By Sultan Musayev | 2026-05-11

Twenty years of Russian criminal justice statistics vanished overnight. In April, the Supreme Court website quietly scrubbed every record of criminal, civil, and administrative cases -- two decades of data, gone. Independent media outlets reported the agency also withheld statistics for the second half of 2025 and removed the link to its data archives from its official VKontakte page.

The Judicial Department of the Supreme Court told Vazhnye Istorii that officials restricted access to conviction data because "regulations regarding publication are changing." It offered no further details.

The deletion was not an isolated incident. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, at least 14 agencies -- including the Prosecutor General's Office and the Federal Penitentiary Service -- have partially or entirely classified their data.

"Russian officials clearly no longer want to publish statistics that discredit the regime," Sanzhar Iskanderov, PR director of the Kazakh publishing house Drakkar, told Kontur. "Negative information fuels protest sentiment, drags down the president's approval ratings, and generally leads to grim social consequences."

Repression by the numbers

Before the data disappeared, journalists and human rights activists had used it to document a wartime surge in political prosecutions. Cases involving high treason, anti-war "fakes," "discrediting" the army, and sabotage all spiked after February 2022.

Last October, Vazhnye Istorii reported, citing then-available Supreme Court data, that 151 people faced criminal charges for "high treason," "espionage," and "confidential cooperation with foreigners" in the first half of 2025. That figure doubled the previous year's six-month total and marked a ten-year high. Convictions for "high treason" doubled. Convictions for "confidential cooperation with foreigners" increased twelvefold.

Independent human rights defenders say the actual figures are far higher. The Perviy Otdel project estimates approximately 800 people became defendants in treason, espionage, or foreign cooperation cases between the start of the invasion and late 2024. A Perviy Otdel study concludes the Supreme Court's Judicial Department understates true figures by more than threefold. State secrecy means even the 800 figure is likely an undercount.

"Throughout the war -- and indeed during Putin's entire reign -- courts have not handed down a single acquittal under these statutes," said Kirill Parubets, an anti-war activist and data analyst collaborating with Perviy Otdel. "At least nine individuals have died in custody after their convictions."

Islam Baigarayev, head of the Bishkek City Bar Association, said statistics served as year-by-year proof of Russia's deteriorating human rights record. He believes Russia is retreating further into the status of a closed, totalitarian state.

"As is customary in such countries, the authorities decided to simply classify the information, reverting to Soviet practices," Baigarayev told Kontur.

Military crime explodes

The vanished statistics also concealed a sharp rise in crimes committed by Russian military personnel. Analysis by Polish outlet Vot Tak of garrison military court case files found that murder cases in 2025 were 16 times higher than in the first year of the war. Cases involving "infliction of grievous bodily harm resulting in death" rose sevenfold compared to the four years before the full-scale invasion.

The surge cannot be explained by military growth alone. Presidential decrees show Russia's armed forces grew only 1.5 times in size between the pre-war period and 2025, Vot Tak noted.

The likely driver: a large share of Russian servicemen are former convicts. In 2025, the Supreme Court -- before the data purge -- began publishing figures for the first time on how many individuals avoided prison sentences by signing contracts with the Ministry of Defense. More than 5,000 defendants chose contract service over a criminal conviction in 2025 alone.

A state going dark

The court statistics are part of a broader informational blackout. Russian authorities have also classified detailed figures on disabled citizens, even as casualties mounted. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and a high-ranking Russian source cited by The New York Times estimate approximately 400,000 Russian servicemen have been maimed.

Beyond the human toll, officials have withdrawn customs statistics and Central Bank foreign exchange reserve data from the public domain. Major Russian corporations received permission to withhold financial indicators. Oil and gas production data was classified. Following Ukrainian drone strikes in 2024, figures on gasoline and diesel production disappeared entirely.

"The authorities do not want to admit their mistakes; they do not want people to see the real price of the war," Iskanderov said.