be “political activities.”[116] The new amendments did not even contain a reference to the prerequisite of “acting in the interest” of the “foreign source” for the public association to be considered a “foreign agent.”[117]

These amendments in effect imposed on unregistered public associations that get designated as foreign agents the same “foreign agent” reporting obligations as registered NGOs, but without any rights of an organization registered as a legal entity. As noted above, this can be an unmanageable burden. 

To register as a “foreign agent,” an unregistered public association submits extensive information[118] and its charter, even though Russian law does not otherwise require public associations or movements to register or submit any of this information.[119]

If authorities consider that a public association meets the definition of a foreign agent but did not voluntarily register, the Ministry of Justice will list them on the registry,[120] and the organization’s leadership will likely face penalties (see below).[121]

On August 18, 2021, the election monitoring group Golos became the first unregistered association in the Ministry of Justice’s new registry.[122] Golos linked the designation to the September 2021 parliamentary elections.[123] Before this registry was replaced by the unified registry of foreign agents in December 2022, it included Golos, five LGBT+ groups, and OVD-Info, an independent human rights group.[124]

Federal Law FZ-75 of April 5, 2021

Another bill amending foreign agents legislation was introduced on November 10, 2020, expanded reporting requirements for groups designated as foreign agents, allowing the Ministry of Justice to ban any of their planned or ongoing activities, and set out additional grounds for unscheduled government inspections. [125] Signed into law on April 5, 2021, it entered into force in October 2021.[126]

In its explanatory note accompanying the bill, the government stated that Russia’s legislation on foreign agents and representative offices of foreign NGOs needed improvement to protect human rights and legitimate state and public interests. The note did not explain how further restrictions to freedom of association support this. The note inaccurately stated that the bill did not contravene international treaties, including the European Convention on Human Rights—to which Russia was a party prior to September 16, 2022—and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Earlier legislation allowed the Ministry of Justice to ban a foreign organization’s activity or project partially or wholly.[127] The new amendments expanded this authority to allow the ministry to ban activities and projects of Russian organizations designated as “foreign agents.”[128] Failure to comply would serve as grounds to close the organization.

The October 2021 law does not specify the grounds for such a ban on activities; it merely states that the ban must be “reasoned.” This allows for endlessly broad, arbitrary interpretations. In a media interview, Tatyana Glushkova, a Memorial lawyer, drew on Memorial’s program on political prisoners as an example. She said authorities could ban it by claiming that, officially, the country had no political prisoners.[129]

Reporting

The new law also obliges Russian groups designated as foreign agents and all foreign groups to submit documentation in advance to authorities for all planned activities and then report on their implementation or provide an explanation if plans fell through.[130]

The new reporting requirements created additional burdens and largely duplicated existing requirements, creating further vulnerability for designated groups. For example, after years of reporting under the earlier foreign agent provisions, in September 2021, the group Rus’ Sidyashchaya (Russia Behind Bars) was fined for not submitting, along with foreign agents reports, regular reports that all NGOs must submit related to their funding and activities.[131] In February 2022, a court decision specifically ordered Russia Behind Bars to submit both types of reports, thereby entrenching this new practice.[132]

Inspections

The new law allowed unscheduled inspections of any group—including those not designated as foreign agents—if authorities receive allegations that it participated in events organized or conducted by a foreign organization listed as “undesirable.”[133]

Under Russia’s 2015 legislation on “undesirable” organizations, the prosecutor’s office can designate as “undesirable” any foreign or international organization that allegedly undermines Russia’s security, defense, or constitutional order. [134] Once blacklisted, any such organization must cease all activities in Russia. Other organizations and individuals that engage in “continued involvement” with these organizations may face administrative and criminal sanctions.[135]

The new law did not clarify what constitutes “participation,” did not differentiate between allegations that a group member “participated” in such events in their personal capacity or as a representative of the group, and did not limit such events to those in Russia. It also included no qualifying criteria requiring the allegations to be credible before they trigger an inspection, nor any cap on the number of these inspections.

The inspections can be very disruptive to an NGOs’ work and draining to its human resources and time, as exemplified during the sweeping raids of 2013 to 2015.[136]

This law also expanded the category of foreign funding to include beneficial ownership for situations where the funding source is Russian legal entities whose “beneficiary owners” are foreign citizens or stateless persons.[137]

Federal Law № 14-FZ of February 24, 2021, and Federal Law №525-FZ, of December 30, 2020 (New Penalties)

In 2021, Russian authorities expanded the administrative and criminal sanctions for non-compliance with the new laws and earlier “foreign agents’” requirements.

Amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses (Federal Law № 14-FZ of February 24, 2021)

Another bill introduced in November 2020[138] was signed into law in February 2021[139] and entered into force on March 1, 2021. It introduced additional charges and administrative penalties for violating the above-mentioned new amendments of foreign agents regulations.

• Media Outlets

The new law introduced an offense in the articles of the code concerning—ironically—abuse of media freedoms. Under this offense, outlets could be held accountable if they mention—in print, online, in broadcasts, and social media—“foreign agents or their materials” without noting this status.[140] The 2021 law set fines of up to 2,500 rubles ($28) for individuals, up to 5,000 ($56) for managers or officials, and up to 50,000 ($561) for legal entities, with the possibility offending materials may be confiscated.[141]

• Reporting Offenses

The 2021 amendments introduced a new offense for failure by “foreign agent” unregistered public associations to submit, or for untimely or incorrect submission of, reports. The penalties range from a warning or a fine from 5,000 rubles ($56) up to 10,000 ($112) for individuals; and between 10,000 and 30,000 ($337) for managers.[142]

The same failure for individuals listed as foreign agents is a fine ranging between 10,000 and 30,000 rubles ($337).

• Labeling Offenses

Failure to mark an unregistered public association’s materials or publications with “foreign agent” could be punished with a fine ranging between 50,000 and 100,000 rubles ($561 and $1123) for individuals, and between 100,000 and 300,000 rubles ($1123 and $3370) for managers or administrators, with possible confiscation of the materials. The liability could be invoked even if the group produced, but did not disseminate, unmarked materials.

The pre-existing labeling penalties for NGOs listed as foreign agents were adjusted to equate them with penalties for unregistered groups. The amendments expanded the range of NGO offenses from merely publishing materials without the “foreign agent” label to producing and sending them to state bodies or other organizations. The fines ranged from 100,000 to 300,000 rubles for managers or administrators, and 300,000 to 500,000 ($3370 and $5682) rubles for organizations.[143] 

Whereas the penalties concerning groups contained an exhaustive list of actions that trigger liability, there was no such list regarding individuals. Instead, the amendments to the code of administrative offenses merely referred to “non-compliance with the status disclosure requirements prescribed by law.” It referenced the abovementioned amendments to the 2012 law,[144] whereby individuals were obliged to disclose their “foreign agent” status whenever they “perform functions of the foreign agent.” The 2022 law lists several examples of such actions but does not provide an exhaustive list.[145]

Failure to label themselves and their materials and information entailed a fine ranging from 10,000 ($112) and 30,000 rubles ($337), with possible confiscation of the materials produced.[146] This was lower than the fines for NGOs or public associations, but higher than penalties for their respective members, founders, and others as listed below.

The amendments introduced individual liability for founders, members, managers, and board members of a “foreign agent” NGO or unregistered public association for failure to label publications produced or disseminated in their individual capacity and connected to their own “political activity,” as defined by foreign agents legislation. This was punishable by a fine of 5,000 rubles, ($56) with possible confiscation of said materials.[147]

Legislators adopted the law so fast they included errors that had to be fixed later. For example, staffers of “foreign agent” NGOs were made liable for failure to label their materials and publications, including when they distribute them online or via media.[148] Yet the amendments did not list NGO staffers among those obliged to label their publications.[149] The error was corrected and signed into law in March 2021.[150]

The law left unclear whether NGOs or unregistered groups and their founders, members, managers, or board members must put a disclaimer or label on their account or must label every social media post that pertains to their work. It is also unclear how they can protect themselves and their groups from liability should a third party create fake accounts online, impersonating individuals or organizations.

This law was superseded by a new law in December 2022, wherein all administrative offenses by foreign agents were outlined under one article of the Code of Administrative Offenses (see below).

Amendments to the Criminal Code regarding Foreign Agents (Federal Law №525-FZ, of December 30, 2020)

Amendments to the criminal code introducing criminal penalties for foreign agents were introduced as a bill expeditiously adopted and signed into law in December 2020.[151] 

On March 1, 2021, they entered into force.

In the explanatory note accompanying the then-bill, the lawmakers claimed that criminal penalties, including a maximum five-year prison term for NGO leaders, would “ensure proper implementation of Russian legislation concerning openness and transparency of activity of persons receiving foreign funding and participating in political processes in the country.”[152]

As explained above, Russian authorities in practice have interpreted “participating in political processes” to include human rights work, environmental activism, protecting women’s rights, and many other types of civic activism.

Previously adopted legislation had set a maximum two-year prison sentence for the criminal offense of “malicious evasion” of an NGO’s obligation to “submit documents necessary for inclusion in the registry” of foreign agents, even though the Ministry of Justice, starting in 2014, could unilaterally put NGOs on the registry.

Experts had advised lawmakers to remove this redundancy and clarify legal uncertainty regarding exactly what meets the threshold and constitutes the crime.[153] But legislators did neither. Instead, they extended the same charge and corresponding penalties to managers of unregistered public associations.[154] 

Prior to these amendments, there was only one known instance when criminal charges were brought for malicious evasion of “foreign agent” obligations. In June 2016, a criminal case was opened against Valentina Cherevatenko, chairperson of the “Union of Women of the Don,”[155] a human rights group involved in peacebuilding projects in the North Caucasus. In June 2017, she was indicted, but in July the same year the Investigative Committee closed the case due to the absence of an offense.[156]

Following further expansion of this law, in article 330.1 of the criminal code, in December 2022 (see below), Russian authorities started opening criminal “foreign agent” charges. In June 2024, Roskomnadzor said investigators opened criminal cases against 25 individuals for non-compliance with the foreign agents legislation.[157]

As noted above, Radio Liberty journalist Alsu Kurmasheva in Tatarstan was charged with failure to register as a foreign agent. At time of writing, she remained in pretrial detention. Other cases include: in 2023 in Tver, against a coordinator with the election watchdog Golos, Artiom Vajenkov; and in 2024 in Pskov, against Golos’s former coordinator, Vladimir Zhilinskiy,[158] Sergei Piskunov, former Golos coordinator in Kemerovo,[159] and the editor-in-chief of a local newspaper, Denis Kamaliagin.[160] The four men were charged with repeated failure to comply with requirements demanding that people designated as foreign agents label each of their publications and social media posts with a disclaimer about their foreign agent status. At time of writing, Piskunov remained in pretrial detention; the other three charged have left the country.

The amendments also introduced criminal penalties for the new categories of foreign agents–“foreign agent-foreign media”[167] and individuals.

Under those amendments, individuals designated “foreign agent media” or heads of legal entities designated as such—with two or more prior unexpired administrative offenses sentences[168] for violating “foreign agent media” regulations[169]—could be held criminally liable.[170] Penalties range from a fine of up to 300,000 rubles ($3370) to a two-year prison term.[171]

The Code of Administrative Offenses already contained provisions concerning repeated violations of regulations concerning “foreign agent media,” stipulating harsher punishments for a repeat (second) offense. Subsequent offenses would be prosecutable under a “gross violation” administrative provision. The 2020 amendments retained the harsher punishments for “gross” administrative violations by legal entities while making such offenses criminal for individuals.

With regards to individuals designated as foreign agents, the law penalizes “malicious evasion” of voluntarily applying to be added to the foreign agent registry and repeated failure to submit accurate regular reports or to label publications, if the person has a prior, unexpired administrative sentence for the same administrative offense. Penalties range from a fine of up to 300,000 rubles ($3370) to five years’ imprisonment.[172]

Provisions entailing criminal liability differentiate between foreign agents, whom Russian authorities consider to be engaged in “political activities” from those whom they consider to be gathering information about Russian military activities or technologies. The former can be criminally prosecuted only if there was a prior administrative penalty.

In such cases, the individual at least receives some indication—in the form of an administrative offense sentence—that authorities consider them to be foreign agents and that they are henceforth obligated to comply with the corresponding requirements.[173] In a case of alleged “military information gatherers,” authorities can bring criminal charges without warning in the form of administrative offense charges.

2022 Laws

By the latter part of 2021, the detrimental impact of the increasingly draconian foreign agents laws and the rising number of “foreign agent-foreign media” designations led civil society groups and media organizations to campaign for revisions.

In September 2021, over 20 Russian media outlets jointly published an open letter to President Putin with 12 proposals for amendments to reduce the legislation’s harm to mass media, such as a minimum threshold for foreign funding to trigger designations and a judicial process for designations.[174] The Kremlin spokesperson said the Kremlin would consider the “constructive” request.[175]

Two weeks later, OVD-Info published an online petition calling for the Foreign Agents Law to be rescinded as unconstitutional, discriminatory, and violating Russia’s international human rights obligations.[176] Over 150 human rights organizations, media outlets, and civic groups endorsed it.[177] By late November 2021, the petition had more than 250,000 signatures.[178] In mid-November, the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, jointly with the Journalists Union of Russia, sent parliament their proposals for amendments to the Foreign Agents Law.[179]

During Putin’s December 2021 meeting with the presidential council, members presented criticisms of the law, including examples of its absurd application, and proposed creating a working group consisting of parliamentary committees, journalists’ unions, and the council to draft new amendments.[180] They also asked Putin to personally oversee the decision on this law, noting that it is a major “irritant” for the media community and wider civil society.[181]

Putin referred to “how the [Russian] mass media are treated abroad,” claiming, with considerable exaggeration, that they are designated foreign agents, dragged to court and interrogations under threat of detention,[182] and that there was a need to protect Russia from external interference in domestic affairs. But he also noted the need to analyze the law’s implications in practice, to protect free speech, and to “act carefully” when dealing with the media. He suggested working with the media community to come to an agreement on this issue.[183]

But the new amendments introduced to parliament in early 2022 were not developed in consultation with the media or broader civil society and ended up even more vague and oppressive than previous amendments.

Federal Law № 255-FZ of July 14, 2022 (“Foreign Influence” Law)

In April 2022, a group of MPs and senators introduced a bill,[184] the title of which—“control over activities of persons under foreign influence”—indicated its repressive purpose. The explanatory note indicated the bill aimed to “increase the effectiveness of foreign agents laws given the current challenges to Russia’s security and sovereignty.”[185]

By the time this bill was developed, norms defining and regulating different categories of “foreign agents” were indeed scattered throughout various laws that had been adopted at different times (see above). However, while the new bill introduced the “convenience” of collecting and unifying different categories under one measure, the authors also used it as an opportunity to drastically expand the application of “foreign agents” provisions and further restrict those designated as “foreign agents.”

The authors proposed preventing foreign agents from influencing children by banning their involvement in educational activities, childcare, and the production of information materials for children. They also noted that foreign agents are regulated by several laws and that there are separate registries for different categories and suggested a unified approach.

The bill was signed into law by mid-July 2022; it entered into force in December 2022.[186] The Ministry of Justice, the key government body responsible for supervision of foreign agents and implementation of corresponding legislation, praised Law FZ-255 for strengthening control over foreign agents and reducing their “destructive influence.”[187]

The new law superseded several earlier provisions governing foreign agents, including most amendments introduced by the 2020 laws outlined above. It replicates many earlier provisions but expands the scope of uncertainty to a point where, in principle, any person or entity, Russian or not, inside or outside Russia, can be designated a “foreign agent.”

Definitions

The new law further expands all the existing definitions of “foreign agents.” As described above, successive amendments to different laws expanded the definition of a “foreign agent” from organizations (legal entities), to “foreign agents–foreign media,” to other categories of individuals, and to associations without legal entities. These were introduced and regulated by several different laws.

The 2022 law replaced these with a consolidated, simplified, but drastically broad definition: any person—Russian, foreign, or stateless; any legal entity either domestic or international; or any group without official registration that received foreign support and/or is under foreign influence and is either engaged in activities that Russian authorities would deem to be political, or is gathering information about Russia’s military activities or military capabilities, or is creating or disseminating materials for public consumption, or is funding such activities.[188]

It thus replaces the already vague requirement of foreign funding or technical assistance with the even vaguer “foreign influence” or “support.”

The law unpacks “foreign influence” as comprised of “support” and/or open ended “influence,” “coercion, persuasion and/or other means.”[189] The notion of “support” encompasses the vague categories listed in the 2020 amendments, i.e., foreign funding (monetary or property transfer) or technical assistance by a foreign source or “other kinds of assistance,”[190] but creates new levels of legal uncertainty. The Russian Ministry of Justice, for instance, listed providing a platform for “promoting views and opinions” as one example of such assistance.[191]

Under this definition, any interaction with a “foreign component” could be construed as “foreign influence,” for example, potentially any engagement with foreign nationals or entities, traveling abroad, or simply watching or listening to content online, on radio or TV. There is no requirement for any causal link between such “foreign influence” and the “political” activities of the person or entity in question.

Similarly, in defining the potential sources of foreign funding, the new law incorporates all earlier expansions and adds persons or entities that are influenced by any of the earlier categories.[192]

The description of what constitutes activities of a foreign agent consolidates earlier provisions of all previous iterations of “foreign agents’” laws.[193]

During this period, Russian authorities also increasingly and explicitly included opposition to the war and support of Ukraine as justification for the “foreign agents” designation.

For example, the Ministry of Justice listed public criticism of, or opposition to, the “special military operation” (Russia’s official title for the armed conflict in Ukraine), and “dissemination of negative information about the Russian armed forces”[195] or “forming negative attitudes towards military service” and “open support of the unfriendly country of Ukraine” and “participation in fundraising in support of Ukraine”[196] as grounds for including individuals and legal entities in the new foreign agents registry.

Furthermore, the Ministry of Justice reported that foreign agents were actively involved in 2022 in disseminating “discreditation about Russian Armed Forces” in the context of ongoing armed conflict in Ukraine.[197] 

Unified Registry of Foreign Agents

The new law abolished the earlier separate registries of different categories of foreign agents, replacing them with a unified registry.[198]

The bylaws that the Ministry of Justice developed in implementing the July 2022 law[199] list the following categories to be included:

• Individuals intending to act as foreign agents;

• Foreign nationals residing abroad who intend to act as foreign agent upon arrival in Russia;

• Foreign journalists accredited in Russia and conducting foreign agent activities not related to journalistic activities;

• Legal entities incorporated in Russia by foreign agents;

• Foreign agents who failed to apply to be added to the registry.

Those already in the registries were automatically included in the unified registry.[200]

Among other information, the registry contains the dates of birth, taxpayer numbers, and personalized pension insurance numbers (an analogue of social security number in other countries) of individual “foreign agents,” and registration numbers, lists of members, web addresses, and locations of organizations and public associations.[201]

In addition to the “foreign agents registry,” a separate registry of persons and entities “affiliated with foreign agents” was to be created under the new law (see further below).[202]

Those designated must start complying with all requirements after authorities add them to the registry.[204]

The new law did not change other aspects of “foreign agent” requirements. For example, it is not clear how individuals are supposed to recognize that they have been subjected to foreign “persuasion” or “coercion,” yet they can face penalties for having failed to register themselves as a foreign agent.

New Restrictions on Activities of Foreign Agents

The new law imposes serious and wide-ranging restrictions on the activities of “foreign agents” to exclude them from public life. These include bans on: civil service employment; access to official secrets; participating in electoral commissions, advisory or expert bodies that advise the state; public commissions that monitor places of detention; state or public environmental impact assessments; independent anti-corruption expertise of draft laws and bylaws; and joining electoral campaigns, and donating to such campaigns or to political parties.[205]

Designated foreign agents are also banned from organizing public assemblies or supporting them through donations, conducting or organizing education activities for minors, or producing information materials for them.[206] They are also banned from participating in procurement tenders, receiving state grants or other financial support, including for creative work, and benefiting from simplified accounting or taxation procedures. Their funds cannot be insured (except personal funds). They cannot operate “critical information infrastructure,” including telecommunication networks.[207]

A large number of civic groups and activists, including those that work on human rights, the environment, election monitoring, and anti-corruption have already been designated “foreign agents.”[208] These provisions allow authorities to bar them from their work and prevent them from directly engaging on these critical issues.

The ban on producing information materials for children resulted in several bookstores in Russia putting books, whose authors were designated as foreign agents, into special wrapping and marking them as adult content.[209]

Expansion of the “Affiliated with Foreign Agent” Category

The law also introduced more broadly the notion of a person affiliated with a “foreign agent” (see also Section II, below). The new provisions define as “affiliated with a foreign agent” the founders, employees, board or other members, or leaders of a “foreign agent entity.”[210]

A person would remain “affiliated” up to two years after they severed ties with the foreign agent, even if the “affiliation” started before the law entered into force, and even if the “affiliation” started before the entity was designated a foreign agent.[211] The law envisages information sharing among numerous state bodies, including tax authorities and state pension funds, to facilitate the documentation of such affiliation.[212]

The notion of “affiliated” also extends to people involved in “political activities” and who are, or have been, receiving funding either directly from a foreign agent or through an intermediary.[213] This could implicate vast numbers of people. The law does not impose reporting or labeling requirements on those considered “affiliated,”[214] but could smear people by affiliation and reinforce the toxicity of a “foreign agent” designation. 

As noted above, the 2022 law provided for a separate registry of persons “affiliated” with foreign agents. At time of writing, the registry was not available publicly. But according to the Ministry of Justice, at the end of 2022, it contained information on about 861 individuals affiliated with foreign agents, thus considerably exceeding the number of foreign agents.[215]

Labeling and Reporting Requirements and Enforcement

The new law essentially replicated pre-existing labeling and reporting requirements (annual, bi-annual, quarterly) for foreign agent NGOs but extended them to all foreign agents, including individuals, and for planned and unplanned inspections.[216]

As noted above, any person or group designated as a “foreign agent” must prominently display this label on all their publications and materials. This requirement extends to founders, leadership, or participants in groups designated as foreign agents.

