Russia’s Federal Subjects have Cut Back or Stopped Publishing Statistics at Different Times than Moscow or than Each Other, 'Sibirsky Ekspress' Says

Paul Goble

Staunton, Jan. 11 – Many likely assume that the governments of Russia’s federal subjects have followed in lockstep Moscow’s decisions to reduce or end the publication of key statistics as was typically the case in Soviet times. But that is not the case now. Many republic, kray and oblast officials have varied their timing not only with Moscow’s moves but with each other.

These decisions haven’t been announced, but they have become clear in an article in the Sibirsky Ekspress telegram channel on crime in various parts of Russia east of the Urals (t.me/Sib_EXpress/69812 reposted at echofm.online/news/v-tyve-buryatii-i-hakasii-rezko-vyroslo-chislo-ubijstv).

In addition to publishing details on differences in crime among them, the telegram channel reports that “far from all Siberian procuracies publish relatively detailed statistics on crime or do so at the same time as one another or at the same time that central officials have stopped publishing such statistics.

Novosibirsk Oblast issued the last crime statistics in May 2025. Omsk did so in July of htat year. But Tomsk Oblast continued to put out statistics on crime through September, although it did not provide comparisons with last year or any data at all on crime rates in previous years.

In the Kuzbass, however, the last crime reports are dated 2023 and the Transbaikal Kray stopped issuing data in 2020.  The telegram channel provides official sources for each of these events. It also points out that Moscow stopped reporting new crime data in January 2023, something that means some federal subjects did so before Moscow and some afterward.

This pattern is critically important for at least two reasons. On the one hand, it is an indication that in something as important as crime data, Moscow is exercising less tight control over how the regional governments handle things. That raises some important questions about the Kremlin’s control of these governments.

And on the other, it suggests that those who want to get data on issues the central Russian authorities have stopped publishing must not fail to look at the regions even if their primary concern is not the regions but Russia as a whole. Regional data will be only partial, but it will help fill a gap that all too many observers have accepted as definitive.