RUSSIA: Repressions in Russia in 2024, a review of OVD-Info
Introduction
OVD (16.01.2025) – The year 2024 for Russian civil society, as well as the two previous years, was marked by the unrelying war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.
Political persecution continued throughout Russia throughout the year. The main trends of the past years have been preserved – pointing, strikes on vulnerable groups, adoption of repressive laws. In addition, one of the terrible leitmotifs of the year was the death of people deprived of their liberty for political reasons: Alexei Navalny was killed, four more people died in prison, two – from the consequences of being in isolation, one – from the consequences of detention.
One of the most important events in the history of political persecution in 2024 was the “Baymak case” in Bashkortostan, which affected dozens of people. Another is the exchange of prisoners between Russia and Western countries, in which 16 people were released, most of them are prosecuted in politically motivated cases. We also saw a sharp increase in criminal prosecutions of “foreign agents” and a scaling of the persecution of LGBTQ+ people.
The report uses data and analytics of participants of OVD-Info, the Sova Research Center, the Exit group, the Thunderstorm media, the first department and the Team against torture human rights projects.
We receive information about politically motivated persecution from different sources – websites of Russian courts and departments, the media, the persecuted themselves and their relatives. Due to the limited information available – in particular, the texts of court decisions – and the resulting impossibility of tracking all prosecutions in real time, our data is obviously incomplete, but we consider it correct and useful to publish the available and contribute to the description of the objective picture of political persecution in Russia.
We also publish data on persecution in the annexed territories of Crimea and Sevastopol – repressions there are carried out by Russian law enforcement agencies, and we have the opportunity to verify this data. As for the occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine, we have decided to monitor data on what is happening there only this year, and so far, including due to the difficulty in obtaining and verifying this data, we are not ready to consider and count them on a par with the rest.
Contents
- Introduction
- Criminal political persecution
- Pressure on the politically persecuted
- Politically motivated administrative cases
- Wartime prisoners
- Repressions at the legislative level
- Pressure on the LGBTQ+ community
- Forced deportation after the terrorist attack in Crocus
- Freedom of assembly
- “Foreign agents”
- “Unwanted” organizations
- Politically motivated pressure on representatives of professional and social groups
- Conclusions
- Links to other data and reports of OVD-Info
Note: Use the automatic translation if you cannot read Russian