Furthermore, under the new law, foreign agents must inform their counterparts of their foreign agents status when they implement activities that authorities deem to be political or related to gathering information related to military activities (see the other part of the definition of foreign agent above).[217] Likewise, they must announce their status whenever they send communications to any state or private bodies or institutions during their activities.[218]

The law does not specify if the same requirements extend to in-person interaction. But in the absence of administrative practice, this currently cannot be ruled out, specifically because these obligations are listed separately from the labeling requirements for published materials and materials sent, for example, to state bodies or other organizations.

Moreover, the law explicitly obligates foreign agents to inform their employees, beneficiaries, founders, or members of their status.[219]

In November 2022, Russian authorities adopted new bylaws with detailed requirements regarding the labeling of published materials for foreign agents under the new laws.[220]

Foreign agents are obliged to report annually on the planned and implemented programs and submit materials pertaining to planned and organized events.

They must report bi-annually on their activities, including on implementation of programs, and submit documents pertaining to organized events or information that were not conducted as planned, as well as information about the aims of the foreign agent organization or association, its organizational chart, the area where its activities are conducted, the address of its governing body, contact information, any changes in its charter, as well as information about its founders, members, participants, and board or governing body membership.

And they must report quarterly about foreign sources of income; finances or property obtained from them; foreign agents bank accounts, their planned use, disbursements, or distribution; methodological, technical, or other assistance from foreign sources; and any changes to the information they must submit in their annual and bi-annual reports.[221]

In addition, foreign agents are obligated to publish information about their activities bi-annually online or in mass media.[222] This requirement previously applied only to foreign agent NGOs but was subsequently extended to all foreign agents.

All foreign agents must undergo an annual financial audit no later than April 15 of the following year and must submit the results to the Ministry of Justice.[223]

The law also specifies an inspection regime for all foreign agents, whereby the Ministry of Justice can conduct planned and unplanned inspections. And whereas planned inspections may only be conducted once a year,[224] there is no cap on the number of unplanned inspections. Moreover, the list of grounds for inspections is quite broad. This includes receiving information from various sources, including mass media, that a person or a group engages in what authorities consider to be “political activities” and receives any sort of foreign support but has not registered as a foreign agent; or information from sources such as individuals, organizations, or public bodies about alleged violations by foreign agents of foreign agents legislation.[225]

The ministry cannot accept anonymized “tip offs" and requires that sources include information about the alleged violation.[226] But there is no requirement for the ministry to conduct due diligence to ensure the credibility of such allegations prior to starting inspections.[227]

Foreign agents would also be subjected to an unplanned inspection if they seek to be excluded from the registry of foreign agents.[228]

The bylaws developed in implementing this 2022 law stipulate that the foreign agent should be notified no less than 24 hours prior to an unplanned inspection and at least three days in advance for planned ones.[229]

The same bylaws prescribe that inspections cannot exceed 20 days, or 50 days in cases where foreign agents applied to be struck out from the registry.[230] “Foreign agents” are obliged to provide extensive documentation and information on private finances on par with organizations.

At the end of an inspection, the ministry can issue an order to undertake certain actions with a deadline, issue a charge sheet for an administrative offense, issue a ban on all or part of a foreign agent’s activities, and file a lawsuit to liquidate the inspected legal entity or ban the target if it is a public association.[231]

The labeling and reporting requirements, and the inspection regime for foreign agents, are extensive and burdensome. But failure to comply with them may have dire consequences for groups and individuals. (See also Section on new penalties for non-compliance introduced by additional amendments in 2022 below).

The law enables authorities to liquidate organizations, associations, and other groups designated as foreign agents and to request that access to webpages of “foreign agents” be restricted if they fail to comply with labeling and reporting requirements. [232] As with previous regulations, the law allows authorities to wholly or partially ban implementation of projects or activities. Failure to comply would lead to liquidation.[233]

Federal Law №498-FZ of December 5, 2022 (Incorporating the “Foreign Influence Law in Other Laws)

In June 2022, a group of MPs and senators introduced a bill that aimed to implement the restrictions on foreign agents and provisions of the July 2022 “Foreign Influence Law,” as outlined above, by introducing corresponding amendments to the laws on civil service, military service, political parties, elections, confidentiality of banking, and others. [234]

The bill was adopted and signed into law with immediate effect in early December 2022.[235]

The law also bans foreign agents from producing information for children, classifying it as information harmful to children’s health and development; other materials deemed harmful to children’s health include information concerning animal cruelty, suicides, narcotics, or sexual violence, and it amended corresponding legislation to ensure that foreign agents are barred from conducting any educational activities aimed at children.[236] The law also explicitly bars youth organizations designated as foreign agents from receiving state support.[237]

The new law introduced amendments to the law on political parties to enforce the ban for foreign agents to make donations to political parties.[238] The new law also tweaked the definition of “electoral candidates - foreign agents” in the law on referendums. It was expanded to correspond to the new broader and unified definition of foreign agents.

The definition of candidates “affiliated with foreign agents” was also expanded from those affiliated with NGOs earlier to any type of legal entity. Similarly, if previously “affiliation” applied only to those affiliated with public associations, new amendments expanded it to any type of association, including foreign ones and those operating informally.[239]

As noted above, the July 2022 Foreign Influence Law (no.255-FZ) had banned foreign agent NGOs from participating in anti-corruption assessments. The December 2022 law implements this ban by amending the law on anti-corruption assessments of legal acts.[240]

These amendments also barred foreign agents from using simplified accounting regimes or partaking in public procurements.[241] Legal entities designated as foreign agents are obliged to disclose information about their beneficiary owners upon the request of authorities.[242]  

Their bank deposits are no longer covered by insurance,[243] and an obligation for banking institutions to provide information on accounts, deposits, and any transactions was expanded from foreign agent NGOs to all other categories of foreign agents.[244] The Ministry of Justice was empowered to obtain information from tax authorities about the bank accounts of foreign agents.[245]

The law also requires registrar offices to provide information on civil acts such as marriages, divorces, adoptions, births, and deaths to the Ministry of Justice as deemed needed by the latter for oversight of activities of foreign agents.[246]

The new law introduced amendments to the law on civil service to add, as a core principle, the protection of civil service from “foreign influence,” which lawmakers defined to include a ban on foreign agents from holding civil service positions.[247]

Amendments were introduced to various corresponding laws to explicitly ban foreign agents from holding positions in law enforcement; in the penitentiary, customs, and intelligence services; and several other state services. Designation as a foreign agent was explicitly included as grounds for dismissal.[248]

Likewise, amendments were introduced to the law on official secrets to enforce the ban on foreign agents accessing classified information.[249]

The new law also obliges media outlets to put a disclaimer if its founder was designated a “foreign agent,”[250] and it drastically expanded locations that are banned as sites of peaceful assembly (see Section on Freedom of Assembly below).

Liability for Non-Compliance with Foreign Agents Requirements (Federal Law №622-FZ of December 29, 2022, and Federal Law №525-FZ of December 30, 2022)

In September 2022, two new bills were introduced in parliament amending the Russian Criminal Code and Code of Administrative Offenses concerning liability for non-compliance with the registration, labeling, and reporting requirements, under the pretext of bringing penalties in line with the July 2022 “unified” foreign agents law.[251]

As a result, both administrative and criminal sanctions for non-compliance with the “foreign agents” requirements were increased, drastically in some instances.

Both bills were signed into law by late December 2022.

Amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses (Federal Law №622-FZ of December 29, 2022)

The bill concerning amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses was adopted and signed into law with immediate effect in late December 2022.[252]

The new law amended the earlier provision that targeted foreign agent NGOs, extending its coverage to other categories of foreign agents (individuals, foreign agents-foreign media, organizations, and unregistered public associations) under the unified notion of “foreign agent.” Several other provisions of the Code of Administrative Offenses that were developed earlier to target different categories of foreign agents separately were made redundant.

These amendments brought all violations that can be perpetrated by foreign agents that were earlier divided between five different articles, combining them in one article – 19.34. It set a unified scale of fines for foreign agents ranging from a minimum of 30,000 rubles to a maximum of 50,000 rubles for individuals; from 100,000 to 300,000 ($1136 to $3370) for managers of associations and organizations; and from 300,000 to 500,000 ($3370 to $5682) for legal entities.

While such standardization may suggest greater legal process, instead the amendments have strengthened penalties against foreign agents, extending some penalties to certain categories of foreign agents to whom they did not apply previously or drastically increased corresponding sanctions.[253]

The law continues to lack guidance as to what would constitute a more or a less serious offense.[254]

Several offenses earlier reserved for organizations or public associations were extended to all foreign agents.

Among these was the charge of conducting activities of a foreign agent while not on the registry of foreign agents. Previously reserved for foreign agent NGOs, it has been extended to cover public associations and individuals.

The charge of failure to submit documents required by the foreign agents law is but one example where amendments resulted in increased penalties. The option of a warning as a minimum penalty for individuals was eliminated, and the unified scale of fines resulted in a doubling of fines for individuals, from 5,000 to 10,000 rubles ($56 to $112). Penalties jumped 10-fold for managers of public associations and the minimum penalty for legal entities swelled almost three-fold.

The charges of publishing or disseminating materials by foreign agents without a disclaimer about their status was additionally tweaked to add not only materials but also “information concerning the type of activities” of foreign agents.[255]

Similarly, the only charge that previously exclusively applied to individual foreign agents was extended to all other categories: failure to inform about the foreign agent status in cases prescribed by Russian law.

The amendments also introduced new categories of violations:

• Failure to comply with the procedure or timeline for posting online or in mass media annual reports on activities of foreign agents, as prescribed by the 2022 Law no.255-FZ (see above);

• Failure to comply with restrictions imposed on foreign agents, such as the ban on educational activities and taking up civil service positions (see above);

• Failure to comply, including failure to comply in due time, with the requirement to incorporate a legal entity in Russia or to inform authorities of this.

This latter requirement applies to foreign agents who publish or take part in producing public materials, including printed or audiovisual.

Penalties for these offenses were set using the same unified scale, as mentioned above.

The new amendments also explicitly stipulated that violation of the foreign agents regulations by foreigners or stateless persons would entail deportation from Russia.[256]

An addendum to the amended article 19.34 of the Code of Administrative Offenses extends the earlier norm, whereby foreign agent media and foreign entities not registered under Russian law bear responsibility as Russian legal entities, to public associations and other associations. The amendments maintained provisions regarding the liability of managers or administrators of public associations, on par with those of managers of legal entities or officials.[257]

Provisions of articles 19.7.5-2, 19.7.5-3 and 19.7.5-4 concerning the liability of physical persons and public associations for different violations of the foreign agents obligations were made redundant as the corresponding charges under article 19.34 (which previously concerned NGOs) were extended to all categories of foreign agents.

Likewise, article 19.34.1 that specifically covered the liability of “foreign agents-foreign media” and parts of article 13.15 (2.2-2.4) that concerned the liability of mass media—for mentioning different categories foreign agents without mentioning their status as foreign agents—were also made redundant by these amendments, as they are now all covered under article 13.15 (2.1).

Amendments to the Criminal Code (Federal Law №525-FZ of December 30, 2022)

In September 2022, a new bill was introduced in the Duma to amend the criminal code.[258] Introduced on the same day as the amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses, these amendments were also signed into law as part of the same package in late December 2022.[259]

Initially the bill contained amendments to article 330.1 of the criminal code only.[260] It was apparently aimed at harmonizing the provisions of this criminal article with the recent amendments to the Foreign Agents Law.[261] It sought to expand them to all categories of foreign agents, since earlier versions of the law (as amended in December 2020) only applied to some.[262] The bill did not initially contain provisions increasing penalties or seek to add additional charges.

However, it was expanded ahead of the second reading in parliament.

Additional amendments eliminated the reference to “maliciousness” in article 330.1, replacing it with a threshold of having two prior administrative convictions on the same grounds within a year. They extended liability for non-compliance to all categories, further increasing avenues for authorities to penalize “foreign agents.”[263]

Since the adoption of these amendments, at least 25 criminal cases have been opened on these charges.[264]

This round also included amendments to criminal code article 239 that drastically increase penalties for creating or participating in the activities of NGOs (including “foreign agent” NGOs), whose activities involve inciting “refusal to perform civil duties or committing other illegal acts,” or creating religious or public associations whose activities involve violence or other harm to health.

Thus, the new law drastically revised the minimum and maximum penalties for founders or leaders of such NGOs (including those designated as “foreign agents”) for inciting “refusal to perform civil duties or to commit other illegal acts” and eliminated the option of a fine or restriction of liberty (not involving incarceration) as a minimum penalty; now the minimum penalty involves forced labor of up to five years, whereas the maximum penalty under this charge doubled from three to six years’ imprisonment.

Similarly, the option of a fine or restriction of liberty was eliminated as a minimum penalty for creating a religious or public association whose activities involve violence or other harm to health was replaced with a minimum penalty of forced labor of up to five years. The maximum penalty was increased from four to seven years in prison.

The penalties for participating in either of these groups has also been revised, with the minimum penalty increased from 120,000 to 200,000 rubles; the maximum penalty was doubled from two to four years in prison.

The recent application of this criminal article demonstrates that it entails a direct threat to civic activists in Russia.

In May 2022, in the wake of massive anti-war protests following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian authorities brought several criminal cases on these charges against leaders and activists of the opposition youth movement Vesna (“Spring”).

Initially, one of its activists was accused of creating—and seven others of participating—in activities of an NGO that, according to authorities, “incited” people to commit illegal acts and “propagated” such acts, namely, to take part in anti-war protests at the end of February 2022.[265]

However, in May 2023, three more were accused of creating the organization (two of them were earlier accused of participation, another one reportedly was not involved with Vesna).[266] Currently, four people have been accused of creating a “harmful” NGO, and five more of participating in its activities.[267] 

Originally formed in 2013 among activists of the political opposition movements in St. Petersburg, Vesna announced an anti-war campaign in late February 2022 and was actively involved in organizing peaceful anti-war protests.

In a media interview, one of the co-founders of the movement said that they thought they would receive the foreign agents designation first and did not expect criminal persecution immediately.[268]

In October 2022, the movement was designated a “foreign agent” and in December a court designated it an extremist organization. The same year it was listed as “involved” with extremism or terrorism,[269] for which there was no basis. The movement spokesperson said they promoted peaceful protests aimed at democratic reforms based on the rule of law and always considered the well-being of citizens as their main goal.[270]

In February 2021, a criminal case on the same charges was opened against the leadership of the Foundation Against Corruption (FBK), founded by the jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny. Later that year, FBK was also banned as an extremist organization (see below).

In 2023, Navalny and several of his former allies received lengthy sentences on bogus extremism and related charges following closed trials. [271] They included Lilia Chanysheva, who was sentenced to 9.5 years in prison in Ufa, Bashkortostan, on extremism and “destructive NGO” charges[272]; her co-defendant, Rustem Muliukov, was sentenced to 2.5 years for extremism; and Vadim Ostanin, was sentenced to 9 years on the same charges in Barnaul. Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in a maximum-security prison, and his co-defendant, Daniel Kholodny, former technical director of Navalny’s YouTube channel, was sentenced to 8 years. In December 2023, Kseniya Fadeyeva, a member of the Tomsk legislature, was sentenced to 9 years in prison on extremism charges for her affiliation with Navalny and FBK.

Aleksandr Verkhovskiy, a Russian extremism and civil society expert, commented to media that the charges under article 239 date back to Soviet times and were used against the so-called “destructive religious groups”—religious cults that ostensibly posed a threat to their members. He said it was unprecedented for the same charges to be used against political organizations.[273]

2023–2024 Laws

On April 26, 2023, five new bills were submitted by MPs to the Russian parliament to make harsher the foreign agents legislation and introduce new norms tackling organizations without legal presence in Russia—an apparent attempt to restrict Russian civil society from engaging with them.[274]

They were all signed into law between July 24 and August 4, 2023.

“Third Parties”

The first two bills, introduced on April 26, 2023, expanded foreign agents legislation, effectively extending liability for compliance to third parties and introducing corresponding penalties. Both bills were signed into law on July 24, 2023.

Federal Law № 358-FZ of July 24, 2023 (“Third Parties Law”)

The first of these laws amended the July 2022 “foreign influence” law (the umbrella law that superseded the various foreign agents; provisions, see above).

The law apparently aims to ensure that foreign agents remain isolated from the public, and to curb assistance to them by third parties.

The law extended the obligation to comply with the foreign agents legislation to any such third party, in that it requires all individuals (Russian or otherwise), legal entities, and public bodies to consider/comply with the foreign agent norms and refrain from allowing foreign agents to violate their (foreign agents’) obligations or restrictions imposed on them.[275]

The law permits the authorities to conduct unscheduled inspections of foreign agents, legal entities, associations, and individuals—Russian or foreign—which are not yet, but could be, designated as foreign agents.[276] Moreover, on par with them, authorities can subject to such inspections any third party considered to have assisted or facilitated foreign agents in violating the foreign agents legislation.[277]

Amendments also expanded who can trigger such unscheduled inspections. Previously, the law provided, as one of the grounds, information obtained from public officials, citizens, or mass media. It now also includes any organization or individual irrespective of nationality.[278] And they can complain to authorities about the alleged non-compliance of foreign agents or alleged assistance of third parties.[279]

The law also authorizes the Ministry of Justice to issue warnings to any third party about non-compliance with the Foreign Agents Law and give them deadlines for rectification.

In addition to inspections that can themselves be very burdensome (see above), these norms can extend application of fines for non-compliance with the foreign agent norms to any such third parties.[280]

Finally, the authors of the law also extended the ban for foreign agents to access state funding to include not only financial support, but also property, and specifically spelled out that this ban also extends to any artistic activities.[281]

They also claimed that the earlier wording of this norm did not prevent socially oriented NGOs or small and medium enterprises designated as foreign agents from accessing state support, whereas, according to them, such state support “contradicts the national interests of Russia and must be banned.”[282]

Although the lawmakers did not mention it explicitly, the authorities had already taken action to deprive foreign agents of state support in the form of access to government- leased property earlier that year. In January 2023, due to the enactment of the 2022 foreign agents law, Moscow authorities ordered the eviction of the Sakharov Center from its city center premises, for which it had had a rent-free lease since the early 1990s.[283]

Member of the Moscow Helsinki Group and Professor of Law Ilya Shablinskiy decried these amendments as unnecessary and said that authorities “want to turn foreign agents into a caste of untouchables or create for them something like a virtual leper colony.”[284]

He also noted that it was unclear, from a legal standpoint, who the third parties are in the proposed bill; supposedly, it could apply to employers of foreign agents, or to somebody who merely leaves a positive comment on the social media account of a person designated as a foreign agent.[285]

Human rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov stated that, with these amendments, authorities could target the sources of financing of foreign agents, as well as those providing them rent or services. Warnings and threat of designation as a foreign agent could also be an effective way to ensure that mass media refrain from allowing foreign agents’ voices to be heard.[286]  

A law introduced in February 2024 and adopted the next month prohibited both placing advertisements in foreign agent media and advertising their websites and social media. The authors said that the law aimed at cutting foreign agents’ advertisement revenue streams and thus preventing “covert foreign interference” into Russia’s domestic affairs.[287] Other MPs said they sought to deprive foreign agents of any source of income in Russia.[288]

Prominent journalist Katerina Gordeeva said the ban is “one of the numerous [acts of] discrimination in modern Russia … and made life significantly harder” for her independent YouTube channel.[289] Another independent politician and journalist Maxim Katz said the law’s restrictions on advertisers were weak, but that they were nonetheless now afraid to place any ads. Katz said his YouTube channel would not shut down but would suffer.[290]

Federal Law № 364-FZ of July 24, 2023 (Additional Administrative Penalties)

The next law amended the Code of Administrative Offenses by introducing an additional “offense” designed specifically to penalize not complying in a timely manner with an official warning or demand to remedy the alleged violation of the foreign agents legislation.[291]

The proposed sanctions would entail fines from 30,000 to 50,000 rubles ($337 to $561) for individuals, from 70,000 to 100,000 ($795 to $1123) rubles for public officials or managers of organizations, or disqualification for up to two years and between 200,000 and 300,000 rubles ($2272 and $3409) for legal entities.

Given how various grounds were used previously to impose draconian fines on NGOs[292] and seek their forcible closures, as well as to harass individuals, this new charge gives authorities an additional tool to impose penalties and seek forced liquidations, further isolating and stigmatizing foreign agents and intimidating their supporters.[293]

“Foreign” Organizations

Three other bills introduced on April 26, 2023, were developed by a group of MPs as a package of amendments targeting organizations incorporated abroad.

Albeit not directly pertaining to the foreign agents legislation, they appear to be developed in the same vein, aiming to restrict, intimidate, and isolate dissenting voices in Russian civil society, particularly from international counterparts.

Federal Law №409-FZ of July 31, 2023 (Ban on Foreign NGOs without Russian Registration)

The first of these additional laws amended the law “On non-profit organizations.”[294] The new law seeks to ensure that individuals and legal entities in Russia can only get involved in the activities of foreign or international NGOs after the latter have their branch or representative offices officially registered, that is, added to the official registry, in Russia.[295]

The bill’s authors said they saw a regulatory loophole due to the lack of an explicit norm excluding the possibility for organizations incorporated abroad and not registered in Russia to conduct activities in the country, either directly or through an intermediary. [296] Without registration, an organization cannot operate legally in the country.

The only exception the new law provides is for participation of such foreign organizations in events organized by, and upon invitation of, state bodies or state-affiliated entities, such as state-owned corporations.[297] But even such state-owned or controlled entities must inform the Ministry of Justice 10 days in advance and publish information about the participation of such foreign NGOs online.[298]

Federal Law №412-FZ of August 4, 2023 (Administrative Penalty)

The second law adopted as part of this package introduced administrative penalties for noncompliance with the above ban on activities of foreign or international NGOs without registration in Russia.[299]

The new amendments added a new charge—participation in activities on Russian territory of a foreign or international NGO that does not have an officially registered branch or representative office.[300]

The proposed penalty for such an offense ranges from 3,000 to 5,000 rubles for individuals, 20,000 to 50,000 for managers or officials, and 50,000 to 100,000 rubles for legal entities.

