Page 11 - bne IntelliNews Russia OUTLOOK 2025

1.0 Politics
1.1 Domestic politics
Political repression continued in Russia in 2024
Russia has witnessed a marked intensification in state-led oppression that will only get worse, according to civil rights groups.
Criminal prosecution is currently the most dynamic form of political pressure in Russia and the annexed Crimea. As of December 9, 2024, 2,976 people are being persecuted for political reasons in the territory of the Russian Federation and the annexed Crimea and Sevastopol, and 1,407 people are deprived of their liberty.
For the first time since 2022, the article with the largest number of new prosecutions was Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code ("Public justification of terrorism"). Last year, the leading article was Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code ("Discrediting the RF Armed Forces"); in 2022 it was Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code ("Dissemination of knowingly false information about the RF Armed Forces").
“The number of sentences with imprisonment has also increased somewhat. Thus, more than half of the sentences imposed over the past year involve imprisonment – 55% (378 out of 679). For comparison, in 2023 such sentences were 50% (339 out of 671),” according to human rights activists at OVD-Info and colleagues at five other projects that published an annual summary of events in Russia’s justice system.
Of these, 390 (28%) are in custody pending the consideration of their criminal case in court, their sentencing and its entry into force. The remaining 1,017 (72%) are already serving their sentences, according to the report.
“Putin remains overwhelmingly popular and the country is going in the ‘right’ direction,” according to the last Levada Center polls.
Putin’s popularity dipped briefly after the start of the war, but since then it has hovered at around 87% for the population as a whole. At the same time, less than half of Russians thought that the country was going in the right direction before the war, but since fighting started around 70% think it is.
11 Russia OUTLOOK 2025 www.intellinews.com