In Memorial’s report, cited by The Insider, it says that in the first nine months of 2026, Russia recorded 1,393 new defendants in politically motivated criminal cases, compared with 1,339 over the same period in 2025. That is a 4% increase, but the structure of prosecutions changed noticeably: the number of cases under articles related to freedom of expression fell from 487 to 380, or by 22%, while under articles on freedom of association it rose from 219 to 328, or by 50%.
Human rights advocates separately highlight three articles that the FSB may investigate: under the article on calls for extremism, the number of new defendants rose by 26%; under the article on calls for activity against state security, by 13%; and under the article on calls for terrorism and its justification, it fell by only 1%. The report’s authors believe this may indicate greater activity by the FSB in politically motivated prosecutions than by other law enforcement agencies, and they describe the security service not only as the main operator but also as a “catalyst” for such cases, emphasizing that this is specifically a statistical assumption.
A significant part of the growth in the “freedom of association” category is linked to separate campaigns. The number of prosecuted supporters of Alexei Navalny rose from 69 to 143, Jehovah’s Witnesses from 45 to 91, and people whom the authorities associate with the so-called “citizens of the USSR” from 13 to 29. Almost all cases against Navalny supporters are linked to accusations of financing extremist activity through donations to the FBK, and in each quarter of 2026 at least 40 new such prosecutions became known.
Persecution of people whom security forces accuse of involvement in Vyacheslav Maltsev’s “Artpodgotovka” also continued: in the first nine months of 2026, Memorial recorded 44 such cases, compared with 20 a year earlier. The human rights advocates write that the reasons for the simultaneous intensification of several unrelated campaigns are still unclear: this may reflect a shift in the focus of the security forces toward alleged “organized” structures, but they do not rule out the coincidence of several separate trends.
At the same time, according to Memorial’s assessment, political persecution is becoming harsher. The share of cases in which there is at least one charge under a particularly serious article rose from 29% in the first nine months of 2025 to 34% in 2026, while the earlier growth in cases of treason, terrorist attacks, and sabotage has practically stopped. In the category of cases for statements, the article on justification and propaganda of terrorism now accounts for more than 60% of prosecutions, and in more than 80% of cases where it is applied, the accused are deprived of liberty.
In the occupied territories of Ukraine, Memorial recorded 307 new politically motivated criminal prosecutions over the same period, compared with 338 a year earlier, while the number of prosecutions for statements there, unlike in other main categories, rose by 17%. The human rights advocates link the overall decline primarily to the end of the sharp surge in repression in the second and third quarters of last year, rather than to a sustained easing of policy; in Crimea and Sevastopol the figure is 4.6 cases per 100,000 residents per year, and in the occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions it is 9.1 versus 1.2 inside Russia.
The number of new criminal prosecutions of Ukrainian servicemen fell from 484 in the first nine months of 2025 to 330 in 2026, mainly because the mass campaign against prisoners from Kursk region came to an end: the number of first recorded prosecutions in this group fell from 258 to 72. Memorial believes that the peak of this campaign has already passed, although new cases continue to emerge with a delay: in the third quarter of 2026, the number of first recorded prosecutions of Ukrainian servicemen rose from 101 to 129, and among prisoners from Kursk region — from 17 to 40. In total, the Russian authorities reported more than 500 Ukrainian servicemen captured there, and Memorial is currently aware of the prosecution of 400 of them; the human rights advocates also note that Ukrainian servicemen remain the most harshly prosecuted category, since in 86% of such cases the charges include at least one particularly serious article.
The number of people recognized by the project as political prisoners increased in the third quarter from 1,680 to 1,825. A broader list of people deprived of liberty in cases showing signs of political motivation and serious violations of the law grew from 5,567 to 5,740, while the report’s authors warn that some cases become known with a delay and the figures may be revised.
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