Foreigners or stateless persons may additionally face discretionary deportation.[301]

Federal Law №413-FZ of August 4, 2023 (Criminal Penalty)

Lastly, the third bill,[302] also signed into law on August 4, 2023, introduced corresponding amendments to the criminal and criminal procedure codes to penalize repeated participation or organizing activities of foreign or international NGOs without registration in Russia.[303]

The liability for participation can be invoked if a person has previously twice in one year been convicted for the administrative offense of involvement with such NGOs or has a prior (unexpunged) criminal conviction for such participation or for involvement with an “undesirable organization.”

As regards involvement with “undesirables” as grounds for prosecution under this article, it appears that parliamentarians believed, since both articles concern involvement with organizations that do not have a legal right to conduct their activities in Russia, these charges can be used interchangeably to meet the threshold for criminal prosecution for either.[304]

Indeed, as a result of this intended interconnectedness between these charges, the same law introduced similar amendments to criminal provisions on “undesirables:” criminal convictions for involvement with unregistered organizations now serve as grounds for prosecution under involvement with “undesirables” charges.[305]

One notable distinction between charges of involvement with unregistered foreign/international NGOs and undesirable organizations is that, currently, charges for involvement with unregistered organizations are limited territorially to Russia. In the case of “undesirables,” this limitation also originally existed, but was lifted and made an extra-territorial crime in 2022 (see below in Section on Free Expression).[306]

Given the parallels between these criminal articles, the same amendments could potentially be introduced to the “unregistered” articles in the future, thus criminalizing Russian civil society’s cooperation with foreign and international NGOs and further isolating them from the international community and increasing their vulnerability and risks.

Such repeated involvement with foreign or international NGOs carries a penalty of up two years in prison.[307]

In the addendum to the article, the authors of the law propose exemption from criminal charges if the person has voluntarily ceased to engage with such foreign NGOs and actively assisted in the investigation of the alleged crime.[308]

The second part of the new criminal article penalizes organizing activities of foreign or international NGOs without Russian registration, punishable with up to three years in prison.[309] No prior administrative or criminal convictions need to exist to trigger criminal prosecution under this article.[310]

Among those affected could be Human Rights Watch’s partners and counterparts. Human Rights Watch was among 15 international organizations whose representative offices’ registration the Russian authorities cancelled in April 2022, shortly after the start of full-scale invasion of Ukraine.[311] Likewise, local partners of many other international and foreign organizations could potentially be at risk.

Although the structure and logic of the criminal provisions appear to be very similar to those on involvement with “undesirable organizations,” the threshold in this case appears to be even lower, since, unlike “undesirables,” authorities would not have a list of unregistered foreign organizations. Hence the burden of due diligence is shifted to the concerned individuals and entities to ensure that interaction with their international counterparts does not put them at risk of prosecution and even imprisonment.

Moreover, considering the history of persecution of activists using the “undesirable” charges,[312] it is likely that, if adopted, these new charges will become a constant source of danger for civic activists, human rights defenders, journalists, and others in Russia.

Taken together, these provisions clearly aim to to deter Russian activists and groups from active international engagements, further isolating and suppressing Russia’s civil society, an outcome that could be expected from many of the other legislative initiatives analyzed in this report.

These amendments do not meet the criteria of necessity and proportionality and so are not a legitimate restriction on the human rights and fundamental freedoms of both potentially affected international NGOs and their Russian counterparts and partners.

II. Restricting Electoral Rights

Federal Law №91-FZ of April 20, 2021 (Candidates-Foreign Agents and “Affiliated” with Foreign Agents)

Allegations of foreign interference in elections have been a constant feature of the nationwide election cycle in Russia since at least 2011. Beginning in 2018, they dominated the political leadership’s rhetoric in response to Alexei Navalny’s “Smart Voting” project, which called on people to vote for any candidate who stood a chance of defeating a candidate from the ruling party, United Russia.[313]

Such allegations spiked in early 2021, after Navalny’s January 2021 arrest upon returning from medical treatment in Germany, and in the months leading up to the September 2021 parliamentary vote. In March 2021, the chairperson of the Russian Central Electoral Commission reported “many elements of interference.”[314] President Putin spoke of the same in meetings with heads of parliamentary factions in February and March.[315] 

After the election, Russian senators identified 10 main forms of foreign interference in Russian elections,[316] and the Duma speaker claimed that “Smart Voting” was backed by “Western states and intelligence services” to interfere in Russia’s internal affairs.[317]

This is the context in which a bill proposing to attach the “foreign agent” label to candidates running for elected positions was introduced to the Duma on November 18, 2020.[318] It was signed into law and entered into force on April 20, 2021.[319] Three years later, in May 2024, the Duma adopted a law banning “foreign agents” from running for public office altogether, and from serving on election commissions.[320]

In practice, the 2021 law, which amended the law on electoral rights, enables authorities to smear opposition candidates with the “foreign agent” and “affiliated with a foreign agent” labels.[321] The former applies to individuals whom authorities have designated as “foreign agents,” and who are running for office.

The latter applies to individuals who, during the two years before running for office, were affiliated with entities designated as “foreign agents”[322] or who conducted what Russian authorities consider to be “political activities” and received any financial assistance from “foreign agents,” including via intermediaries.

Although governments can legitimately introduce legislation to secure elections from foreign interference, this law uses the notion of “foreign agent” to stigmatize political opposition candidates involved in civic activism. The 2021 law’s labeling requirements for such candidates are more extensive than the disclosure requirements for candidates’ criminal records.

The “foreign agent” label must be clearly marked on the candidate’s registration application,[323] in party lists,[324] nomination signature sheets in support of the candidate,[325] and materials produced by candidates and their campaigns and other publicly available election-related documentation.[326] The new law requires that during any public address, the candidate must be identified as a “foreign agent.” Finally, the label would also be included on ballots.[327] Electoral commissions would be tasked with informing voters of a candidate’s “foreign agent” status.[328] 

The law also expanded application of an earlier ban on organizations designated as foreign agents from engaging in electoral campaigns to cover individuals and unregistered public associations.[329]

During the Duma’s first reading of the then-draft law, according to Russian media, the head of the Senate’s Ad Hoc Commission on Protecting State Sovereignty and Preventing Interference in Domestic Affairs justified it by claiming that some states and international organizations were weakening Russia’s ability to defend its interests and that Russia’s foreign opponents aimed to install their candidates into Russian state bodies.[330] He singled out the “School of Local Governance,” headed by acting and former Moscow municipal deputies, who were in the political opposition, accusing the project of “preparing hundreds of such people to infiltrate municipal and state bodies.”[331]

This new law affected candidates running in the September 2021 parliamentary and municipal elections. In March 2022, additional amendments were introduced to the law on presidential elections, extending the same categories of “foreign agent candidates” and “candidates affiliated with foreign agents” to presidential campaigns and elections, with similar obligations to label all campaign materials and disclose this status ahead of any public appearances or speeches.[332]

Ahead of the elections, authorities announced an automated system to ease the marking of candidates and party lists with the “foreign agent” label and ensure its visibility.[339]

In some instances, competing candidates asked that electoral commissions check and label their political opponents as “foreign agents” or “affiliated.”[340] An expert from the election monitoring group Golos likened this to a witch hunt.[341] In early September 2021, seven opposition political parties that ran in parliamentary elections—half of all parties that stood in the elections—urged reform of the “foreign agents’” legislation.[342]

Federal Law №43-FZ of March 9, 2021 (Online Campaigning)

On November 12, 2020, a group of MPs introduced another bill concerning electoral rights.[343] It was adopted on March 3, 2021, and entered into force on March 9, 2021. [344]

The new law enables authorities to extrajudicially block online content entirely at the discretion of electoral commissions. It extended the scope of electoral campaigning to include online content and extended the ambit of the Russia’s election law to include rules on producing and disseminating online content.[345]

The law amended several other laws to enable the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) to regulate the production and dissemination of campaign materials,[346] and enable it—and all regional electoral commissions—to request that Roskomnadzor, the state body responsible for monitoring and controlling online content, block content if election commissions believe it violates electoral regulations.[347] The new law does not set clear criteria or thresholds triggering this extrajudicial blocking, apparently leaving this to the discretion of the electoral commissions.

In line with these amendments, Roskomnadzor, upon the request of an electoral commission, can immediately demand service providers block access to the offending content. Once Roskomnadzor issues this demand, content-hosting providers have 24 hours to find and notify the website about the official demand to delete the content.[348]

The website owner has 24 hours to comply. Failure to do so will result in the hosting provider blocking access to the website or online resource in 24 hours.[349] If the website owner complies, they must inform Roskomnadzor.[350] Authorities verify deletion of the contested information and request the service provider restore access to the website.[351]

Although the law outlines a swift procedure for blocking content and websites, it has no clear timeline for verifying whether the content has been deleted. It also envisages that the blocking can last from the day of the announcement of an upcoming vote and up to five days after the announcement of the results.[352]

Some opposition MPs at the time said the new law would be used against them.[353] One noted that in almost every election campaign “one [ruling] party is allowed to continue campaigning even on the “[Election] Silence Day [the day before elections when all electoral campaigning is forbidden],” while they are banned from doing so.[354] The deputy head of an opposition party that is not in parliament said the law’s arbitrary enforcement would radicalize protest and increase distrust in the electoral process.[355]

Other political opposition activists not represented in parliament also expressed concern that any websites campaigning for certain candidates can be blocked, particularly those promoting “Smart Voting.”

Anastasia Burakova, a coordinator of “United Democrats,”[356] a capacity-building project for opposition candidates, said the law is so broad that, in theory, anyone who expresses their opinion about a candidate on social media could be held liable.[357]

Federal Law №37-FZ of March 9, 2021 (Administrative Penalties for Campaign Violations)

On November 20, 2020, a group of MPs introduced a bill drastically increasing penalties for violating certain election campaigning rules. [358] Parliament adopted it on March 3, 2021. President Putin signed it into law on March 9; it entered into force on March 20, 2021.[359]

The law sharply increased fines for three types of violations set out in previous laws:

• Campaigning outside the designated period or in locations where campaigning is forbidden;

• Failing to comply with rules for producing or disseminating campaign materials;

• Placing printed campaign materials in locations forbidden by federal laws or on premises without the owner’s permission.

For some categories of offenders, the penalties have been increased more than 10-fold.[360]

Amendments Involving “Extremism”

Authorities have developed other tools to hamper opposition candidates’ participation in elections.

On May 4, 2021, a bill was introduced banning candidates affiliated with “extremist organizations” from running for the Duma; it was subsequently expanded to a ban on running in any election for public office.[361]

The bill imposed a five-year ban on the leadership or management of organizations designated as extremist and a three-year ban for their staff and even supporters, defined in broad terms. It has retroactive effect, to include anyone who led or managed such organizations up to three years before authorities designated the group extremist, and up to a year for staff members and supporters.

The bill was hastily adopted and signed into law exactly a month later, on June 4.[362] On June 9, the Moscow City Court ruled in favor of a request by the Prosecutor’s Office to designate as “extremist” three groups associated with Alexei Navalny—the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), the Foundation for Protection of Citizens Rights, and Navalny’s headquarters.[363]

On June 25, 2021, Ilya Yashin, a well-known opposition figure, announced that he had been banned from running for the Moscow City Duma because the election commission equated him with an “extremist” due to his support for Navalny.[364] Leonid Volkov, one of Navalny’s aides, stated that Yashin had no connection whatsoever to FBK or Navalny’s regional teams and that at that time the court’s designation of Navalny’s organizations as extremist had not yet entered into force.[365]

Another well-known opposition candidate, Lev Shlosberg, was also struck from the candidates lists for alleged involvement with extremist organizations.[366] Initially, the electoral commission denied him registration on August 3, a day before the “extremist” ruling entered into force, for alleged involvement with protests in support of Navalny in January 2021. This decision was overruled the following day, but a few days later he was again struck from the list and was not allowed to run in parliamentary or local elections.[367] In September 2021 and June 2022 the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court upheld this move.[368]

In June 2021, the independent rights group OVD-Info documented that over 30 candidates had to step down from the September parliamentary or municipal elections because of this legislation.[369]

Similarly, in the summer of 2022, authorities used extremism charges to prevent opposition candidates from running in the September 2022 local elections. In slightly over a month from the start of the electoral campaign in mid-June, at least 24 people—Moscow municipal deputies or activists who expressed intention to run—were reported to have been arrested and/or charged with using extremist symbols and then struck from electoral lists on the basis of old social media posts related to Navalny or “Smart Voting.”[370] In a media interview, a lawyer with the human rights group “Perviy Otdel" (First Department) called this a “simple and effective” way to prevent candidates from running.[371]

In late March 2023, a group of MPs submitted another bill concerning elections.[372] While the primary focus of the bill was reported as regulating elections on the territories—of Ukraine—that Russia claimed to have annexed since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, alongside those amendments, the bill also aimed to extend the ban on candidates affiliated or convicted of involvement with extremist groups from running for senatorial positions in the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council. It also banned the use in electoral campaigns of materials access to which has been blocked by Roskomnadzor, or which include “signs of extremism.”

The bill was signed into law on May 29, 2023.[373]

Earlier, a person was not eligible for a senator seat, among other grounds, while they had an unexpunged criminal conviction for extremism-related charges. Under these latest amendments, this period of ineligibility would be extended by an additional five years after their conviction has expired or was expunged.[374]

Furthermore, these amendments replicated the same restrictions that as introduced by the 2021 law concerning general elections for candidates considered to be involved with banned extremist or terrorist groups. Namely, they imposed a five-year ban on the leadership or management of organizations designated as extremist and a three-year ban for their staff and even supporters, defined in broad terms, with retroactive effect—three years before authorities designated the group extremist for leadership of organization or group, and up to a year for staff members and supporters.[375]  

As mentioned before, for example, in August 2023, Alexei Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in maximum security prison on extremism related and other charges. The former technical director of his YouTube channel was sentenced to eight years in prison, also on extremism charges, because three organizations affiliated with him, including his electoral campaign offices, were banned as extremist.

In June and July the same year, courts in Barnaul and Bashkortostan sentenced Vadim Ostanin and Lilia Chanysheva—two former heads of local branches of Navalny’s organization—to 9 and 7.5 years in a prison colony respectively on combined charges of organizing an extremist society, incitement of extremism, and creating a “harmful” NGO. On appeal, the court increased Chanysheva’s sentence to 9.5 years. Several of Navalny’s aides were indicted on extremism charges after having taken part in entirely legitimate and peaceful opposition to the Kremlin.

Likewise, in December 2022, Russian authorities declared the youth activist movement “Vesna” as an extremist organization and subsequently opened criminal cases against at least three people on allegations of participating or creating extremist organization (and eight others on other charges) for their peaceful anti-war activism (see above).

These amendments bar them from running in electoral campaigns in the foreseeable future, while Russian authorities continue to abuse counterextremism machinery against opposition and anti-war activists, as well as against minority religious groups.[376]

Amendments Relating to Other Crimes

Similar restrictions were imposed on people who were convicted for taking part in “unlawful,” peaceful protests and other legitimate exercise of their civil and political rights. A law adopted in May 2020 expanded an earlier ban for persons with criminal convictions from running in elections[377] to cover those convicted for certain crimes of “moderate severity.”[378] Another law, adopted in April 2021, duplicated that ban to running for the Duma.[379] The bans apply through the duration of the sentence and for five years beyond its expiration. These bans would apply to people convicted for violent crimes. But they also explicitly include those convicted for repeated violation of public assembly rules.[380]

For example, in December 2020, a court in Moscow handed Yuliya Galyamina, an opposition activist and a former member of Moscow’s municipal assembly, a two-year suspended sentence for posting information on social media and taking part in a peaceful public assembly earlier that year.[381] This effectively blocks her running for any elected position for seven years. Several opposition activists are in similar situations.[382]

Russian authorities employ other tools to disrupt and, where possible, prevent opposition candidates from running for office. In 2021, authorities twice interrupted, under different pretexts, gatherings of independent municipal deputies that aimed to help potential candidates share best practices and skills for running election campaigns and working with grassroot candidates.

In March, police raided a forum of municipal deputies in Moscow, arresting almost 200 attendees and charging them with participating in activities of an “undesirable organization,” claiming the event was organized by United Democrats, which authorities equate with the “undesirable” Open Russia movement.[383]

In May, using the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext, authorities interrupted a meeting of independent municipal deputies in Novgorod to discuss strengthening local self-governance.[384] Four days before the meeting started, the governor imposed new restrictions limiting the number of people that could gather for private events, and imposing mask and social distancing mandates.[385]

According to organizers, attendees were following these new restrictions and had separated into three rooms to ensure compliance.[386] Nonetheless, when police raided the gathering, they reportedly refused to count the attendees or measure the distance between them and proceeded to arrest around 25 attendees for violating restrictions.[387] 
 

III. Limiting Public Assemblies

Introduction: Right to Peaceful Assembly in Russia

For nearly 10 years, the right to peaceful assembly has increasingly been under attack in Russia. Authorities routinely withhold official permission to hold protests. This has often left organizers with little choice but to either cancel gatherings or hold “unauthorized” demonstrations and face dispersal by police, administrative detention, and fines. 

Amendments to legislation on peaceful assemblies introduced in 2012 and 2014 allowed authorities to ban all public assemblies in a considerable number of sites[388] and increased organizers’ liability, including for the conduct of protesters.[389] They drastically increased penalties and statutory limitations for violating public assembly rules.[390] They also introduced new penalties, notably administrative detention of up to 30 days and criminal sanctions, including prison terms, for repeated violations.[391] 

Starting in March 2020, Russian authorities began using the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext to ban protests.[392] After the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, authorities used the same tactic to ban anti-war protests,[393] even though almost every other pandemic-related restriction had been lifted. In the first month after the invasion, over 15,000 protesters were detained, most of them fined and held in detention for anywhere from a few hours up to over a month.[394] However, these restrictions were applied selectively, as several large-scale gatherings and marches took place that were organized or officially endorsed and supported by the authorities without any Covid restrictions.[395]

In November and December 2020, United Russia MP Dmitriy Viatkin introduced six bills amending various laws, which further and drastically undermined the right to freedom of assembly. Four of these bills were signed into law on the same day, December 30, 2020; two more were enacted in February and April 2021.

On November 17, Viatkin introduced two bills amending the law on public assemblies. The bills retained the term “notification” to describe the process by which a protest organizer communicates with authorities about planned public assemblies for them to be lawful.

But the amendments consolidated in legislation a permission-seeking licensing system via which protest organizers must seek and get explicit authorization for a public assembly.

They expanded obligations for organizers and grounds for explicitly forbidding an assembly or withdrawing a previously issued permission. The amendments introduced disproportionately burdensome and potentially unrealistic requirements for verifying the origins of funds and donations for public events and for reporting on their management. And they banned a range of persons and entities from sponsoring public events.

On November 23, Viatkin introduced two more bills amending the Code of Administrative Offenses, adding penalties for violating these newly introduced or amended provisions.

On December 14 and 16, Viatkin introduced two more bills amending criminal code articles on “hooliganism” and impeding traffic to expand application of these charges. While the explanatory notes did not refer to public protests to justify the bill, authorities used the revised charges against peaceful protesters after the countrywide protests in January 2021.

In June 2022, a group of MPs and senators introduced a bill further restricting freedom of assembly. 

2020-2021 Laws

Federal Law №497-FZ dated December 30, 2020: Closing Loopholes

Single-Person Protests and Public “Strolls”

Since at least 2012, activists unable to receive authorization for protests have used single-person pickets to demonstrate publicly, by either creating lines of individuals, observing the 50-meter minimum distance required by law, or by organizing themselves to replace one another in a sequence of single-person pickets.[396] Police routinely detained such protesters and charged them with violating public assembly rules.[397]

In 2018, Russia’s Supreme Court repeated the earlier Constitutional Court ruling equating a “series” of such simultaneous pickets with an unauthorized mass gathering if they are united by the same goals, slogans, location, and other characteristics.[398]

The first of the November 2020 bills reaffirmed this approach,[399] equating a sequence of single-person pickets with a mass gathering,[400] thus closing the last remaining loophole for people to hold peaceful protests without prior authorization. The amendments provided no temporal or numerical clarification for “sequence.” Instead, they reprised the Constitutional and Supreme Courts’ criteria that the pickets need be united by goals, slogans, location, and the like, but omitted the court’s criteria about simultaneity.[401] 

Likewise, the new amendments stipulated that courts may decide that a mass “presence,” or a simple stroll by a group of people in a “public space,” may be considered a public gathering requiring prior authorization, even if the stroll had no visible or audible hallmarks of a public protest, such as placards and chanting, and even if people walked only on the sidewalk. A court could find a “stroll” to be a mass protest by determining merely that the walkers were organized or shared an intent to “express or form opinions or [advocacy] on political, economic, social, cultural [issues] or foreign affairs.”[402]

The concept of such “public strolls” first appeared in Russian legislation in 2012, when new amendments introduced penalties for organizing or taking part in them.[403] This stemmed from peaceful strolls, involving thousands, which took place in central Moscow in response to the violent police dispersal[404] of a sanctioned protest there in May 2012.[405]

The new amendment streamlines prosecution of entirely peaceful activists for organizing or taking part in such events. Authorities would not need to prove any secondary harm or infraction. The penalty for organizers and participants is up to 10 days’ detention.[406]

New Protest Authorization Requirements

The new amendments streamlined calculation of deadlines for advance notification.

