Politically Motivated Convictions in Russia Tripled Between 2022 and 2025 and Half Now Involve Time Behind Bars, Rights Activists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 18 – Russian courts in 2025 handed down three politically motivated verdicts every day, three times the rate during the first year of Putin’s expanded military operation in Ukraine, human rights activists say on the basis of court records; and the severity of sentences has increased as well, with half of those convicted last year given jail terms.

            This trend, Andrey Karyev of Novaya Gazeta says, is continuing in 2026. In less than the first four months of this year, Russian courts have handed down 198 sentences in political cases, a rate only slightly lower than in 2025 when 1100 political sentences were handed down; and they imposed prison sentences in more than half (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/04/18/tri-prigovora-v-den).

            As a result, what were earlier exceptions are now becoming the norm in Russian courts, which have become almost as in Stalin’s time “a conveyor belt” for imposing political convictions that is becoming ever more repressive in this regard by inertia and with little need for Kremlin intervention, the journalist suggests.