Collateral Victims of Putin’s Repressions -- Families of Enemies of Putin Regime and Those Under House Arrest

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 25 – Arguably everyone who lives in the Russian Federation is a victim of the Putin regime; but typically, observers count as victims those who have been imprisoned or forced into emigration because of their views. But there are two additional categories of collateral victims who should be remembered.

            These are the family members of those have been sent to the camps or forced into emigration, a group that was routinely repressed in Stalin’s time and is now being mistreated in Putin’s as well as family members of those subject to house arrest because their residences become a kind of jail not just for those awaiting trial but their family members as well.

            The first of these has attracted some attention because of the Stalinist precedent (https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/09/24/semi-vragov), but the second has garnered much less because many observers are inclined to treat house arrest as a softened form of detention and even something worthy of praise.

            But as the numbers of people put under arrest over the last 13 years has risen, it has affected all of their family members because apartments and houses are rapidly being converted into mini-prisons, a trend that same the state money but punishes people not convicted or even charged, Cherta journalist Anya Morentseva says (cherta.media/story/domashnij-arest/).

            Her article which describes this form of Putin repression strongly suggests that those concerned about his crackdown on Russians need to add the families of those under house arrest to the list and provide what attention to and support for them so as to make their lives better and discourage the Kremlin from extending this practice more broadly.