Even before the amendments, the public assembly law had a narrow, five-day window for submitting “notifications”—effectively requests for permission—to hold a public assembly. They had to be submitted no earlier than 15 days prior to, but not later than, 10 days before the event.[407] Local authorities in different regions calculated these deadlines differently. Some included the first and/or the last days of this window in their calculation, then claimed the request did not meet submission requirements and denied the request.[408]

Human rights experts analyzed how, in 2017, this narrow submission window—and the power of authorities to “negotiate” alternative dates, locations, and assembly formats—forced organizers to risk “unauthorized” demonstrations or markedly change their plans.[409]

In 2018, a Russian Supreme Court ruling aimed to clarify the application of the Assemblies Law.[410] The court’s interpretation of these deadlines excluded the dates of receipt of notification and the date of the public event itself from the calculation of the deadlines, effectively requiring organizers to submit their notification two days earlier.[411] The 2020 amendments effectively set this interpretation of the timeline into law, potentially further reducing the public’s capacity to hold discussions or protests in response to evolving events or of public significance.[412]

The new amendments also increased the deadline by which authorities must respond to the “notification.” Previously, local authorities were obliged in most cases to respond within three days of receiving the “notification.”[415] Now, if the last day of this three-day period falls on holidays or a Sunday—and holidays are regularly bundled and extended through the use of bridging days—authorities can respond on the first working day thereafter, but not later than three days before the planned event.[416]

This implies that organizers can be held in a state of limbo about whether they will be allowed to proceed with an event, while at the same time effectively being precluded from disseminating information about it. Three days before the event is also the deadline for organizers to notify the authorities of their acceptance or rejection of authorities’ suggestions. If authorities “propose” an alternative location, time, or even format, organizers are left with no choice other than to accept it or call off the event.

Previous law obligated protest organizers to inform authorities about whether they accept the state’s proposals for changes. The amendments now also explicitly require organizers to formally notify authorities if they cancel the event over objections to such proposals.[417]

New Grounds for Forbidding Protests

The Law on Public Assemblies provided only two explicit grounds on which authorities can ban protests:[418] if the request is submitted by persons who by law are banned from doing so,[419] or if the event’s planned venue is a location where public assemblies are banned under federal or local laws.

Even before the 2020 amendments, the law also implicitly banned assemblies, by shifting responsibility onto organizers and imposing penalties for failure to comply.[420] Thus organizers are banned from proceeding with an event if they did not comply with a submission requirement regarding the time and place.

These provisions effectively amount to a ban but are disguised among organizers’ responsibilities, giving authorities additional tools to deny the right to peaceful assembly.

The new amendments expanded grounds on which the state can implicitly ban protests, avoiding explicit language of prohibition in favor of language of withdrawing permission or “suggesting changes to the event’s location and/or timing.”

Withdrawing and Annulling Authorization

Authorities can withdraw consent for an event they had previously sanctioned if they receive information from another state agency that, for example, someone who is barred from organizing an assembly is listed among organizers.[421] This can appear reasonable, allowing officials who decide on assembly requests to “catch up” and act on information they receive from other agencies.

But, as noted, the grounds on which people are banned from being organizers are unfair and disproportionate.[422] Such communication between state agencies is not made public and can only be contested in court after the fact.[423]

Likewise, if officials decide that an organizer disseminated information about an authorized event that differs from the aims, format, or estimated number of participants indicated in the request and/or agreed upon with authorities, the state can withdraw authorization.[424] This gives authorities wide discretion to determine whether such a discrepancy exists and opens the way for arbitrary withdrawal of permission.

Another amendment explicitly allows officials to withdraw authorization in the event of an emergency or terrorist attack or threat thereof, and either suggest a different time and place or request that organizers submit a new request.[425]

Such threats are obviously legitimate grounds for interfering with the right to assembly. But the authorities’ recent record of using any means to bar peaceful protests raises concern that officials may use unsubstantiated claims of threats as pretexts to selectively restrict free assemblies.

An example of such a claim is a media interview given by an MP, following the winter 2021 wave of unauthorized opposition protests. The MP claimed there was “reliable information” that terrorist groups could target unauthorized rallies and demonstrations.[426] He provided no information to substantiate the allegations. 

Another new clause provides that any change to the declared aims, form, or even number of participants would oblige organizers to submit a new authorization request.[427] For example, if organizers believe that the number of participants in an authorized protest is likely to exceed what they had reflected in the request, they must notify authorities.

This would automatically annul the previously granted permission and would require organizers to re-start the authorization process. Given the above-described timelines, the organizers could not hold the protest on the planned date and would face penalties if they did so.[428]

Yet if organizers were to preemptively inflate the expected number of protesters, they risk being denied permission to hold the event at their preferred venue, on the grounds that it is not suitable for a larger gathering.[429] Local rules in some regions require organizers of larger gatherings to notify, or obtain permission from, several state bodies.[430]

“Proposals” for Changes in Protest Formats

Authorities can also change the event’s format. If organizers wanted to combine different types of assembly, for example, hold a march and demonstration, authorities can choose one of those forms for them.[431] If organizers fail to notify authorities of their consent or provide notification but go ahead with the event in some other format, the protest would be considered unauthorized.

The wide discretion that the law gives authorities to grant or refuse authorizations or arbitrarily force a change of time, location, or form on protesters and leaving them with a choice to “take it or leave it” is a clear negation of freedom of assembly.

The new amendments also require organizers to formalize acceptance of any changes that they negotiate with authorities regarding the event’s timing, venue, and format. Failure to do so renders the event unauthorized, and hence banned.[432] The law does not clarify what would constitute the organizers’ formalized acceptance of these changes: additional correspondence, in-person notification, or some other procedure.

It is not difficult to envisage a scenario whereby an event organizer held a planned event and respected the changes required by authorities but cannot prove that they notified authorities in time of their acceptance of these changes.

Role of Journalists

Amendments concerning journalists explicitly ban protesters and participants of other public gatherings from using journalists’ insignia[433] and require journalists covering such events to abide by the same rules of conduct as participants.[434] 

The provision on insignia is in principle reasonable. But in practice it could serve as grounds for police to interfere with journalists’ work covering protests. OVD-Info, experts on public assemblies, for example noted that the provision enables police to detain journalists arbitrarily for several hours to verify their credentials and whether they were lawfully using their insignia.[435] 

At the same time, press insignia have not protected reporters from police abuse at protests. During the protests in various cities across Russia in January[436] and February 2021, several human rights groups documented incidents of police beatings and arrests of journalists covering events. The journalists were wearing jackets or armbands clearly marked with “press” and carried press cards.[437]

Past practice also raises concern that police may use the new rules to prevent reporters from documenting police abuse at protests. For example, during protests in Moscow on February 2, police backed a group of peaceful protesters against a wall in a courtyard.[438] They demanded that reporters leave the scene. Had the reporters refused to do so, authorities could have used the new amendments as an additional tool to penalize them.

The new law explicitly bans journalists covering public events, from, among other things:

• Campaigning or disseminating information about the planned public event, whether in support or against, including by displaying any symbols expressing “individual or collective opinions”;
• Taking part in “organizing, discussions about, or decision-making or other collective actions in accordance with the aims” of the event;
• Organizing donations and petition-signing regarding the event.[439]

Lawmakers introduced these provisions several months after protests that Russian journalists held in response to criminal cases against their colleagues.[440] The provisions’ ambit is not limited to demonstrations, but also covers other kinds of public gatherings, such as discussions and debates. 

Federal Law №541-FZ of December 30, 2020

New Funding Restrictions, Unreasonable Expense Management Burdens on Organizers

The second bill[441] that entered into force in January 2021[442] created additional hurdles for public events expected to draw more than 500 people.

The amendments in this law ban cash donations for such events, and oblige organizers to have accounts in Russian banks and to process any payments related to events only via them.[443] When organizers submit their protest authorization request, they must now also include banking details for the account used for fundraising for any related expenses.[444] They must also submit an expense report to the local authorities, who forward it to the police.[445]

The new amendments ban funding from a wide range of sources, including various types of foreign actors[446] and Russian NGOs, unregistered groups, and individuals designated as “foreign agents.”[447] The law also bans donations from people under the age of 16; legal entities that were registered less than a year prior to the donation, and anonymous donors. 

The definition of “anonymous” donors leaves ample room for arbitrary interpretation. If even one item of required information about a donor is deemed missing or inaccurate, the donor is considered anonymous.[448] For individuals, this list includes the full name and complete address; for legal entities, it includes the taxpayer identification number, full title, and banking details.[449] 

The amendments not only apply to demonstrations, but also to other public gatherings, which Russian law broadly defines as “joint presence of people for discussion of issues of societal importance in a space designated or adapted for these purposes.”[450] This would encompass workshops, debates, seminars, lectures, and various other public events.  

Considering this wide range, the ban on funding of mass public events by international organizations leaves unclear how entities such as the United Nations could organize large conferences in Russia. It also leaves unclear whether foreign entities would be barred, for example, from organizing or donating to a marathon or similar event to raise awareness about a social cause.

The law places excessive and potentially unrealistic burdens on organizers to track and manage funds raised for such public events. Organizers must return to the sender any donations received from banned sources, explaining why the funds are being returned. Donations deemed “anonymous” must be transferred to the federal budget within 10 days of their receipt, but not later than the day of the public event.

Organizers would possibly have to pay out of their pockets any fees for transferring returned funds because the law explicitly bans spending collected donations for anything other than organizing and conducting the public event. The law does not clarify whether this would include fees on “non-compliant” donations.

The law also presumes that organizers will have the resources necessary to analyze and process every single donation, irrespective of its value, and execute returns with individual explanations. Under the timeline provisions for such returns, if organizers receive a large number of donations within days or even on the day of the event, organizers could still be obligated to process all returns no later than the day of the event.

The law also requires organizers to return any unspent portion of the total of donations to all donors, proportionate to the size of their donations. This requires them to identify all donors, calculate the amounts due, process transfers, and pay fees. Organizers have only 10 days after the event to comply. Failure to comply with these cumbersome procedures for fundraising, transfers, expenditures, and returns would constitute an administrative offense (see below).[451]

Finally, the new law creates concern about donor privacy. Individuals must submit detailed private information: full name, date of birth, residential address, passport details, and citizenship, and confirm that they do not fall within one of the above-listed categories from which donations are banned.[452]

Legal entities must submit taxpayer number, name, registration date, banking details, and confirm that they are not from one of the banned categories.[453] The law allows event organizers to obtain this detailed information but does not provide any privacy safeguards except for declaring that organizers may not disclose this information to third parties except for unspecified “cases prescribed by law.”

Amendments to the Criminal Code that Affect Public Assemblies

The two bills introduced in December 2020 amended the criminal code. One expanded the definition of hooliganism[454] and the other amended the criminal article on damaging roads and transportation lines to include impeding traffic.[455] Both were adopted and signed into law in December and entered into force on January 10, 2021.[456]

The amendments changed the definition of criminal hooliganism, preserving its core as “gross violation of public order, expressing obvious disrespect of society” but substituting one of its three thresholds from the earlier qualifier of “use of arms or objects used as arms” to the more broad and vague notion of “violence to others or threat of its use.”[457]

The amended article concerning damaging vehicles, transport lines, and so on was changed to include blocking transport infrastructure and impeding vehicles and pedestrians’ movement.[458] The amendments also significantly lowered the threshold for criminal liability to jeopardizing a person’s life, health, or safety, or risking property damage or destruction.[459] 

The law provides no clear criteria for distinguishing circumstances where such a threat exists in the context of public assemblies. As OVD-Info has noted, this allows law enforcement officials to abuse this uncertainty and avoid the burden of proof.[460]

The new penalty is up to one year of imprisonment. The amendments also introduced additional levels of aggravated offense. If previously these were only the death or one or more persons, now they also include non-serious bodily harm through negligence, punishable by up to two years behind bars; less serious bodily harm, by up to three years’ imprisonment; and serious bodily harm or significant damage, by up to four years.[461]

The Supreme Court submitted to parliament a negative review of the bill, noting that the drafter failed to explain how pre-existing legislation was insufficient and stating that the listed new offenses should be qualified as administrative offenses, not criminal. During parliamentary hearings, MPs from parties other than United Russia unsuccessfully challenged the necessity for these amendments.[462]

Shortly after the amendments were enacted, authorities applied these new articles widely in several cities across Russia against participants in the January 2021 mass protests.[463] According to OVD-Info, among the many protesters hit with a variety of criminal charges in 2021, at least 27 were charged with impeding traffic, and at least four under the new expanded definition of simple hooliganism.[464]

Indeed, authorities used the impeding traffic charge during this period more than they had in the entire preceding decade.[465] In October 2021, a protester, Gleb Maryasov, was sentenced to 10 months in prison on allegations of organizing and inciting blocking traffic in Moscow during the January 23 protest.[466] 

The amendments created yet another convenient tool to prosecute and imprison protesters and organizers for peaceful, albeit unauthorized protests, and ultimately intimidate others from participating in future protests. As noted, authorities have commonly used various reasons to refuse authorization for public assemblies critical of the government. For example, they have sealed areas that organizers planned as the protest venue, causing overflow to nearby streets and sidewalks. The new amendments let authorities file criminal charges against organizers and protesters for this overflow.

Russian authorities continued to expand their toolkit to ban and criminalize protest. They also misused Covid-19 restrictions to impose blanket bans on opposition protests and gatherings. Whereas civic activists are in constant danger of triggering the numerous new trip wires, mass gatherings in support of federal or local authorities can be organized with dubious safety measures but without consequences for organizers.

Federal Laws no.24-FZ of February 24, 2021, and no.102-FZ of April 30, 2021, Administrative Offenses

A separate set of amendments that introduced penalties for the new public assembly offenses described above were developed and submitted to parliament as part of the autumn 2020 package of bills.[473] The bills were signed into law in February and April 2021, respectively.[474]

The first set of these amendments more than tripled the minimum and maximum amounts of fines and added mandatory labor as a possible penalty for interfering with the work of police or other officials, or non-compliance with their orders.[475]

This offense can relate to refusal to obey an order in a wide variety of contexts. However, two factors strongly suggest that the new penalties aim to further restrict freedom of assembly. Lawmakers introduced the stiffened penalties together with new, restrictive public assembly rules. Authorities regularly press these charges against protesters taking part in unauthorized, and sometimes even sanctioned, protests.

The law also introduced a new charge for violating the rules on raising, managing, and reporting on funds, corresponding to the offenses described above. The new charge penalizes even late submission of, or inaccuracies in, these expense reports.[476] The penalty for individuals ranges from 10,000 to 20,000 rubles (US$135 and $270); for legal entities, between 70,000 to 200,000 rubles ($940 and $2,700).[477]

Likewise, persons or entities who are now banned from donating but who do so face fines ranging from between 10,000 to 15,000 rubles ($130 to $200) for individuals, and between 15,000 rubles and 100,000 rubles ($200 and $1,350) for legal entities. This expansion of grounds for administrative liability gives authorities more opportunities to apply criminal charges for repeated violations of public assembly regulations.[478]

The second set of amendments[479] to the Code of Administrative Offenses expanded the scope of violations of public assembly rules to include penalties for unauthorized use of journalist insignia at public events. This new offense is punishable with a fine of between 20,000 and 30,000 rubles ($270 to $405).

2022 Law

Federal Law №498-FZ of December 5, 2022

As described in the section on Foreign Agents above, in December 2022, a new law was adopted[480] to implement the provisions of the July 2022 “Foreign Influence” law.

Among other things, it also restricted foreign agents right to peaceful assembly.

Through its amendments to the 2004 law on assemblies, the new law explicitly banned foreign agents from organizing any assemblies and reiterated a ban on donations from foreign agents in support of assemblies. It also drastically expanded blanket bans on locations where assemblies can be organized to include the vicinity of buildings of state bodies and surrounding areas.

The blanket ban also extends to critical infrastructure objects, playgrounds, and sports fields, building and territories of educational institutions, medical and social welfare organizations, religious buildings and their territories, religious pilgrimage sites, sea or river ports or terminals, railway stations, bus stations or terminals, and airports.

Prior to that, the blanket ban introduced by the Russian authorities covered territories in the vicinity of pipelines, railroads, territories surrounding presidential residencies, emergency services buildings, courts, and penitentiary system buildings and territories. However, many of these locations, such as territories adjacent to railway stations, airports, religious, medical organizations, and educational institutions[481] have in fact been banned for many years, but through decisions of local authorities.

In June 2020, the Constitutional Court ruled that such local restrictions were disproportionate and exceeded the competence of local authorities, since they were not enshrined in law.[482] Instead of universally overturning localized restrictions, the legislators explicitly expanded and enshrined such bans in federal law.

Furthermore, the law allows local authorities to determine additional locations where public assemblies would be banned or can be restricted by time, if this is justified by “historical, cultural or other objective specificities” of the given region.

Local authorities therefore would have wide discretion to ban a protest, since neither of the vague categories of “specificities” are defined in law. The only requirement for the local authorities that the bill provides is that they would need to mark such locations.

IV. Attacking Free Expression

Introduction

Russian authorities proposed and adopted new laws that chill free speech within a larger context of developments in Russian society and globally that authorities perceive as threatening.

Most dramatic are the laws that introduced war censorship, adopted shortly after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Earlier laws expanded criminal defamation charges and made penalties harsher. They followed Navalny and FBK’s investigations into high-level corruption and embezzlement that attracted millions of viewers on YouTube.

The context for harsher criminal penalties for accusing someone of sexual assault is the #MeToo movement, which reached Russia in 2016. The penalties for insulting veterans followed Alexei Navalny’s outburst against pro-government attempts to co-opt the USSR’s victory in World War II for the ruling party’s political agenda. 

2020 Laws on Insult and Defamation

Federal Law №513-FZ of December 30, 2020, Amendments to Code of Administrative Offences

The bill[483] amending administrative liability for insult and defamation was first introduced in May 2020[484] and was adopted as part of the wider package of laws adopted on December 25, 2020. Putin signed it into law five days later.[485]

In the bill’s explanatory note, lawmakers focused on the need to protect people from insult by government officials.[486] In recent years there were several episodes in which government officials’ offensive comments provoked public outcry.[487] In practice, the new law only partially concerned insult by public officials, and drastically expanded the applicability of the administrative charge for insult and corresponding penalties. It is likely to have more serious negative consequences for civil society activists and political opponents than for government officials. 

The previous definition of insult related chiefly to insult with the use of “indecent” language. The amendments expanded this to include not only indecent humiliation but also the broadly ranging “other forms contravening morality.”[488]

Defining “morality” is a value judgment open to wide and subjective interpretation that does not allow for predictable application of the law. This legal norm therefore does not meet criteria for legal certainty.

The amendments also envisage insult of “individually undetermined” persons.[489] This could allow authorities to institute proceedings without a complainant and/or victim, presumably based on authorities’ assessment that a given statement or content may be insulting to some individuals or groups.

The new law expanded the definition of public insult to include online content. Provisions concerning liability for failure to prevent insult leave unclear who would be held responsible for this offense: social media companies, webpage owners, or internet providers.

For all categories of insult, fines were increased up to three-fold.[490]  

The amendments introduced defamation as an administrative offense, and penalties for legal entities since they cannot be criminally liable.

The definition of defamation is identical to that of the criminal offense: “dissemination of intentionally false information that denigrates the honor and esteem of another person and damages their reputation.” The penalties for a legal entity are fines ranging between 500,000 rubles to 3 million rubles (approx. US$ 6,725 and $40,350).[491]

Federal Law №538-FZ of December 30, 2020, Amendments to the Criminal Code on Defamation

Defamation was re-criminalized in Russia in summer 2012, shortly after Putin’s return as president, and just six months after it had been decriminalized upon the initiative of then-President Dmitry Medvedev.[492]

In late December 2020, MP Dmitriy Viatkin introduced a package of amendments to the criminal code’s definition and application of defamation. Just 16 days later, parliament adopted it, and Putin signed it into law.[493]

The amendments expanded the definition of defamation and introduced imprisonment as a penalty for aggravated defamation offenses.[494] In the bill’s explanatory note, Viatkin stated the amendments aimed to expand liability for criminal defamation to online content and justified introducing deprivation of liberty (and forced labor) as a penalty by the need to “provide courts with possibilities for choosing fair punishment.”

The criminal code’s amended article on defamation has five parts. The first contains the definition of “simple” defamation and corresponding penalties. Subsequent parts address aggravated defamation:

• [Simple] defamation;

• Public defamation (through public statement, public broadcast, mass media or Internet, including against an individually undefined group);

• Defamation committed by using one’s official position;

• Defamation involving false allegations that a person carries a socially dangerous (contagious) disease;

• Defamation involving false allegations that a person perpetrated sexual assault or committed grave or particularly grave crime.[495]

The amendments did not touch upon the first part of the article. The definition of “simple” defamation and the penalty remained unchanged. With this law, only “simple” defamation does not involve deprivation of liberty.

“Simple” defamation is the only criminal defamation offense that triggers a private prosecution, where the plaintiff bears the burden of proof regarding the wrongdoing and the damage inflicted. Defamation with any of the aggravating circumstances triggers state prosecution. According to an expert with the human rights group Agora, Damir Gainutdinov,[496] this results in very different outcomes, with most state prosecution cases resulting in guilty verdicts.

In fact, court data for 2019[497] suggests that while an overwhelming majority of criminal cases under “simple” defamation resulted in acquittals,[498] there were no acquittals under other categories of defamation, although the number of criminal cases opened under the aggravated offenses was also far lower.[499]

However, now that various types of online content can trigger aggravated criminal defamation charges, the number of criminal cases may significantly increase. Another lawyer stated that courts mainly rule in favor of plaintiffs in cases where the injured parties are state officials, politicians, businesspersons, or clergy.[500] Defamation, the lawyer said, “doesn’t work” for the broader public.

The new definition of public defamation expands the format of the offending utterance to include online content. It also includes “individually undefined” groups of individuals as potential victims. An expert with the Mass Media Defense Center, Svetlana Kuzevanova, suggested this constitutes a drastic change in the concept of defamation in Russian law, departing from the defense of an individual’s reputation to the protection of undefined groups.

In practice, it is unclear how intentional falsehood regarding an undefined group can be established and how information about such a group can be verified.[501] Kuzevanova also noted that these amendments contravene international standards regarding defamation, as well as Russian judicial practice.[502] Another lawyer suggested that, in introducing the notion of “individually undefined” groups, lawmakers were guided by the fact that the primary target of defamatory statements were government officials.[503] 

The amendments expanded penalties for public defamation to include up to two years of compulsory labor, up to two months’ arrest, or up to two years’ imprisonment.[504]

In February 2021, opposition activist Alexei Navalny was sentenced to a large fine under this charge in relation to a tweet he posted in June 2020.[505] He was convicted after the amendments entered into force, but since criminal law cannot be applied retroactively, he was sentenced in accordance with the law as in force at the time of his alleged offense. If someone were to be charged for the same offense now, they could receive up to two years’ imprisonment.

