From 2022 to 2025, at least 203 politically motivated criminal cases involving torture were initiated in Russia, according to a review by the human rights project «Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial»*.
Meanwhile, from 2015 to 2021, according to the project's data, 46 political cases involving torture were recorded. During this period, torture was recorded in 2.4% of political cases (46 out of 1815), and since the beginning of the war in 4.2% (203 out of 4801).
Security forces use torture as a way to obtain confessions, as an additional element of the punishment system, and also as a means of intimidation.
The most politically motivated criminal cases involving torture were recorded in 2022 — 78. In 2023, there were 70 such cases, in 2024 — 45, and since the beginning of 2025, torture was used in 10 criminal cases.
Human rights activists believe that it is too early to say that torture became less frequent in 2024 and 2025; most likely, the decrease in numbers indicates a cooling in information gathering because many criminal cases involving torture become known only in court.
The defendants in 66 political criminal cases involving torture, which were initiated after 2022 (before 2022 — 25 such cases), were Ukrainian citizens. According to «Memorial», Ukrainians are 4.4 times more likely to be subjected to torture than politically persecuted citizens of Russia and other countries.
More than half of the cases of torture in politically motivated cases after the start of the war were recorded in the occupied territories and in Chechnya, according to «Memorial» data. There are known to be 20 such cases in Crimea since the start of the war, 25 in Kharkiv, 21 in Zaporizhzhia, and 17 cases in the Donetsk regions.
In the Russian regions within international borders, human rights activists recorded 86 political cases involving torture over three and a half years of war. Torture was most frequently used in Chechnya, where, according to human rights activists' estimates, there were 20 such cases in the last three years compared to two cases in the seven years before the invasion. Those persecuted in such cases in the republic face torture 14.6 times more often than the average in Russia and the occupied regions.
* Recognized as a «foreign agent».