Moscow Closing Prison Camps But It is Planning to Open More Preliminary Detention Centers where Many are Held and Conditions are Often Worse

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 23 – Moscow has closed some of its prison camps over the last several years because so many the inmates previously held there have volunteered to fight in Ukraine and have their sentences commuted (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/some-russian-prison-camps-to-be.html).

            But it has also announced plans to build new hybrid prison colonies combining detention centers and prisons (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/moscow-plans-to-create-hybrid-colonies.html); and now it says it will build 11 new preliminary detention centers (SIZOs) across the country. (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/08/23/v-rossii-postroiat-11-novykh-sizo-news).

            Over the next decade, the Russian government says, it will build 11 new preliminary detention centers to hold up to 11,230 people, 14 special holding facilities to hold 3420 more, and modernize 118 existing SIZOs (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/08/23/v-rossii-postroiat-11-novykh-sizo-news).

            This announcement is worrisome for three reasons. First, SIZOs are often used to hold not only those awaiting trial but increasingly those already convicted.  Second, conditions in them are often far worse than in ordinary prisons or camps (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/12/hundreds-of-ukrainians-subject-to.html).

            And third, SIZOs are often where people who have participated in protests or demonstrations are put; and this announcement suggests that the Putin regime is prepared to detain ever more of them – and wants Russians to know that it is prepared to do so despite all the Kremlin’s talk about declines in the crime rate.