Forced labor and deprivation of liberty were also added as penalties for all other categories of defamation: up to three years for defamation with the use of one’s official position,[506] up to four years for defamation concerning carrier status of contagious diseases,[507] and up to five years for defamation concerning allegations of sexual assault or other grave crimes.[508]

Criminal Defamation and Anti-Corruption Allegations

Before the amendments were adopted, authorities could not seek the imprisonment of a person in connection with defamation charges directly, since the penalty for defamation itself was limited to fines and mandatory labor. Instead, authorities could pursue imprisonment only in the event of malicious noncompliance with a defamation verdict, court order, or other judicial act.[509] This required initiating a separate criminal case and a trial.[510]

In 2019[511] and 2020,[512] two separate criminal cases on charges of malicious noncompliance with earlier court rulings were opened against Ivan Zhdanov, director of the Foundation Against Corruption (FBK), which is associated with Alexei Navalny. Both cases stemmed from earlier rulings in which courts found that FBK’s high-profile anti-corruption investigations were defamatory.

In the first case in 2017, Alisher Usmanov, a billionaire metals magnate, filed a lawsuit in relation to FBK’s investigative piece, “Don’t You Call Him Dimon,” alleging then-Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev was benefiting from a multi-layered corruption scheme.[513] Following the trial, during which the court rejected 22 out of 23 motions filed by the FBK and Navalny defense team,[514] the court ruled for Usmanov and ordered Navalny and the FBK to take down the video and several social media posts and publish official retractions.[515]

Zhdanov explained that FBK complied with the court ruling by publishing an official retraction on its website and YouTube channel. However, the video remained available on Navalny’s website and YouTube channel, over which Zhdanov claimed he and the FBK had no control.[516] Nevertheless, in July 2020, a court found Zhdanov guilty of malicious noncompliance with the court order and fined him.[517]

In the second case, the charges stemmed from an October 2019 court ruling against FBK, FBK’s lawyer Liubov Sobol, and Alexei Navalny in a defamation lawsuit[518] brought by a company that FBK alleged belonged to the late Yevgeniy Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s chef” and then-head of the Wagner mercenary group. The defamation lawsuit related to online publications, including a 2019 FBK video in which they alleged that the 2018 outbreak of dysentery in Moscow schools was caused by poor food quality, asserting that Prigozhin’s company supplied in-school meals.[519]

A Moscow court ordered FBK, Sobol, and Navalny to pay nearly 88 million rubles (about $1,370,000) in damages, publish an official retraction, and remove the YouTube video. Russian authorities added Zhdanov to the wanted list (he has remained abroad) and opened several other criminal cases against him pertaining to his FBK work.[520]

These cases could foreshadow future defamation cases concerning high-level anti-corruption investigations. The 2020 amendments allow authorities to opt for prosecution on defamation charges that are directly punishable by deprivation of liberty. Notably, allegations of large-scale embezzlement and bribery, which FBK made in the above cases, amount to allegations of serious crimes, and currently could trigger up to five years’ imprisonment. This could have a strong chilling effect on anti-corruption activism, undermine anti-corruption efforts, and seriously hamper the right to free expression and to access and impart information.

In 2021, authorities reactivated defamation cases that were effectively dormant for four or five years concerning the founders of three independent investigative journalism projects—Roman Dobrokhotov (The Insider), Roman Anin (iStories), and Roman Badanin (Project)—and raided their homes and those of some of their journalists under this pretext, shortly after they published pieces revealing high-level corruption involving top leadership of Russian law enforcement and national security bodies.[521] Dobrokhotov and Badanin left the country in 2021; Anin left Russia in March 2022.[522]

Criminal Defamation and Sexual Assault Allegations

The 2020 amendments increased the gravity of, and penalty for, defamatory allegations concerning sexual assault and sexual molestation[523] to a maximum five-year prison penalty. Absent a verdict against the alleged perpetrator or an active criminal case, the burden of proof can shift to the person claiming to have been the survivor of sexual abuse.

The context for these amendments was the authorities’ increasing promotion of “traditional values,” their resort to “traditional values” arguments to minimize the problem of gender-based violence,[524] and the phenomenon of women sharing their experiences of sexual violence on social media in 2016, under the hashtag #IAmNotAfraidtoSpeak.”[525]

Criminal cases for sexual assault or molestation are relatively rare compared to the scale of sexual assault and gender-based violence in Russia, which is widely believed to be underreported.

A 2011 report by a Russian NGO working with survivors of sexual violence found that the intimate nature of sexual violence, coupled with victim-blaming, results in about 80 percent of survivors concealing sexual violence, even from those close to them.[526]

According to Mari Davtyan, a lawyer who works on gender-based violence, most rape cases do not reach courts because consent is not part of the discourse on this issue, and in many cases, law enforcement refuse to identify a rape as such.[527]

Polls published in 2018 indicated that around a quarter of women encountered sexual violence (25 percent) and approximately the same number (24 percent) experienced sexual harassment.[528] A 2020 survey on sexual harassment suggests that more than half (55 percent) of those polled considered the problem to be exaggerated.[529]

Sexual assault survivors who do not successfully seek justice and who speak out about their experiences years later may risk criminal defamation.

A January 2021 Russian Supreme Court ruling provides a basis for sexual violence survivors to publicly share their accounts without fear of prosecution.[530] Pertaining to a civil defamation lawsuit concerning allegations of sexual assault that a survivor posted on her social media account, the court took into consideration jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women to conclude that women’s right to life free from gender-based violence is inseparable from other basic human rights, including to free expression.

It acknowledged that sharing personal experiences on social media has become one of the forms of discussing otherwise suppressed and taboo subjects of sexual violence. The Supreme Court ruled that courts should closely protect survivors of sexual violence from efforts to interfere with their freedom of expression. It is not yet clear, however, how this ruling will affect judicial practice in criminal defamation cases.

2020-2022 Laws on Extrajudicial Blocking of Online Resources, Including for Insult and Defamation

Federal Laws no.530-FZ of December 30, 2020, no.260-FZ of July 1, 2021, and no.584 of December 29, 2022

In recent years, Russian authorities have gradually built a legal framework and digital and physical infrastructure for increasingly restrictive control over online content and access to information from Russia.[531] Some of these measures used the pretext of protection from defamation or insult to simplify and streamline extrajudicial blocking of “offending” content.

In December 2020, a law was adopted requiring owners of websites or social media pages with over 500,000 daily Russian users to monitor and block “offending” content.

Among other elements, this included an obligation to prevent the dissemination of defamatory information and ensure the protection of dignity and reputation of individuals and legal entities.[532]

It also required and regulated constant content monitoring, and extrajudicial blocking of content violating Russian laws, for example, materials of “undesirable” organizations or information about unauthorized assemblies, and prescribed blocking and unblocking procedures. It also imposed obligations related to users’ data and content storage, annual reporting, and the like.

Ahead of the second reading, the bill was expanded to add an obligation for social media to ensure the dignity and reputation of individuals and organizations, and to monitor for information that can be insulting to personal dignity, public morals, disrespectful to society, state bodies and state symbols, or contains incitement to participate in unauthorized public assemblies (on par with mass riots, extremism, etc.).

The bill also had an additional provision enabling individuals to sue social networks for defamation if they did not comply with the request to take down the offending content.

The law entered into force in February 2021.

Meanwhile, also in February 2021, a group of MPs introduced another bill for extrajudicial blocking of defamatory online content containing allegations that concerned individuals have perpetrated a crime.

The authors of the bill explained that while procedures for blocking “false” or insulting information already existed, they required decisions of competent bodies and lacked mechanisms for effective “direct and prompt protection” from defamation. The authors addressed this by proposing amendments that authorize a person accused of perpetrating a crime to ask the Prosecutor General’s Office to work with Roskomnadzor to block online resources containing such information.

The authors claimed that the bill was aimed at protecting the rights of citizens, but envisaged no distinction, for example, for public figures, and the responsibility to remain open to public scrutiny and criticism.[533]

The bill was signed into law with immediate effect on July 1, 2021.[534]

Under this law, a concerned person alleging that online content contains defamatory information against them can submit a request to prosecutors, providing information about the offending online resource and justification for the blocking request. Upon inspection by prosecutors and review by the Prosecutor General’s Office, the request is sent to Roskomnadzor, who contacts the domain host. If the latter does not block the online resource within one day, it is blocked by the authorities.

Decisions about such blockings can be appealed in court, but the parties who may file such an appeal do not include the domain host. Also, filing such an appeal does not have suspensive effect.

Another law, adopted in December 2022, placed responsibility for moderating online content on the owners of ad placement websites, and also restricted foreign ownership of such services to 20 percent.[535] It specifically obliges the owners of such online platforms to ensure the protection of dignity and reputation of individuals and organizations, placing the burden of compliance with legislation on protection from defamation and insult on the online platforms’ owners.

2022-2023 War Censorship Laws

Introduction

On February 24, 2022, Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which immediately sparked mass anti-war protests in Russia and international condemnation. Thousands of anti-war peaceful protesters gathered every day in the first month, to which authorities responded with mass detentions, intimidation, and police brutality. Many public figures openly called for people to join protests, calling for an end to the war, and condemned Russia’s actions.

On February 24, Roskomnadzor demanded that media refer to the war only as a “special operation in connection with the situation in Lugansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic,” and said that only information from official sources could be published.[536] Rozkomnadzor publicly warned media that “unverified” and “false” information would be instantly blocked and disseminating it would result in fines.[537]

Within three days, Roskomnadzor threatened to block at least 11 media outlets, accusing them of publishing “false information” about the war for reporting on Russian forces’ shelling Ukrainian cities, causing civilian casualties, and referring to the armed conflict as “an attack,” “invasion,” or “declaration of war.”[538]

The same day, the Russian Defense Ministry urged media “not to become the blind victims” of Western information warfare, accusing independent Russian media and, in particular, Novaya Gazeta, of spreading “fake information prepared by a stoned gang of Nazis and [Ukrainian Secret Service]” using “templates approved and published by US propaganda centers and their NATO allies … to discredit the Russian Armed Forces.”[539]

Russian authorities started limiting access to information online.

Between February 27 and March 3, authorities blocked access to at least nine Russian media sites, including The Village, TV Rain (Dozhd), Echo of Moscow, DOXA, The New Times, Krym.Realii, Taiga.Info, Current Time, and several Ukrainian media outlets.[540] On March 3, a leading independent media broadcaster, TV Rain, announced that it would temporarily suspend broadcasting because the new bill was forcing them to lie.[541] Earlier, a radio station made a similar announcement.[542]

On March 4, parliament hastily enacted two laws amending the criminal code and the Code of Administrative Offenses that introduced war censorship, outlawing and penalizing independent war reporting, as well as anti-war speech and anti-war protest, with stiff prison penalties for individuals of up to 15 years’ imprisonment and penalties for organizations of up to 1 million rubles ($15,000).

To fast-track these amendments, both laws were not introduced to parliament as stand-alone bills, but as amendments inserted into unrelated bills that were already on parliament’s agenda. Lawmakers pushed through censorship amendments to the criminal code by attaching them to the bill penalizing calling for sanctions against Russia, which had passed its first reading in May 2018 and since then had been effectively frozen.[543] They attached administrative penalties, for “discrediting” the armed forces, to a June 2021 bill on illegal financial transactions that had passed its first reading by December 2021.[544]

In one day, March 4, parliament held second and third readings of the two bills, and both chambers adopted them unanimously.[545] President Putin signed them into law with immediate effect.[546] The unprecedented haste suggests the urgency the Kremlin felt to silence war critics and information channels differing from the official line.

The laws imposed strict censorship on all discussion of Russia’s war against Ukraine, with Russian authorities using them to prosecute people for a wide range of speech about the war, including merely describing the armed conflict as “war” or “invasion.” The censorship provisions also apply to any deployment involving Russian armed forces beyond Ukraine. Two weeks later, parliamentarians adopted another set of amendments that expanded application of the “discrediting” and “fake information” to include operations of all state bodies abroad.

In anticipation of the adoption of the draconian laws, several foreign media pulled out of Russia,[547] while at least two Russian independent media deleted all their previous war-related publications. Subsequent months saw an exodus of Russian and foreign media to protect the safety and security of journalists after the new censorship laws.

Federal Law №32-FZ of March 4, 2022 (Criminalization of Discreditation and False Information about Russian Armed Forces)

Amendments to the Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code 

Amendments to the criminal code introduced three new criminal articles.[548]

• “False Information” about Russian Armed Forces

The first, article 207.3 of the criminal code, penalized “public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Russian Armed Forces,” with penalties ranging from large fines to imprisonment of up to three years.[549]

Those who allegedly disseminate such false information using their “official position” or as part of an organized group or accompanied by “artificial creation of evidence for prosecution”; or “guided by greed, or motivated by political, ideological, race, ethnic or religious hatred or hatred against a social group” or for monetary gain, could face 5 to 10 years in prison.[550]

In the event of “grave consequences,” the penalty is imprisonment from 10 to 15 years, with a ban on carrying out certain professional or other activities for up to five years.

Russian criminal law does not contain an exhaustive list of what constitutes “grave consequences,” and depending on the specific crime, law enforcement and courts have interpreted it to include significant financial loss and bodily harm or death. What might constitute a grave consequence of disseminating alleged false information, is therefore essentially at the discretion of the prosecution or court.

The first three criminal cases on the new charges were opened on March 16.[551] Two days later, the first person was placed in pretrial detention on the same charges.[552] In January 2023, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office reported that in 2022, 187 criminal cases were opened on the “false information” charges and 78 of them reached courts, while over 125,000 internet resources were either blocked or had to pull down information concerning armed conflict in Ukraine following Russia authorities’ demands.[553]

According to one media estimate, by early January 2023, Russian courts issued verdicts in 22 such criminal cases, with six prison sentences, five suspended sentences, four sentences to forced labor, and seven fines, while two cases were closed and two returned to the prosecutor’s office.[554]

The “false information” charge proved an effective and convenient tool to suppress anti-war speech. According to Russian human rights defenders, in 2022, it was by far the most widely used charge in anti-war cases.[555] Most individuals facing these charges were either detained or fled the country.[556] Half are journalists, bloggers, or civic activists.[557]

Among them have been prominent opposition figures, including Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, sentenced to lengthy prison terms for criticizing Russia’s war against Ukraine and attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure. In December 2022, a court sentenced Yashin to eight-and-a-half years in prison with an additional four-year ban on internet use.[558] In April 2022, after a year in pretrial detention, Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in maximum security prison on combined charges of treason, dissemination of “false information” about the conduct of the Russian Armed Forces, and involvement with an “undesirable organization.”[559]

In July 2022, Aleksey Gorinov, a member of the Krasnoselsky municipal council in Moscow, became the first person to be sentenced to a prison term on these charges. He received a seven-year prison sentence and a four-year ban on holding official positions for delivering an anti-war speech during a council meeting in March 2022.

In January 2023, a Russian court delivered the first verdict on these charges in absentia, against a former police officer sentenced to eight years in prison for social media posts, in which he wrote that Russia had attacked Ukraine.[560] At time of writing, the harshest sentence in absentia of 11 years in prison was handed down to a journalist, Michael Nacke, and a founder of Conflict Intelligence Team, Ruslan Leviyev (Karpuk), for their online streams discussing Russia’s war in Ukraine, including civilian casualties, the shelling of a nuclear power plant, and Russia’s war censorship laws.[561] In July 2024, courts issued sentences, in absentia, to authors Masha Gessen and Mikhail Zygar for 8 and 8,5 years respectively, on fake news charges.[562] Earlier, a court had handed down a nine-year prison sentence, also in absentia, to Russian blogger Veronika Belotserkovskaya for her online post about Russia’s bombing of Mariupol; Russian authorities froze her assets in Russia, including her apartment.[563]

The largest number of cases were opened in April 2022. Since then, there has been a notable decline; one Russian lawyer attributed this in part to the law’s effectiveness in freezing public debate about the war.[564]

According to official data and media estimates, in 2023, 135 new cases were opened on “false information” charges, and at least 70 cases on these charges reached Russian courts, while authorities blocked 69,000 on allegations of “false information.”[565]

According to Russian human rights group OVD-Info, at least 77 people were sentenced on “false information” and 52 on “discreditation” charges in 2023.[566] Among them were both prominent opposition figures and people with no background in activism.

• Public Actions “Discrediting” Russian Armed Forces

The second new criminal code article is 280.3, outlawing and penalizing “public actions aimed at discrediting” the use of the Russian Armed Forces for “protection of [Russia’s] interests, its nationals, maintaining of international peace and security.” The definition of such “discreditation” was construed to specifically include public calls to “impede the deployment” of the armed forces.

Criminal charges under this article can be brought against individuals with at least one prior administrative conviction on the same charges within one year.[567] The maximum penalty was up to three years in prison, with subsequent amendments later increasing it to five, see below).[568] However, if there are aggravating circumstances, such as causing death by negligence, harm to health, damage to property, mass violation of public order, or interrupting the work of transportation, financial credit institutions, and other infrastructure, imprisonment could be increased to five years with subsequent amendments increasing this maximum penalty to seven years.[569]

In June 2022, the Ministry of Justice issued guidelines for judges, forensic experts, and investigators, clarifying the distinctions between charges of “false information” and “discrediting.” The ministry suggests that making a factual statement should be qualified as “intentionally false information,” whereas expressing negative opinions about the conduct of the military constitutes “discrediting.”[572]

Later that month, a popular opposition politician and former Yekaterinburg mayor, Yevgeniy Roizman, was charged with “discrediting,” according to him, for calling Russia’s war against Ukraine “an invasion.”[573]

• Calling for Sanctions

The third new article makes it a criminal offense for Russian nationals to call for sanctions against Russia, its nationals, or Russian legal entities. This in fact was the original provision of the bill before the “false information” and “discrediting” articles were added before the second reading.

The new article 284.2 targets “repeat offenders,” that is Russian nationals who within a year prior were sentenced on the same charges for an administrative offense. The penalties range from a fine to up to three years in prison combined with a fine.[574]

Since Russia’s occupation of Crimea and its role in the downing of the civilian flight MH-17 over Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine in 2014, various countries, including the US and the European Union, have imposed economic and political sanctions against Russian leadership, businesspeople with close ties to the Kremlin, and others.

 In the wake of the full-scale invasion, the number of new sanctions and restrictions against individuals, businesses, and trade with Russia exploded. Several international bodies and intergovernmental organizations have also acted to suspend Russian membership or expel Russia altogether.[575]

At time of writing, no information was available about criminal cases brought on charges of calling for sanctions. However, several Russian opposition figures, including Alexei Navalny and his aides, have long called for sanctions against Russian targets, including businesspeople who they believe are close to President Putin.[576] These new offenses are an additional tool to persecute opposition politicians and activists who support sanctions against Russian targets.

Federal Law №31-FZ (Amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses)

In parallel, parliament adopted similar amendments to the Code of Administrative offenses, introducing a new administrative offense of “discrediting” and “calls for sanctions” corresponding to the respective criminal articles.[577]

One of the key differences, beyond gravity of penalties, criminal records, and lower standards of fair trial safeguards, is that administrative penalties, unlike criminal penalties, can be applied to legal entities.

Public Actions “Discrediting” Russian Armed Forces

The definition of the administrative offense of “discrediting” the Russian Armed Forces is largely identical to that in the criminal code; the only difference is that the first offenders should be charged with the administrative offense. This offense is punishable by a fine that varies greatly among private individuals, officials or managers, and legal entities, with a maximum fine of up to 500,000 rubles ($7,000) for legal entities.[578]

Anyone with at least one prior administrative conviction for the same charge within one year can be indicted under the criminal code.

The law prescribes up to a doubling of fines in a range of “aggravating circumstances,” including those creating a risk of death, harm to health, damage to property, or mass violation of public order, or disrupting various infrastructure.

By late August 2022, 3,807 cases for discrediting armed forces were opened under administrative offense provisions (article 20.3.3).[579]

Calling for Sanctions

Similarly, the definition of the new administrative offense that bans calling for sanctions (article 20.3.4) is identical to that in the criminal code. The administrative offense is designed for first-time offenders. Anyone sentenced under this article who commits a second offense within one year could face criminal prosecution. The penalty is a maximum 50,000 ruble (approx. US$ 700) fine for individuals and a 500,000-ruble fine (approx. US$7,000) for legal entities.

Expansion beyond the Armed Forces (Federal Laws no.62 and no.63 of March 25, 2022, and no.57 and no.58 of March 18, 2023)

March 2022 Expansion to all State Bodies Operating Abroad

On March 23, 2022, Russia’s parliament adopted two bills introducing amendments to the Criminal Code and Code of Administrative Offenses, effectively expanding the ban on criticizing the armed forces to ban criticism of all Russian government actions abroad.[581]

Like the preceding censorship laws, in an apparent effort to expedite their adoption, lawmakers attached these amendments to bills already on parliament’s agenda related to the prosecution of forestry rules violations that had nothing to do with censorship.[582] 

The amendments expanded the definition of the criminal offenses of “false information” and “discrediting” and of the administrative “discrediting” offense to include any Russian government bodies operating abroad. This could cover entities such as the Russian Guard (Rosgvardiya) that have been taking active part in the armed conflict in Ukraine, as well as embassies, consulates, and emergency services.

The penalties remained the same as those set out in the initial law criminalizing “false information” and “discrediting” the Russian armed forces (see above).

March 2023 Expansion to “Volunteers”

On March 18, 2023, President Putin signed into law two more bills to extend application of “discreditation” and “fake news” provisions to “volunteers” taking part in armed conflicts.[583]

These amendments were requested by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the late founder and public face of the Russian Wagner mercenary group[584] The Wagner group has been involved in armed conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, fighting on the Russian side, and in recruiting convicts serving prison sentences, including for grave crimes in maximum security prisons,[585] to fight in Ukraine in exchange for pardons. Wagner also operates in several African countries and committed serious human rights violations in Mali and the Central African Republic.[586] Following Prigozhin and Wagner’s unsuccessful march on Moscow in June 2023,[587] Putin publicly acknowledged that Russia fully financed the armed group.[588]

In an open letter in January 2023, Prigozhin lobbied for amendments to ban any criticism of those fighting on the Russian side in the armed conflict in Ukraine, indicating that “a large number of volunteers are taking part, including those previously convicted” and sought that any information about their past felonies would be punishable with a five-year prison sentence.”[589]

Journalists reported numerous cases of convicts being released after completing the six-month contracts with Wagner, some of whom were serving lengthy prison sentences for grave crimes, including murder.[590]

The day after Prigozhin’s appeal, the chairman of the Duma, Viacheslav Volodin, instructed the chairmen of two parliamentary committees to develop the amendments.[591]

To fast-track the adoption of these amendments, they were folded into unrelated bills that had earlier passed through their first reading. This strategy, which had been similarly used to fast-track the adoption of the original bills on “discreditation” and “fake news,” aimed to circumvent the mandatory pause for revisions after the first reading. Thus, the amendments to the criminal code were appended to a bill concerning liability for trespassing in restricted areas, and the amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses were appended to a bill on dissemination of guidance on the production of ammunition for firearms in mass media.[592]

Apart from extending coverage of the corresponding articles to “volunteers” (groups, organizations, or individuals assisting the Russian Armed Forces), the amendments to the criminal code also increased the maximum penalties for “simple”—unaggravated—“discreditation” or “fake news” from three to five years in prison as well as aggravated “discreditation” from five to seven years in prison.

Furthermore, Russian lawmakers subsequently developed a new punishment for some of those convicted for “discreditation” or “fake news,” as well as several other charges increasingly used by Russian authorities against civic activists, particularly those who oppose the war.

New Nationality Law: Revoking Nationality for Discreditation/False Information about Armed Forces and Other Offenses (Federal Law №138-FZ of April 28, 2023)

In late April 2023, a new citizenship law was adopted in Russia.[593] It came into force on October 26, 2023,[594] and greatly expanded the capacity of Russian authorities to strip naturalized Russian nationals,[595] convicted for certain crimes, of their nationality and subsequently deport them from its territory.

Anti-war activists and other civic activists who did not acquire Russian nationality at birth, but were naturalized, could be at risk, since many criminal charges that are increasingly used against anti-war protesters and opposition activists in Russia are now featured as grounds for revoking Russian nationality.

The authors noted that in the 20 years since the adoption of the previous nationality law in 2002, over 7.3 million people obtained Russian nationality.[596] The total number of naturalized Russian nationals was not available at time of writing.

The new citizenship law supersedes the previous 2002 federal law. It drastically expands the list of crimes, sentencing for which entails terminating nationality with subsequent deportation. It also introduces additional grounds for termination—for actions deemed to pose a threat to national security, a norm that is vague and open to abuse.

As a result, on par with grave crimes such as terrorism or rape, the new law would enable authorities to strip Russian nationality from naturalized citizens convicted on criminal charges of “discreditation” or “fake news” about Russian Armed Forces or about Russian officials operating abroad and “volunteers,” such as Wagner mercenaries (see above).

The same norms would also be expanded to include many additional criminal charges that were used in recent years against civic activists, human rights defenders, journalists, and political opposition figures in Russia. These include:

• A charge of organizing mass riots (article 212), under which civic activists were prosecuted in the Bolotnaya case in 2014 and the Moscow case in 2019, as well as another charge of using violence against a police officer, if coupled with an extremism or terrorism charge;[597]

• Repeated violation of assembly rules (article 212.1), under which Ildar Dadin was sentenced in 2015[598] and several civic activists since, for peaceful, albeit unauthorized, protests[599];

• Creation or leadership of a religious or public association, if its activities involve violence against a person or otherwise harm their health; or creation or leadership of an NGO that incites people to refuse their civic duties or engage in other unlawful acts (article 239). This was one of the charges in recent verdicts against the late Alexei Navalny and former heads of local branches of his organization in Barnaul and Ufa—Vadim Ostanin and Lilia Chanysheva—as well as against several activists of the youth movement Vesna, prosecuted for anti-war speech (see above).

• High treason (article 275), under which prominent opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in maximum security prison, in combination with other charges, for speaking out against Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Kremlin regime.[600] Several other people have been recently detained reportedly for making donations to the Ukrainian Armed Forces[601];

• Public calls to extremist activities (article 280), one of the charges under which a number of Alexei Navalny’s affiliates were convicted[602];

• Participation or organization of activities of an “undesirable organization” or rendering financial support or services to it (article 284.1), based on which several Open Russia activists were sentenced in recent years and for which Andrei Pivovarov, the movement’s former executive director, has remained in prison[603];

• Rehabilitation of Nazism (article 354.1), which criminalizes “false information” about activities of the Soviet Union during World War II and denigrating symbols of Russian military glory (see below Section on Historic Truth). As noted above, several Vesna movement members have been indicted on these charges for anti-war speech.[604]

The expanded list of criminal charges that Russian authorities could use to strip naturalized persons of Russian nationality, if convicted, also include evasion of foreign agent’s obligations (article 330.1) and calling for sanctions against Russia, its nationals, or legal entities (article 284.2).

As noted earlier, investigators have brought at least 13 criminal cases against individuals alleging they failed to fulfill their foreign agent obligations.

Such provisions present a real threat to several civic activists and opposition figures, in particular, those engaged in international advocacy efforts.[605]

With that, the citizenship law also provides that terminating nationality would be applied without statutory limitations as to the date of naturalization, perpetration of the alleged offense, or date of the sentence.[606]

Stripping dissidents of acquired nationality and expelling them from the country, reminiscent of Soviet repressive practices, is not new in modern Russia.[607] In recent years, it has been employed against religious minorities, whom Russian authorities have designated as extremist, despite a lack of any calls for or incitement of violence.

The new nationality law also introduced additional grounds for terminating citizenship: committing actions that threaten Russian national security.[610] This concept appears related to earlier provisions of the 2002 Nationality Law, where decisions granting naturalization could be withdrawn if it had been acquired with the “purpose of conducting activities threatening the foundations of constitutional regime.”[611]

Notably, the law outlines an extrajudicial process for revoking nationality on these grounds, in which the FSB would decide whether the person had committed such acts. This norm contains no safeguards against statelessness and no statutory limitations as to when naturalization was granted or when the alleged threatening acts occurred. Hence, a person can be stripped of Russian nationality, even if that is their only nationality and they will become stateless. Likewise, if the person has acquired Russian nationality since childhood (but not at birth) and lived their entire life in Russia and committed an act that the FSB deems “threatening Russian national security,” there are no safeguards or bars against revoking their nationality.

The law provides that the concerned individual would have 10 days to appeal such a decision in court, during which time they could not be removed. However, the practice in other cases involving FSB decisions on threats to national security likely demonstrates the futility of such a process.

For example, Vanessa Kogan is the former director of the human rights organization Astreya, the partner group, which has since closed, of Stichting Russian Justice Initiative, an NGO, specializing in litigation and advocacy at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). In 2020, after applying for Russian nationality after legally residing in Russia for many years and having a Russian family, her request was rejected based on an FSB decision alleging she posed a threat to national security.[612] She was ordered to leave Russia in 15 days but managed to suspend the expulsion, pending a ruling of the ECtHR. Kogan left Russia in 2021.

It was only during her appeal before a local court that she learned about the existence of an FSB report that had presumably been the basis for the decision. However, she was denied access to it based on the claim it contained classified information. The court stated that the FSB had exclusive competence to assess whether foreign citizens represented a threat to national security, defense interests, public order, or public health, and that the court did not evaluate whether the relevant authorities had or had not acted reasonably when issuing administrative decisions.[613] The ECtHR found that in making their decision, Russian authorities pursued an ulterior purpose of punishing her and her spouse for their human rights activities and preventing them from continuing human rights work in Russia.[614]

As noted earlier, these provisions of nationality law contain no safeguards against statelessness. Russia signed but never ratified the European Convention on Nationality,[615] which among other things restricts the grounds for deprivations of nationality, nor the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.[616]

On July 21, 2023, a group of senators submitted a new bill that sought to extend the same grounds for stripping Russian nationality to all citizens, including those who acquired it at birth.[617] If adopted, the bill would have exposed all Russian opposition and anti-war activists to the risk of statelessness and the legal limbo that it entails. However, after the chair of the senate’s constitutional committee, Andrey Klishas, strongly criticized the bill, pointing out that terminating Russian nationality for those who acquired it at birth contravenes the Russian Constitution,[618] three of the four senators who initiated the draft bill withdrew their signatures from it.[619] The bill also received negative feedback from the Duma committee on legislation and the Russian government.[620] In January 2024, the Duma dropped the bill.[621] The resolution of the issue reinforced the differences in protections against loss of nationality between those who acquire Russian nationality at birth and those who are naturalized.

2024 Law: Confiscation of Property for False Information about the Armed Forces and Other Offenses (Amendments to the Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code)

In January 2024, 395 MPs submitted a bill to enable authorities to confiscate the property of those convicted on several charges introduced or expanded in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Parliament adopted the bill, and the president signed it into law on February 14.

The law allows the confiscation of assets gained from dissemination of false information about Russia’s armed forces and assets used to finance public calls against Russia’s security or for the implementation of the decisions of international organizations.

The law also increased penalties for public calls to conduct activities against Russia’s security, if motivated by remuneration or hatred, and expanded the definition of such activities to include any sabotage activities.[622]

2022 Law on Extrajudicial Closure of Media, Blocking Websites for “Fakes” (Federal Law №277-FZ of July 14, 2022)

In April 2022, a group of MPs introduced a bill,[623] allowing Russian authorities to extrajudicially shut down mass media and block online content for disseminating “false information” about the conduct of the Russian Armed Forces or other state bodies abroad, or for disseminating calls for sanctions against Russia. The bill also envisaged liability for licensed media reprinting or reposting such materials, and for disseminating information on “unauthorized” public events or calls to participate in them.

Parliament adopted the bill in early July. Putin signed it into law with immediate effect on July 14, 2022.[624]

In their explanatory note, the authors justified the bill by citing the alleged persistence of an “anti-Russian agenda,” the spreading of “illegal information” in media, and the need for “symmetrical” retaliation against foreign mass media in Russia in the event of hostile measures against Russian media abroad. They also emphasized the need to curb “dangerous online content” that causes “informational destabilization.”[625]

The new law introduced amendments to several laws,[626] stripping mass media and journalists of many essential protections. The amendments enabled the Prosecutor General’s Office to extrajudicially suspend and cancel mass media registrations, broadcast licenses and journalists’ accreditations on a wide range of grounds, including for publishing false information about Russia’s military, calls for sanctions and calls to mass violations of public order, justification of extremism, and disrespect to the state. Amendments also allowed the Prosecutor General to ban foreign mass media in Russia and cancel accreditations of foreign journalists, in retaliation for restrictions imposed on Russian media abroad.

Previously the Russian law on mass media explicitly provided that registration (licensing) of mass media could be voided only based on a court ruling, and its operations could be suspended or stopped by a court ruling or decision of the media’s founders.[627]

The law also stripped journalists of protection for reprinting materials or information of other mass media, if they contained the above information outlined in this offense. Previously, journalists were mostly exempt from liability for direct republication of materials of other mass media.

A violation leads to suspension for up to three months; the second, up to six months. After the third violation, the prosecutor general or deputies impose a permanent ban on the offending mass media outlet or broadcaster by voiding their registration and/or license.

Journalists with media outlets that commit these offenses, Russian or foreign, lose their accreditation.

The new provisions expanded information that Russian authorities deem illegal to include content that “discredits” the Russian Armed Forces, contains calls for sanctions or otherwise contains “illegal” or dangerous information or is disrespectful to Russian society, state, or constitution. To temporarily restrict access or permanently block “illegal” online content, the Prosecutor General’s Office informs Roskomnadzor. The prosecutor general can decide to permanently block online resources in cases of repeated violation.

The new law eliminated an earlier procedure that required authorities to inform the administrators or owners of online content that they are in breach of law and allowed them to immediately comply with a demand to remove offending content to avoid having their website blocked by Roskomnadzor.

In 2022, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office, over 190,000 online resources were either blocked or deleted.[629] Ten days after the law entered into force, the prosecutor general and Roskomnadzor blocked the website of the week-old Novaya Rasskaz Gazeta for “discreditation.” Authorities did not explain what information they deemed as “discrediting” the Russian Armed Forces or state bodies.[630]

Russian authorities have asserted extraterritorial jurisdiction over this subject. Since February 2022, in at least three instances, Roskomnadzor demanded that providers and media outlets in Kazakhstan take down materials concerning the war in Ukraine.[636] In January 2023, one of these outlets received a summons from a Russian court to appear in a lawsuit that Russian military prosecutors lodged against the outlet.[637]    

In September 2022, a group of MPs introduced a complementary bill to further expand Russian authorities’ extrajudicial capacity to block webpages that suggest and provide information on how to fund Russia’s adversary during armed conflicts.[638] The bill’s authors justified the amendments by pointing to “increased activity of NATO countries against Russia’s security online.”[639] President Putin signed it into law on November 2, 2023.[640]

V. Anti LGBT Laws

Introduction

Russian authorities use “traditional family values” discourse to enforce social conformity and to justify the adoption and enforcement of anti-LGBT laws. They also use it as part of their narrative about negative Western influence, which supposedly propagates and imposes LGBT rights narratives. The Russian government’s positioning of itself as the protector of “traditional family values” in a purported standoff against the “collective West” has only intensified with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

LGBT people in Russia have long faced threats, bullying, and discrimination. But open hostility has increased since the adoption of the anti-“gay propaganda” law in 2013.[641] The law banned the “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors.”[642] It has been used to shut down websites that provide valuable information and services to teens across Russia and to bar LGBT support groups from working with youth.[643]

While officials claim that the goal was to protect children, the law in fact directly harms children by denying them access to essential information and increasing stigma against LGBT youth and their families.[644]

Legislative amendments adopted since 2022 mark a full-on attack on LGBT people in Russia. They expanded the propaganda law to effectively ban public discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity; bylaws clarified that “propaganda” entails any positive or even neutral information about queer people or relationships. They restrict any depiction of so-called “non-traditional relationships” to people over the age of 18. A 2023 law bans gender-affirming healthcare and changing gender markers in identity documents, dissolved marriages of transgender people, and banned them from adopting or fostering children.

A November 2023 Supreme Court ruling designated the “International LGBT Movement” as an “extremist organization.” The ruling—which, among other things, prohibits the rainbow flag as an extremist symbol—opened the floodgates to allow arbitrary prosecution and imprisonment of LGBT people and of anyone who defends their rights or expresses solidarity with them.

2022 Anti-LGBT Laws

Federal Laws no.178-FZ and no.179-FZ of December 5, 2022, Expanded Ban on LGBT “Propaganda” and Administrative Penalties

In summer 2022, several groups of MPs proposed legislation to expand the “gay propaganda” ban beyond minors. Among them was an initiative in July 2022 [645] that was returned to the authors because it lacked government review. Media reports suggest that this was done so that it would not compete with a similar bill developed by United Russia.[646]

In August, a group of MPs submitted two other bills for government review.[647] One aimed to amend the Law on Information to expand the prohibition of “gay propaganda” to any information, not only for minors. The second introduced corresponding amendments to the sanctions under the Code of Administrative Offenses.

United Russia deputy Alexander Khinshtein, one of the authors of the bill, stated that it would fully extend the ban “on that sort of propaganda among audiences of all ages—offline, media outlets, the internet, social media, as well as in cinemas,” with stricter punishment for violations.[648]

Both were submitted to parliament in late October 2022.

A Roskomnadzor representative told a reporter that the agency supported the bill, stating that “the popularization of deviant relations does not fit with traditional values of our society” and that “such information … is dangerous for all of society.”[649]

In September, two MPs submitted to parliament a separate bill, aiming to expand the list of information forbidden for children to include information about voluntary childlessness, which they consider a “foreign ideology that forms destructive social behavior … that is, runs against Russia’s traditional family values and state policy.”[650] It did not advance in parliament.[651]

Ahead of the second reading of the bills developed by MPs from the ruling party, Khinshtein proposed extending the ban on propaganda for “non-traditional sexual relationships or preferences” to include gender-affirming health care and pedophilia. From this listing it appears that he implicitly equated the three.

He also added provisions for extrajudicial blocking of online content containing such “propaganda,” banning the sale of goods containing banned content, and extending the ban to advertising.

Furthermore, he introduced amendments that drastically expanded the earlier ban. They included extending the subject of the ban from information propagating “non-traditional relationships” to “demonstration of non-traditional relationships or preference,” information propagating pedophilia, and information that could induce a desire for gender reassignment.

During parliamentary debates, Khinshtein linked the new bill to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, claiming that the fight against “non-traditional relationships” is one of the most important issues for Russia that has been invigorated, rather than overshadowed, by the “special military operation.” He claimed that this “operation” took place in people’s minds, not just on the battlefield, and that Russia is a stronghold for protecting “traditional values” while an LGBT revolution engulfs the West.[652]

The chairman of the Duma reinforced the narrative about supposed Western influence when the bill passed the third reading, stating that its adoption would “protect [Russian] children and the country’s future from darkness spread by the USA and European states.”[653]

The same rhetoric was echoed by other MPs. Deputy Duma Chair Anna Kuznetsova claimed that LGBT people are the most effective tool for destroying the country.[654] The chair of the Duma’s Committee on International Affairs, Leonid Slutskiy, claimed that the bill is pursuing the protection of Russian youth from the alien values imposed by the West, while the chair of the committee on family, women and children’s affairs stated that Russia has its own way and does need “non-traditional relations” imposed by Europe.[655]

On December 5, 2022, President Putin signed both bills into law with immediate effect.[656]

The first of the new laws amended several laws, including laws on information and mass media, to introduce the ban on information and materials propagating “non-traditional sexual relationships or preferences,” as well as gender reassignment and pedophilia. It also extended the same ban to advertisements and the sale of goods, banned screening movies containing such materials, and tasked the Roskomnadzor with monitoring and blocking online resources containing such content.

The same law also amended provisions of two federal laws concerning protection of children and their rights by extending the ban introduced by the 2013 law to displays of “non-traditional sexual relations or preferences.” It also introduced a ban on information propagating pedophilia and “information that could induce desire for gender reassignment in children,” listing this information as harmful to children.

These amendments also stipulated that such materials, including, for example, images merely demonstrating gay couples holding hands, can be broadcasted only from 11 pm to 4 am, or as restricted paid content. Even announcements or messaging about such broadcasts must be marked as adult content and cannot contain any fragments of it.

So, for example, if a movie contains gay or queer characters, not only the restrictions on screening and viewing would apply, but even the trailer of such a movie would not be permissible if it contained those characters.

Similarly, these amendments banned streaming of such content unless the owners of the streaming service or platform ensure children are restricted from accessing it. 

The other law amended the earlier administrative offense sanctions for “propaganda of non-traditional relations” to minors. Reference to minors was deleted from the simple unaggravated charge; it was also expanded to include “preferences” and “propaganda of gender affirmation.”

Spreading such content to minors was reclassified as an aggravating circumstance. The list of aggravating circumstances was also expanded to include spreading such content online, or via mass media. And a combination of the two—spreading among children, online or via mass media—appears as a particularly aggravating circumstance. The amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses also drastically increased the corresponding fines.

The maximum fines for individuals for an unaggravated offense were increased 20-fold to 100,000 rubles ($1,123). Fines for managers of organizations or officials were increased four-fold to 200,000 rubles ($2,282) and remained unchanged for legal entities.[657] 

Fines for an aggravated offense (spreading to children or via internet or media) range from 100,000 to 200,000 ($1,123 to $2,282) for individuals, 200,000 to 400,000 ($1,123 to $4564)for managers or officials, and from 1 to 2 million rubles ($11,412 to $22,824) for legal entities or a 90-day suspension of operations.

Fines prescribed for spreading the banned information to children online or via mass media double for individuals and managers/officials: from 200,000 to 400,000 ($2,282 to $45,64) and from 400,000 to 500,000 ($4,564 to $5,682) respectively; and jump to up to 5 million ($57,061) for legal entities or a 90-day suspension of operations.

The same offenses perpetrated by a foreigner or stateless person would entail the same fines with subsequent deportation or up to 15 days in detention with subsequent deportation.

The amendments also introduced a new article penalizing spreading information among minors that demonstrates “non-traditional sexual relations and/or preferences” or is capable of inducing a desire to undergo gender transitioning.

Penalties include fines of 50,000 to 100,000 rubles ($570 to $1,123) for individuals, 100,000-200,000 ($1,123 to $2,282) for managers/officials and from 800,000 to 1,000,000 rubles ($9,129 to $11,412) or a 90-day suspension for legal entities.

The lawmakers did not specify or clarify what information or imagery, in their opinion, are capable of inducing desire for gender transition.

Spreading such information online or through mass media also doubles fines for individuals and managers/officials and increases the fines for legal entities to up to 4,000,000 rubles ($45,649) (or a 90-day suspension). If a foreigner or stateless person perpetrated the same offenses, the same fines would be accompanied by deportation, or fines could be replaced with up to 15 days’ detention (with subsequent deportation).

The same law also introduced a new article sanctioning “propaganda of pedophilia.”

Shortly after the adoption of the law, MP Khinshtein said he had filed a complaint against the Russian publishing house behind Summer in a Pioneer Tie, a book about infatuation between two members of the Soviet-era communist youth organization.[658] In September 2022, Khinshtein called the book a provocation and proof of why such a law was needed.

Several Russian bookstores started wrapping books that could potentially trigger application of the new laws in non-transparent wrapping and marked them as 18+ or pulled them from shelves.[659]

Police opened several cases under new charges against transgender sex workers who advertised online, courts fined them, and ordered foreigners among them deported.[660] 

Roskomnadzor issued fines against several Russian online streaming services, while others reportedly took down movies including “Brokeback Mountain” and “Call Me by Your Name,” (both with a same-sex romance theme) and changed Russian dubbing of the American television show, “Sex and the City.”[661]

In February 2023, Roskomnadzor developed bylaws outlining criteria for defining such propaganda.[662] These include information showing the attractiveness of queer relationships; information aiming to give a positive image of queer people; information that creates a “distorted image of the social equivalence of traditional and non-traditional sexual relationships”; and information that provokes interest in queer sexual relationships or positively frames or justifies gender affirmation.[663]

In June 2023, the Russian minister of health stated at parliamentary hearings that President Putin instructed the ministry to establish a new psychiatric institute to study the behavior of LGBT people.[664] Local LGBT activists and human rights defenders have been concerned that it could lead to the official introduction of conversion therapy,[665] which the UN independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity has said could potentially amount to torture and has called for its ban.[666]

2023 Anti-LGBT Law

Federal Law №386-FZ of July 24, 2023, Ban on Gender Affirmation Treatment

At the end of May 2023, a new bill banning gender-affirming health care was presented to the Russian parliament.[667] It was signed into law on July 24, 2023.[668]

The bill was endorsed by nearly 400 MPs from all parties represented in the parliament and spearheaded by the speaker of the Duma, Viacheslav Volodin.[669] He claimed that the authors of the bill wanted to protect the country from “diabolic policies” of the US that “propagate these new pseudo values,”[670] and that Russia “is the only country that counteracts what is happening in the US, Europe and does everything for the  protection of family and traditional values.”[671] During parliamentary hearings on the bill, he told the Health Ministry not to introduce any amendments “under the guise of concern for people’s well-being”; instead, he said, it should demonstrate its concern by “banning this vice.”[672]

Similarly, Pyotr Tolstoy, the Duma’s deputy chair, referred to the bill as “yet another step to protect national interests” from “perversions.”[673] He dismissed concerns from the Health Ministry and the scientific community that adopting the law would lead to ethical, medical, and social problems, including an increase in suicides.[674] He also claimed that “the Western transgender industry is trying to penetrate our nation, creating a window for their multi-billion dollar business.”[675]

Notably, he directly linked the bill to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At the parliamentary hearing, he stated the bill should be adopted “because Russia has changed since the start of the special military operation” and that Russians fighting in Ukraine “must return to a different country.”[676]

Earlier, the chair of the Russia’s Investigative Committee, Alexandr Bastrykin, claimed that changing gender markers in identity documents without gender affirming surgery to avoid mandatory military service is cheating and undermines Russia’s defense capability.[677]

The initial bill banned gender-affirming health services and changing a person’s gender marker in identity documents.[678] These provisions were not only discriminatory but would violate the rights to physical integrity and privacy.[679] But lawmakers did not stop there; they pushed ahead with an even more restrictive bill to automatically dissolve marriages of transgender people, prevent trans people from adopting children or becoming foster parents, despite criticism from human rights lawyers, activists, and medical professionals.[680]

The new law introduced amendments to Russian Family Code provisions so that marriages of transgender people would be terminated on par with cases of the death of a spouse.[681] Previously, Russian courts have annulled transgender people’s marriages based on lawsuits filed by prosecutors.

Other amendments to the Family Code ban trans people from adoptions or taking guardianship over children. [682]

Amendments to the law “On Civil Acts” in effect banned registration of gender reassignment in official documents without gender-affirming surgery,[683] but the same law introduced amendments to the healthcare law explicitly banning gender-affirming medical interventions, including gender-affirming medication and surgery.[684] 

The only exception the new law provided was for surgeries on intersex children.[685] Such surgeries are medically unnecessary and nonconsensual; almost all these procedures carry a meaningful risk of harm and can be safely deferred.[686]

Provisions of the new law related to documentation would not have retroactive effect and exempted transgender people who have completed transition and obtained all documentation—identity and other official documents—prior to the law’s entry into force on July 24, 2023.[687] But this exemption is limited to documentation, and does not apply to marriages, adoptions, or guardianship over children.

Tolstoy said, during parliamentary debate on the bill, that Interior Ministry data show that nearly 3,000 people in Russia changed their gender marker in identity documents between 2016 and 2022, around 900 of them in 2022.[688]

In November 2023, the Russian Supreme Court banned the “international LGBT movement” as an “extremist” organization, opening the door for even wider persecution of LGBT activists and allies (see below for details).

VI. Expanding Crimes against the State: Incitement, Treason, Confidential Cooperation, Undesirables

New laws described in this section expanded the definitions of treason and espionage.  They include a new crime, of “confidential cooperation” with foreign states or organizations, which appears to mark an effort to intimidate critics reminiscent of the Soviet-era ban on foreign contacts. The authors of the treason amendments did not conceal their intent to instrumentalize the new provisions to target civil society groups, which they claimed foreign intelligence services supposedly use to access official secrets. Adjacent laws criminalized cooperation with international bodies, “to which Russia is not a party,” and involvement in “undesirable foreign organizations” outside Russia’s borders.

In 2023, authorities sent to Russian courts 101 cases for treason, espionage, and confidential cooperation, five times as many as they had in 2022, according to a media report based on Russian court data. Criminal prosecutions for involvement in “undesirable” organizations are on the rise, and the Prosecutor General’s regular, new designations of foreign organizations as “undesirable” widens the risk of criminal prosecution for civic activists.

2022 Amendments to the Criminal Code (Federal Law №260-FZ of July 14, 2022), on National Security

In May 2022, a group of MPs introduced a bill that amended and introduced new articles to the criminal code concerning national security.[689] Parliament fully adopted it by early July, and Putin signed it into law on July 14, when it also entered into force.[690]

Some of the new criminal articles directly target free speech and could substantially increase the risk of criminal prosecution for Russian civic activists, journalists, and critical voices. These include articles criminalizing vaguely conceived “public calls for actions against state security,” displaying extremist or Nazi symbols, and involvement with foreign actors in “confidential cooperation” against Russia’s national security.

Born out of the ongoing war against Ukraine, the amendments also expanded the definition of treason in ways that expose independent thinkers and actors to increased risk of such charges. The new definition of treason covers people without access to state secrets and the new definition of espionage covers transferring information to a widened definition of “hostile agents” that include foreign and international organizations. Adjacent laws criminalized cooperation with international bodies, “to which Russia is not a party,” such as the International Criminal Court, and involvement in “undesirable foreign organizations” outside Russia’s borders.

Penalizing Public Calls against National Security

The new law criminalized public calls for actions against state security. The scope of the new article 280.4 also covered public calls to impede the work of national security services or their personnel. This is punishable by up to three years in prison.[691]

Public calls made online or through mass media, by several people by prior agreement, or by someone abusing their official position are punishable by up to five years in prison. The heaviest penalties, up to seven years, are envisaged for “organized groups.”

A Russian free speech group noted that a “public call” can range from an address to a public assembly to a social media repost; there have been criminal cases in which people were held liable for a video that was seen by only two people.[692]

Russian human rights lawyer Pavel Chikov noted in a media interview that the ban on “impeding” the work of national security authorities or personnel could, in practice, criminalize any public criticism of the FSB. Chikov recalled that a 2018 suicide bomber attack on the FSB building in Arkhangelsk prompted an outburst of public criticism of the FSB on social media. The FSB retaliated with a wave of criminal prosecutions for social media posts, some of which merely discussed the reasons behind the attack. Among those prosecuted and convicted was a journalist, on “justification of terrorism” charges.[693]  

An addendum to this article listed around 30 criminal code articles whose offenses would be considered crimes against Russia’s security, which include various financial, narcotics, organized crime, and state secrets charges. They also include violation of rules and customs of war and illegal change of the state border.

The latter provision is particularly concerning because of Russia’s claims that it annexed the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine in 2014 and four other Ukrainian regions in 2022.  

“Confidential Cooperation”

This law introduces the new crime of “confidential cooperation with a foreign state, international or foreign organization” in activities that are “knowingly directed against Russia’s security.” The maximum penalty is eight years in prison.

These amendments apparently aim to close loopholes potentially left by the higher threshold for treason, and to send a chilling message to Russian journalists, opposition, and civic activists, reminiscent of the Soviet era-ban on contacts with foreigners. This article could potentially be used to prosecute anyone involved in international advocacy related to Russia.

According to the Russian human rights group First Department, authorities opened at least 40 criminal cases in 2023 against people who allegedly engaged in “confidential cooperation” with non-Russian nationals.[694]

It can easily be used against Russian opposition politicians. Many activists and political figures would regularly meet with foreign diplomats, statesmen, and international and foreign organizations, exchanging views and information, as political figures in many countries do. These have included Boris Nemtsov before his 2015 assassination in Moscow, Navalny until he was nearly fatally poisoned in 2020 and imprisoned in 2021, and many others. They also have been advocating for sanctions against kleptocrats and those responsible for grave human rights violations in Russia.

Many Russian independent political analysts, human rights defenders, civic activists, and journalists also regularly meet with foreign diplomats and international organizations, such as the United Nations, as well as peers and other counterparts from foreign organizations, including Human Rights Watch, to share information on their respective fields of expertise.

The law gives wide discretion to authorities to interpret such interactions as aimed at harming Russia’s security and to prosecute activists. It follows nearly a decade of smear campaigns in which state and state-adjacent media have sought to construe civic groups’ contacts with foreign counterparts and international donors’ technical assistance as suspect, and to accuse pro-democracy activists of being on a Western payroll.[695]

Treason

In 2012, authorities expanded the definition of high treason to include providing any foreign state, international, or foreign organization “consultative or any other assistance” that is directed against Russia’s security,” thus potentially jeopardizing people who interact with such counterparts for legitimate purposes.

The authors did not conceal their intent to target civil society groups with the July 2022 amendments. Indeed, they justified the proposed amendment by insinuating that NGOs were a security risk and that foreign intelligence services are actively using them to access official secrets. This expansion of the treason definition in 2022 covered people who do not have access to official secrets and so may not know the information they share could be classified.[696]

The amended law expanded the definition of espionage to include collecting, keeping, and transferring information to enemies that can be used against Russia’s armed forces or other state bodies during armed conflict or other military operations. The newly introduced notion of “enemy” includes foreign states, and international and foreign organizations. This broad definition exposes human rights and other experts, and journalists working or covering Russia to risk of treason charges.

In previous treason cases, once charges were pressed, Russian intelligence services had discretion to decide whether the information the suspect gathered could have been used against Russia. From the limited information available on treason trials, it appears forensic experts in such cases are FSB experts who are subordinate to investigation teams.[698]

In September 2022, leading Russian senator Andrei Klimov expressed regret that no one had been prosecuted for treason for having called for sanctions. [699] Russian politicians and activists, including Navalny, have for years publicly supported targeted sanctions and promoted their own sanctions lists. It seems likely Klimov was implying they should be prosecuted as traitors, as was the case with Kara-Murza.

In 2023, authorities sent to Russian courts 101 cases for treason, espionage, and confidential cooperation, five times as many as they had in 2022, according to a media report, based on Russian court data.[700] Journalists also noticed that investigations on these charges are now fast-tracked; if in the past it took an average of two years for such cases to reach trial, now it can take under a year.[701] And whereas previously those at risk were primarily scientists, military personnel, and employees of classified defense infrastructure enterprises, nowadays, they are increasingly “regular” people, accused of treason for donations to the Armed Forces of Ukraine,[702] arson attacks on draft offices, and social media posts about defection.[703] Treason convictions have soared. Whereas in 2013, Russian courts issued four guilty verdicts on treason charges, in 2023, they issued 39, according to First Department.[704]

Evgeniy Smirnov, a human rights lawyer specializing in treason cases, criticized the arbitrariness in charging practices for state security offenses: “The same acts that did not constitute a crime two years ago, without any changes to the criminal code, are now punished with decades of imprisonment… The manner in which criminal code offenses are formulated, no one, even lawyers, can understand them. Now what is allowed and what is prohibited is at sole discretion of high-ranking law enforcement.”[705]

Life Imprisonment for Treason

In April 2023, another law was adopted, increasing penalties for certain crimes, including treason.[713] The maximum punishment for treason was raised to include life imprisonment.

The same law also criminalized cooperation with international bodies, “to which Russia is not a party,” such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) or any ad hoc international tribunals that may be established to prosecute Russian officials and military personnel, as well as foreign courts.[714] Such cooperation is punishable by up to five years in prison.

Expanded Definition of “Undesirables” Crimes

The other amendments to the criminal code that entered into force in July 2022 effectively allowed Russian law enforcement to prosecute activists for any involvement outside Russia’s borders under “undesirables” charges. For example, a Russian activist who traveled abroad to participate in a conference that was co-organized by a blacklisted organization could risk criminal prosecution and imprisonment.

Several organizations designated as “undesirable” never even had presence or projects in Russia. Under Russia’s repressive “undesirables” laws, the Prosecutor General’s Office can designate as “undesirable” any foreign or international organization that allegedly undermines Russia’s security, defense, or constitutional order. The organization must then cease its activities in Russia, and Russian citizens’ continued involvement with such organizations carries a criminal penalty.

In January 2023, Russian authorities blacklisted the Sakharov Foundation as “undesirable.” Andrei Sakharov was a Soviet nuclear physicist, famous dissident, and a 1975 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. The Sakharov Foundation was created in the US in 1989 by Sakharov's widow and his American supporters to safeguard and promote his legacy. Banning the foundation as undesirable not only smears Sakharov’s legacy, but also potentially endangers the numerous human rights defenders, independent journalists, pro-democracy activists and scientists, and cultural figures associated with the Sakharov Center in Moscow and its archives.[716] As noted above, in August 2023, a court ordered the forcible closure of the Sakharov Center.[717]

Between April and July 2023, authorities also blacklisted five environmental groups, including Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, potentially putting many Russian environmental defenders at risk.[718]

In May, the authorities also added the Foundation Against Corruption to the “undesirables” list, creating yet another potential ground for prosecution for their supporters and members.

In July, Russian authorities blacklisted the Human Rights House Foundation, a Norway- based organization running an international network of human rights houses across Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans, and the Caucasus. The organization decried the move as a reprisal for their human rights work.[719] In January 2024, the authorities banned Article 19, the internationally renowned free speech organization.[720]

The activities of so-called undesirable organizations were first criminalized in May 2015.[721]

***

In the first years after the 2015 adoption of the original undesirables law, leadership or participation in the activities of “undesirables” was generally prosecuted as an administrative offense punishable by a fine; however, a repeated violation within one year would qualify as a criminal offense with a maximum six-year prison sentence. Criminal liability could be invoked for a repeated “offense” only for leadership or participation in activities within Russia, and only if, prior to that, the accused had been sentenced at least twice within one year on the same charges as administrative offenses.

Between 2019 and 2021, at least nine criminal cases were opened, all of them against alleged members of the Open Russia Civic Movement (ORCM). Russian authorities considered the movement affiliated with exiled former oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky; ORCM members consistently denied that connection.[722] Activists received suspended sentences, mandatory labor, and, in two cases, prison terms for reposts on social media, or for participating in public debates or peaceful protests while allegedly displaying symbols linked to the blacklisted group.[723]

***

In June 2021, new amendments explicitly banned participation in the activities of “undesirable” organizations even outside Russia’s borders for Russian nationals, Russian legal entities, and stateless persons permanently residing in Russia.[724] It also expanded the grounds for designation as “undesirable,” so that organizations that assist “undesirable” ones by serving as intermediaries can themselves be blacklisted as such.

In parallel with the June 2021 amendments, Russian parliamentarians worked on another bill to amend the criminal articles concerning undesirables.

In 2021, MPs sought to expand application of these criminal provisions beyond Russian territory, in line with the above ban, so that authorities could prosecute activists for participation in “undesirables” activities abroad. Previously they could only do so if activists were accused of involvement for something that occurred inside Russia. They also sought to lower the threshold for invoking criminal liability, so that only one prior administrative sentence would suffice for a “participation” charge, whereas previously it required two prior sentences, and eliminate any requirement for priors for “leadership” charges.

However, in the version of the law adopted in July 2021, territorial restrictions were reinstated, i.e., criminal liability could only be invoked for “offences” committed on Russian territory.[725] 

That 2021 law, however, still expanded the scope of the “undesirables” criminal articles. The term “leadership” of undesirables was replaced by “organization of activities” and a new group of acts were added—donating, gathering donations, or providing financing services for them became punishable with up to five years in prison. Neither “organizing activities” nor financial support charges require any prior administrative convictions; the first such “violation” can immediately trigger criminal prosecution.

The July 2022 amendments to “undesirables” articles introduced by Federal Law №260-FZ finally removed territorial restrictions, allowing Russian authorities to prosecute activists for affiliation with “undesirable organizations” even when the “offence” took place outside its borders.

Finally, amendments to criminal articles on “undesirables,” adopted in August 2023, expanded application of the charge for participation in activities of the “undesirables”: if previously the law required that the person had at least one prior unexpunged administrative or criminal conviction on “undesirables” charges, they can also be indicted on these charges if they had no prior “undesirables” convictions but have been convicted for involvement with “unregistered organizations” (see section on Foreign Agents above).

Authorities have targeted prominent Russian human rights defenders on absurd grounds for alleged involvement in undesirable foreign organizations. In September 2021, a court fined Igor Kalyapin, chair of the Russian group Committee against Torture, for allegedly “distributing materials” of an “undesirable” foreign organization.

The material in question was an article the Committee against Torture posted on its website in 2017, reporting that the Czech humanitarian group People in Need (PIN), blacklisted as “undesirable” in 2019, honored Kalyapin for his human rights work. A photograph of the awards ceremony and a link to PIN’s website appeared with the article. After 2019, the link no longer worked.[726]

In July 2021, the human rights project Team 29 announced its dissolution after authorities blocked its website and the lawyers learned that Russian authorities equated it with the Czech NGO “Společnost Svobody Informace,” which Russian authorities had earlier banned as undesirable.[727]

Russian authorities have also harshened their persecution of activists perceived to be affiliated with Open Russia.

In 2022, two activists indicted on these charges were sentenced to several years in prison. In May, Mikhail Iosilevich, an activist and entrepreneur, was sentenced to 20 months in prison for allegedly providing space at his café for an Open Russia event, even though it was, in fact, organized by another organization and Iosilevich maintained he had no connection to Open Russia.[728] In July 2022, Andrei Pivovarov, former executive director of the Open Russia Civic Movement, was sentenced to four years in prison on charges of leading an “undesirable organization.”[729]

Involvement with an “undesirable” foreign organization was also among the charges on which opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in prison in April 2023.[730]

In August 2023, police detained Grigoriy Melkonyants, the chair of Golos, the leading Russian independent election monitoring group, and raided the apartments of several members and perceived affiliates on allegations of continued participation in the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), despite Golos’s departure from the Network after it was designated undesirable in 2021.[731] In December 2023, a court extended his pretrial detention until April 17, 2024. His lawyer linked this with the start of Russia’s nationwide electoral campaign and presidential elections in March 2024.[732]

In early 2024, Russian courts issued at least three fines on charges of “involvement,” two for giving interviews and one for posting a link on social media to a publication that Russian authorities earlier blacklisted as “undesirable.”[733]

In February 2024, a group of Russian MPs introduced another bill amending the “undesirables” legislation.[734] The bill’s authors seek to expand the definition of “undesirable organization” beyond foreign NGOs and extend it to a much broader range of entities, including those incorporated and funded by foreign governments or international or intergovernmental organizations. The only exception conceded by authors is for intergovernmental organizations of which Russia is still a member state.[735] Together with this bill, the authors introduced amendments to other laws and corresponding amendments to administrative and criminal code provisions pertaining to “undesirables.”[736] The State Duma adopted the bill in July 2024 and at time of writing it was pending approval of the Federal Council and the president.[737]

Demonstration of Extremist and Nazi Symbols

The 2022 criminal code amendments criminalized displays of extremist or Nazi symbols or other banned images (article 282.4). This is problematic because it is a disproportionate use of a criminal penalty for an offense that does not necessarily incite violence. It carries a penalty of up to four years in prison.[738] The article is intended for repeat offenders and can be triggered if the individual has a prior administrative offense or criminal sentence for this offense.

There are exemptions to the administrative offense if the use of the symbol “forms a negative attitude towards such ideology and does not contain propaganda or condones Nazi or extremist ideology.”[739] In practice, authorities may arbitrarily choose not to apply these exemptions.

For example, in June 2022, an Arkhangelsk court fined a person for a social media post, in which he compared an emblem of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment to the Wolfsangel, a Nazi symbol.[740] The court noted that the accused had intended to propagate (neo)Nazi symbols and he explained to the court that he is an historian.[741] A Russian anti-extremism think tank group analyzed the publication and concluded that he was not condoning (neo)Nazi ideology.[742]

In December 2021, a court sentenced Maria Aliokhina and Liusia Stein of Pussy Riot, a Russian feminist protest and performance art group, to 15 and 14 days in detention, respectively for a photo of President Lukashenka of Belarus with swastikas, published in 2015.[743]

In June 2023, a court in Blagoveshchensk, in Russia’s Far East, fined a former deputy of the regional legislative assembly on charges of demonstrating Nazi symbols for reposting a parody video on social media.[744] In it, authors of the original video showed side-by-side a video clip of the “Us” (“Мы”) music video of singer Shaman (Yaroslav Dronov), with a clip of a Nazi boy from the 1972 movie “Cabaret” singing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” apparently to demonstrate their likeness.[745] Shaman shot to fame after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine with a number of “patriotic” music video releases.[746]

Russia’s selective enforcement of its overly vague anti-extremism laws in order to outlaw, for example, political opposition and minority religious communities, highlights the concern that authorities will selectively enforce this new criminal provision on symbols to target critics.

Russian political opposition activists prosecuted in 2022 under the administrative offense of displaying “extremist symbols" risk criminal prosecution and imprisonment as recidivists. Russian authorities’ list of “extremists” includes the late Alexei Navalny and several of his aides and supporters,[747] as well as organizations affiliated with him and his regional electoral campaign teams.[748]

In 2022, dozens of civic activists and independent municipal deputies and candidates were fined on charges of displaying extremist symbols for social media posts displaying symbols of Navalny’s “Smart Voting” project, or just mentioning it, and for displaying the Foundation Against Corruption logo.[749]

A spike in the number of such cases in Moscow in the summer of 2022 apparently was linked to the municipal elections in autumn.[750] An administrative offense sentence on charges related to extremism prevents candidates from running (see section on electoral rights).

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, several social media platforms refused to censor online content in line with Russia’s war censorship laws. In response, in March 2022, Russian authorities banned Facebook, Instagram, and their parent company Meta as extremist.[751]

As a result of the aforementioned 2022 amendments, displaying symbols of these organizations, including, for example, Facebook’s or Instagram’s logo, entails an administrative fine, and, if repeated, leads to criminal prosecution.

In June 2022, the Supreme Court of Tatarstan banned the All-Tatar Public Center as extremist. Russian experts on anti-extremism disagreed with this designation, branding it unlawful and unfounded.[752]

In November 2023, following a closed-door hearing, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Ministry of Justice’s lawsuit banning the “international LGBT movement” as extremist for “inciting social and religious discord.”

The 2023 Supreme Court ruling outlawing the LGBT movement also banned the rainbow flag, which, by February 2024 had served as a basis for at least 11 administrative convictions.[753] At least three groups supporting LGBT people’s rights shut down their operations due to risk of prosecution.[754]

In July 2023, a group of MPs introduced a bill that penalizes “public justification” or “propaganda of extremism,” equating it with public calls to engage in extremist activities.[755] In their explanatory note accompanying the bill, its authors at first referred to cases of school shootings as part of the rationale for developing the new legislation. But they then switched their focus to the activities of foreign intelligence and foreign organizations “implemented using Russian public associations and individuals” and alleged that “global internet companies” can be used to widely disseminate false information and facilitate the organization of “illegal” public assemblies.[756] The authors then asserted that the proposed amendments aim to prevent “destructive influence” on Russian society and its “decay.” According to the MPs, “public justification” should be understood as public statements acknowledging the validity of ideas that Russian authorities have designated as “extremist” or urging support or replication of such ideas.[757] On September 28, 2023, the parliament’s lower chamber adopted the amendments in first reading and at time of writing it remained pending.

VII. Censoring Historical Debate

Laws Protecting “Historic Truth” (Rehabilitation of Nazism/USSR Role in World War II)

Introduction

From 2020 to 2022, Russian authorities notably revamped efforts to monopolize the narrative about the USSR’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II and seal it in legislation. This was part of wider official efforts to suppress legitimate speech that is at odds with official narratives about World War II, and Russian and Soviet history more broadly.[758]

The 2020 amendments to the constitution emphasized that Russia is the successor state to the USSR and enshrined in law the notion of “historic truth” that Russia undertakes to “protect.”[759] In 2021, parliament adopted laws that ban comparisons between the USSR and Nazi Germany and criminalize insulting the memory of World War II veterans.

This was not the first time Russian lawmakers used legislation to protect “historic truth.” In 2014, Russia adopted a law penalizing “rehabilitation of Nazism,” which lawmakers interpreted as public denial of facts established by the Nuremberg Trials, public condoning of crimes perpetrated by the Axis Powers, dissemination of false information about the USSR’s actions during World War II, dissemination of disrespectful information about the Russian Military Glory and Protection of Motherland memorial dates, and public denigration of symbols of Russian military glory.[760] 

This law effectively outlawed any critical debate about the role and conduct of the Red Army during the war. In the first verdict under this charge, issued in 2016, a court fined a man for a social media repost in which, among other things, he was accused of “rehabilitating Nazism” for discussing the partition of Poland between the USSR and Germany under the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.[761]

The broader context for this legislation is an official move, according to rights experts working closely with Russian historians, to increasingly impose an official historical narrative glorifying the victory over Nazi Germany and other Soviet-era achievements, while downplaying, justifying, or, in some cases, contesting the facts of Stalin’s Great Terror and other Soviet era atrocities.[762]

These experts also note that authorities now pursue an aggressive historical memory strategy that marginalizes alternative viewpoints and puts independent thinkers and activists working on historical memory at risk of persecution.[763]

In an early example of this in 2014, the historian and philosophy professor Andrei Zubov was fired from his position at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations for publishing a commentary comparing Russia’s occupation of Crimea and Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938.[764]

July 2021 Laws (Federal Laws no.278-FZ and no.280-FZ of July 1, 2021, Banning Comparing the USSR and Nazi Germany)

In October 2020, President Putin publicly supported a proposal for legislation banning any comparison between the aims and actions of the USSR and Nazi Germany,[765] and in January 2021, he formally instructed parliament to draft it.[766]

The corresponding bill was introduced in parliament in early May and signed into law on July 1, 2021.[767] It introduced a ban on equating the aims, decisions, or actions of the Soviet leadership or military to those of Nazi Germany or the Axis Powers during World War II, or denying “the decisive role of the Soviet people in the defeat of Nazi Germany,” as well as “the USSR’s humanitarian mission” during the liberation of European countries. The ban extends to public presentations and multimedia broadcasts online or via telecommunication.

In the bill’s explanatory note, the authors explicitly note that one of the bill’s purposes was to “protect historic truth.”[768] Amendments to the administrative offenses code, adopted in 2022, set out corresponding penalties (see below).

In January 2023, a Russian publishing house published an abridged version of the book by American self-help author and blogger Mark Manson Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope.[769] The publishing house censored out sections of the text, explaining that doing so was required by Russian law. The text in question concerned the Soviet Red Army’s conduct in Poland during World War II, comparing it to that of Nazi Germany.

Another bill was signed into law on the same day in July 2021, banning the display or dissemination of images or speeches of leaders of groups, organizations, or movements condemned at the Nuremberg Trials or those who collaborated with them.[770] This law blacklisted them as extremist materials.

The bill was originally introduced as part of the fall 2020 legislative crackdown. In the explanatory note accompanying the bill, its authors stated that they aimed to prevent glorification of Nazi criminals, referring to unspecified recent cases of public display of their images, as well as the availability of various merchandise online with such imagery.[771]

However, as one of the immediate responses to the adoption of this law, bookstores started taking out books that contained the images of Nazi criminals, disregarding the books’ actual contents and messaging.[772]

Furthermore, another bill, authored in April by Senator Turchak and MP Zanko, was signed into law in late December 2022.[773] The new law set St. George’s ribbon as one of the symbols of Russia’s “military glory:” its misuse or abuse has therefore become a punishable offense under above mentioned provisions.

St. George’s ribbon, a Russian Empire military symbol, was adopted by the Soviet military during World War II. Its aesthetic has been actively taken onboard by Russian authorities, in particular in the context of Russia’s armed conflict with Ukraine since 2014.

2021-2022 Amendments to Criminal and Administrative Offenses Codes (Federal Laws no.58-FZ and no.59-FZ of April 5, 2021, and Federal Law №103-FZ of April 16, 2022)

As part of the November 2020 wave of legislative amendments, MP Irina Yarovaya introduced two bills, one of which amended the criminal code (article 354.1)[774] to expand the definition of rehabilitation [condoning] of Nazism and increase corresponding penalties. The other introduced administrative liability for legal entities.[775] By early April 2021, both were adopted by parliament and signed into law.[776]

As noted earlier, prior to these amendments, rehabilitation of Nazism under the Russian criminal code included two thematic parts. One criminalized public denial of facts established by the Nuremberg Trials and public condoning of crimes perpetrated by the Axis Powers or dissemination of false information about USSR actions during World War II. The other penalized dissemination of disrespectful information about the Russian military glory and Protection of Motherland memorial dates, and public denigration of symbols of Russian military glory.

The initial version of the bill was limited to a proposal to include the use of the internet as an aggravating circumstance in the first part of this definition. However, the scope of the bill was drastically expanded ahead of the second reading in parliament.

The first part of the rehabilitation definition was therefore expanded to also criminalize dissemination of false information about veterans of World War II.[777] It also added perpetration by groups of people or using the internet as an aggravating circumstance.[778]

The second part of rehabilitation, concerning memorial dates and symbols of military glory, was also expanded to criminalize insulting the memory of “defenders of the Motherland,” as well as denigrating or humiliating World War II veterans. The amendments also drastically increased fines (10-fold) and expanded the list of penalties for rehabilitation of Nazism, to include incarceration for up to three years.[779]

The same law introduced aggravated circumstances for this part of the definition, which were lacking previously, to include perpetration of the offense by an organized or premeditated group or using mass media or the internet. The corresponding new penalties included a maximum penalty for aggravated offenses of up to five years’ imprisonment.[780]

The other 2021 law amending the Code of Administrative Offenses introduced similar changes regarding insulting World War II veterans in order to introduce liability for legal entities for the same offenses.[781]

As the authors of the amendments explained, the rationale behind these provisions was to enable authorities to prosecute both individuals and legal entities for the same alleged offense.[782] As with the bill amending the criminal code, authors of the bill originally proposed somewhat restrained amendments to include only the part concerning denials of the facts established by the Nuremberg Trials and “false information” about the activities of the USSR.

However, ahead of the second reading, it was expanded to harmonize it with the criminal provisions and include veterans. The corresponding fines for legal entities were drastically increased to up to 5 million rubles (approx. $70,000); and the penalty under a newly added offense was introduced at the same level.[783]

Authorities adopted these amendments several months after Alexei Navalny was sentenced on defamation charges for harshly criticizing people, including a World War II veteran, who appeared in state propaganda ads in support of the 2020 constitutional amendments (see above, section on defamation).[784]

In June 2022, parliament amended the Code of Administrative Offenses,[785] introducing penalties for equating the USSR during WWII with Nazi Germany, as spelled out in the 2021 law described above. The maximum penalty for individuals is 15 days’ detention.[786] Repeated violations may entail disqualification of officials for up to a year and a suspension of operations for legal entities for up 90 days. These laws restrict legitimate free expression and have been used to persecute critics of the Kremlin and Soviet-era repression.

In late August 2022, a Moscow court sentenced opposition politician Leonid Gozman to a maximum penalty of 15 days’ detention on charges of equating, in a two-year-old social media post, the USSR and Nazi Germany, and stating that Stalin was worse than Hitler for unleashing a total war on his own people.[787] After serving the term, he was immediately arrested again and, on September 14, sentenced again to another 15 days for a 2013 post, comparing SMERSH (abbreviation from Smert shpionam, “Смерть шпионам” – Death to Spies), an infamous Soviet counter-intelligence service, to the SS.[788]

Russian law enforcement has prosecuted similar cases under different charges in previous years as well, particularly cases that received extensive media coverage.

In January 2020, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against Nikolay Gorelov, a blogger from Kaliningrad, accusing him of rehabilitation of Nazism for what he termed a “satiric fantasy” piece.[789] In it, he touches on the rape of German women by Soviet soldiers during World War II and imagines Hitler and Stalin in hell, praising the Red Army. Investigators later dropped the case due to expiration of statutory limitations.[790]

In September 2020, Aleksandr Bastrykin, chairman of the Investigative Committee, announced the establishment of a special division within the agency dedicated to investigating crimes related to “falsification of the history of the Motherland” and the rehabilitation of Nazism.[791] 

In an October 2021 interview, popular rapper Morgenshtern criticized lavish spending on annual Victory Day celebrations and questioned their purpose. Hours later, the Veterans of Russia movement filed a complaint calling for an inquiry for “denigrating historical memory and legacy”; Bastrykin ordered his remarks to be examined for “rehabilitation of Nazism.”[792] At time of writing, there was no information regarding the outcome of this case.

In September 2021, police arrested a homeless man for burning a wreath at a World War II memorial, according to media, to dry his socks. Police first accused him of vandalism; the charge was later changed to “rehabilitation of Nazism” after the intervention of Bastrykin.[793] The homeless man was placed in pretrial detention for two months in October 2021: there has been no subsequent news about the outcome of this case.    

The number of criminal prosecutions on allegations of rehabilitation of Nazism has continued to increase since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.[794]

In March 2023, Russian authorities opened a criminal case against staff of Memorial, accusing them of rehabilitation of Nazism, claiming that the organization’s database of victims of Soviet repression included individuals who had collaborated with Nazi Germany. Memorial, the international historical, educational, charitable, and human rights society, was co-laureate of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize and shut down by authorities in December the same year. During subsequent Supreme Court hearings, the prosecutor alleged that Memorial was speculating on the topic of political repression in the Soviet Union and “creates the false image of the USSR as a terrorist state, [while] whitewashing and rehabilitating Nazi criminals.”[795]

Human rights experts also documented several incidents in recent years in which Russian authorities or their proxies use various means to persecute civil society organizations that challenge the official version of history and prosecute independent researchers and activists for it.[796]

Stanislav Seleznev, a lawyer with the human rights project “Net Freedoms” (Setevye svobody, "Сетевые свободы"), who worked on “Nazism”-related cases stated that Russian authorities can prosecute for “any historic research and publications [stating] that anyone, other than Hitler’s army, committed war crimes [during World War II]” and noted that such cases increasingly target not those glorifying Nazism, but rather those criticizing Communism or comparing the actions of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany armies during the war.[797]

New provisions introduced penalties for violating “extremism” laws that can be used to punish people for disagreeing with Kremlin narratives.

In September 2022, MPs introduced two bills concerning extremism.

One of the bills introduced amendments to administrative penalties for producing, possession, or dissemination of such “extremist materials.”[798] On June 13, 2023, it was signed into law and entered into force in late June.[799]

Previously, a specific publication had to be added to the list of “extremist materials” to entail liability; under the new amendments, it suffices that “offending” materials fall under the broad and vague definition of extremist materials as defined under article 1 of the Russian counterextremism law. The penalties for this “offense” remained unchanged.[800]

The other bill in the package aims to amend the very definition of “extremist materials” in the law on counterextremism to ban maps, other images, and other publications “contesting the territorial integrity” of Russia.[801] In the explanatory note, the authors of the bill explicitly referenced maps designating Crimea as Ukrainian territory as one of such “offending” example.[802]

If the bill were to be adopted with its original wording, any such maps, images or other publications would be outlawed in Russia regardless of when they were published.  It remained pending at this writing.

The Council of Europe Venice Commission has criticized the Russian counterextremism law and, in particular, its basic notions, such as the definition of extremism, for giving “too wide discretion in its interpretation and application, thus leading to arbitrariness.”[803]

This would considerably simplify for authorities the prosecution of alleged “offenders,” while increasing the danger for activists, dissidents, journalists, and anyone else who monitors and reports on the situation in the occupied and the annexed territories of Ukraine or posts online content related to the conflict.

VIII. Censoring Education

Introduction

In 2020, Russian authorities, in an apparent attempt to control and curate narratives and public discourse, began tightening control over the content of educational activities, invoking the need to fight “foreign influence” and “protect history.”

For example, in October 2020, the prosecutor’s office initiated an inspection of one of the leading higher education institutions in the country, the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, which is directly affiliated with the presidential administration and considered to be one of the top schools for career public servants.

Among other things, authorities requested information about students and faculty involved in projects linked to foreign NGOs supposedly posing a threat to Russia, including those aimed at training election monitors, falsifying world and Russian history “in the interests of anti-Russian forces,” undermining traditional Russian moral values, discrediting authorities, “facilitating protest attitudes,” and “creating pro-American influence groups.”

Authorities also demanded information about students who participated in protests and whether they received payment, as well as university prevention programs aimed at reducing protest activities among youth.[804]

Federal Law №85-FZ, dated April 5, 2021

On November 18, 2020, a group of MPs—including Senator Andrei Klimov, chair of the Senate’s Ad Hoc Commission on Protecting State Sovereignty and Preventing Interference in the Domestic Affairs—introduced a bill banning educational activities that lack official authorization.[805] By April 2021, the bill had been signed into law.[806]

One academic expert said the bill was “a continuation of the raft of foreign agents laws,” this time affecting educational institutions.[807] In the bill’s explanatory note, lawmakers said that lack of legal regulation over educational activities enabled “uncontrolled realization by anti-Russian forces of a wide range of propaganda activities masquerading as education activities among school and university student communities, including those funded from abroad and aimed at discrediting Russia’s state policies, revision of history and undermining the constitutional order.”

Adopting the bill, the authors said, would help “counter [the spreading of] illegal information and anti-Russian propaganda” in these communities.[808]

The law allows extracurricular educational activities only if they comply with requirements laid out in the amended law on education and other relevant legal acts and gives the Russian government full control over the procedures, conditions, forms, and oversight relating to them.[810]

Amendments explicitly ban educational activities on various grounds. Some of the grounds listed can be legitimate, such as preventing the spread of racial, ethnic, or religious enmity or superiority. But the list also includes “imparting false information about historic, national, religious and cultural traditions of nations.”[811] This is an overly broad and highly subjective category that leaves the door open for arbitrary interpretation and censorship that violates the right to freedom of expression and to impart and receive information. 

The law also authorizes the Education Ministry and Ministry of Science and Higher Education to coordinate international cooperation undertaken at all educational institutions.[812] Educational establishments would have to receive “conclusions,” which amount to permission, from these ministries to be involved in a variety of international initiatives. These include international education or scientific programs; sending their students, professors, or researchers to foreign educational institutions; hosting foreign students, professors, or researchers; and joint scientific research projects.

Such permission would even be needed for organizing international conferences and exchanging research literature.[813] The law requires that education establishments obtain such permissions by September 1, 2022.[814]

The Russian academic community criticized the bill as it was pending in parliament as harmful for the educational process and the freedom to receive and impart scientific ideas.

In January 2021, the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences officially requested that the State Duma withdraw the bill.[815] The president of the academy explained that the bill would “impede the popularization of science [and] limit international scientific cooperation.” He also noted that many of the bill’s restrictive norms duplicate anti-extremism laws. The Russian Academy of Sciences sent the Senate a negative assessment of the bill and continued to oppose it even after consultations in the Senate.[816]

Around the same time, over 1,700 Russian scientists and educators signed a declaration condemning the bill as the “state’s attempt to take control over the freedom to disseminate knowledge” and “very harmful for Russia’s scientific, cultural, and technological progress.”[817]

The declaration’s authors stated that the concept of the bill was fundamentally malicious, unsalvageable, and that the idea of licensing or other regulation of [extracurricular] educational activities was “deeply insulting.” They stated that “knowledge is one of the basic values of civilizations” and that “disseminating knowledge is our life’s work, our profession and civic duty ... for which we need no permission.” They pledged to refuse to comply with the licensing system the law prescribes and with requirements “to submit the text of speeches, addresses or presentations for approval by state bodies.”[818]

Another open petition supported the academics opposed to the measure and demanded that lawmakers withdraw the bill.[819] More than 240,000 people signed it. A number of MPs also criticized the bill, including a Communist Party MP, who said that if the authors “want to limit foreign influence, they should reflect it in the name of the law, but education has nothing to do with this.”[820] Klimov dismissed his critics, accusing them of “aiding foreign powers.”[821]

Sergey Lukashevskiy, director of the Sakharov Center, an independent human rights research and education center, said in a media interview that the law does not define what sort of “false information” the bill would ban, and that state bodies would use their own discretion to decide which point of view is true or false.[822]

In 2022, Russian authorities also implemented additional measures that impede international cooperation between Russian educational institutions and European counterparts.

In May, the minister of science and higher education announced that Russia intended to abandon the Bologna Process, which aims to bring more coherence to higher education systems across Europe through mutual recognition of qualifications.[823] In June, it “recommended” all Russian universities end cooperation under Erasmus+, the European Commission program of student mobility.[824]

Other oppressive tools, such as “undesirable” and foreign agents legislation, have also had a negative impact on international cooperation in education in Russia. In June 2022, the Social Sciences Laboratory, a project that developed scholarship programs and methodology for teaching social sciences, announced that it had closed after authorities notified it to register as a foreign agent. Even though the project had announced its closure, the Ministry of Justice added it to the foreign agent registry a few days later.[825]

Also in June 2021, the Prosecutor General’s Office blacklisted Bard College, a private US-based liberal arts college, as “undesirable.” Bard had partnered with one of the leading Russian state universities in St. Petersburg; the two institutions had planned to establish a new university focusing on the humanities, and social and natural sciences.[826] At the end of March 2023, they likewise blacklisted the “Free University” founded by former faculty members of the Higher School of Economics, one of Russia’s top universities.

According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Free University faculty popularized activities of organizations banned in Russia as extremist, while the university’s literature is “distinctly anti-Russian.” The office also accused the faculty of producing publications that effectively justify reform of the constitutional regime “under the guise of development of democratic institutions” and that the university shapes a “persistent aversion” to Russia among students and imposes an “ultra-liberal model of European democracy.”[827]

The founders of the university listed as reasons for its establishment authorities’:  interference with teaching the humanities; censorship; restrictions of academic freedoms; adoption of repressive laws on education; and political repressions against “disloyal” faculty members, disguised as “reorganization” and “staff reduction.”[828]

In April, its faculty said that they would discontinue activities in Russia, referencing the risk of persecution in connection with the “undesirable” status.[829]

Acknowledgements

This report was researched and written by Damelya Aitkhozhina, then Russia researcher in the Europe and Central Asia division. Aleksander Lokhmutov, research assistant, Europe and Central Asia division, provided additional research and writing. Rachel Denber, deputy director, Europe and Central Asia division, and Danielle Haas, then senior program editor, edited the report. James Ross, legal and policy director, provided legal review and wrote the international legal analysis. The report was also reviewed by Tanya Lokshina, associate director, Europe and Central Asia division, and Joseph Saunders, deputy program director. Iskra Kirova, advocacy director, Europe and Central Asia; Kyle Knight, interim deputy director, LGBT Rights Program director; and Annerieke Smaak Daniel, researcher, Women’s Rights Division also reviewed parts of the report.

The report was prepared for publication by Ellen Bleier, senior associate, Europe and Central Asia division; Travis Carr, publications officer; and Fitzroy Hepkins, senior administrative manager.