Russian Authorities’ Approach to Counter-Extremism and Religious Issues
At the intersection of two spheres of Russian policy—the regulation of religion and security—is a specific security enforcement tool: counter-extremism legislation and its application in the religious sphere, which exerts control over Russian citizens, counteracts Western influence, and favors certain religious organizations over others.
Since the beginning of the post-Soviet period, the policies of the Russian authorities in both spheres have gradually become more restrictive. The evolution of regulation in the religious sphere during the 1990s and 2000s has been documented more than once, with multiple accounts focusing on the development of the legal mechanisms underpinning this regulation.Footnote 1 The security policy underwent a more complex transformation in this period, but one thing is certain: Vladimir Putin’s arrival marked a shift toward viewing a wide range of public policy areas through a security lens.Footnote 2 Unsurprisingly, the regulation of religion quickly became one of those areas. The counter-extremism legislation that emerged in 2002—titled “On Countering Extremist Activities”—has become one of the most important instruments in national security management.Footnote 3 It has been applied near-universally, including in the religious sphere.
This legislation covers topics that are commonly addressed in the laws of almost all European countries.Footnote 4 However, in Russia, it is framed differently, encompassing all the politically and ideologically motivated activities perceived by the state as threats to both specific population groups and the authorities. This legal instrument simultaneously performs two functions: ensuring national security and protecting society from threats from extremism as interpreted in line with the anti-cult movement. This duality was born of the securitized approach toward IslamFootnote 5 but has since spread to a wide variety of religious groups. This process gained new momentum in 2012–2014 due to the so-called conservative turn taken by the Russian authorities. Since 2014 and the annexation of Crimea, ongoing religious persecution has noticeably intensified. This trend has already attracted attention, as can be seen, for example, in publications by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Forum 18, and the SOVA Research Center (which operated till 2023 under the name SOVA Center for Information and Analysis).Footnote 6 However, the enforcement of counter-extremism legislation in the religious sphere in this period has never been summarized.
The enforcement of this law is largely tied to protecting traditional values. In the religious sphere, the policy of protecting traditionalism in the 2000s was interpreted more as an instrument of desecularization.Footnote 7 However, by the early 2010s, it became clear that this policy was more accurately viewed as a means to reinforce the authoritarian and anti-Western nature of the political regime.Footnote 8
It is easy to perceive repressive policies in the sphere of religion through the lens of the growing rapport between state authorities and the dominant Russian Orthodox Church. This perspective might suggest that even counter-extremism legislation has been enforced specifically against critics of the Russian Orthodox Church. This approach is presented in its most detailed form by Ani Sarkissian.Footnote 9 While she accurately describes the development of religious policy in Russia, including administrative preferences granted to certain organizations, starting with the Russian Orthodox Church, Sarkissian’s conceptualization is overly simplistic. First, she believes that the state is persecuting religious groups in order to defend Orthodox Christianity, which is definitely incorrect—Orthodox movements alternative to the dominant Moscow Patriarchate also face serious pressure. Next, she claims that the 1997 law on freedom of conscience and religious associations established the preferred status of the four traditional religions, but this is not accurate either—the law only introduced the concept of traditionalism into legal circulation. The real discussion of establishing a hierarchy based on this concept started several years later.Footnote 10 This discussion did not focus on religions in general but rather on specific religious organizations, most notably Islamic organizations. Specific legal preferences for the four religions designated as traditional only emerged during Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency, and, in many instances, the traditional Islamic organizations, rather than the Russian Orthodox Church, have benefited. Ultimately, counter-extremism legislation primarily protects the state rather than the Russian Orthodox Church.
The approach of Jardar Østbø appears more promising. He views the development of anti-extremism policy as part of an approach to religion—and even more broadly to the securitization of the very concept of traditionality.Footnote 11 Confirming and developing Østbø’s thesis, my analysis of the development of counter-extremism legislation and its enforcement practices from the initial conservative turn to the early years of the full-scale war with Ukraine illustrates the significant evolution of Russian counter-extremism and its growing role in shaping an authoritarian regime that bases its ideology on the defense of traditional values.
Legal Framework for Counter-Extremism Policy in the Sphere of ReligionFootnote 12
Counter-extremism legislation emerged shortly after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, but the suggestion that the new law emerged as a result of 9/11 would be an exaggeration.Footnote 13 Within Russia, the adoption of counter-extremism legislation was more often associated with the need to counter the emerging threat from the far right, and attempts to create such legislation had already been underway for several years prior to September 11, 2001.Footnote 14
Counter-extremism legislation in Russia is complex.Footnote 15 It is based on the framework 2002 law on countering extremist activities and, in particular, on the definition of such activity given in Article 1 of the law.Footnote 16 This definition encompasses a diverse array of actions, varying significantly in their degree of radicality from terrorism and mutiny to discrimination and the public display of banned symbols. Crimes that correspond to this definition could in some respects be called crimes of an extremist nature, but this legal concept is not precisely defined in the law; therefore, it cannot be said with complete certainty what list of articles of the Criminal Code fully covers it. To be more precise, a formal list does exist but is little known and is clearly narrower than the actual list of activities addressed by specialized counter-extremism law enforcement units.Footnote 17 Furthermore, some extremist actions constitute administrative rather than criminal offenses. The law on countering extremist activities also stipulates that organizations and media resources can be banned for their extremist actions.Footnote 18
Some elements of the definition of extremism are unrelated to religion, although crimes, including extremist acts, can certainly be motivated by religious hatred or political hatred tied to religion. Such crimes, whether a terrorist attack, a hate crime against a person or a material object, or any other type of crime, could be classified as religious extremism, even though such a category does not currently exist in the law—although its possible introduction into the legislation was actively discussed in the early 2000s and before, but never implemented.Footnote 19
Extremist activities include discrimination, incitement to hatred, or humiliation of people “on the basis of their … attitude to religion.”Footnote 20 This, presumably, depends on the alleged extremists’ own specific religion, absence of religion, or particular negative stance toward any given faith. There are practically no court cases related to religious discrimination, and this element of the definition can be taken as not currently enforced. On the other hand, court cases related to inciting hatred (including variants such as humiliation of dignity) are common.Footnote 21 They are covered, when pertaining to individuals and not organizations, by Article 282 of the Criminal Code.Footnote 22 Since the so-called partial decriminalization was enacted in 2018, the same actions now constitute an administrative offense punishable under Article 20.3.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, and only a repeated offense within a year or the presence of aggravating circumstances (mainly calls for violence) leads to criminal liability under Article 282 of the Criminal Code.
Actions in the form of hooliganism, or disorderly conduct, aimed at insulting the religious feelings of believers are also criminal offenses (Article 148 Parts 1 and 2 of the Criminal Code). Verdicts under this article could punish physical actions that pertain to sacred objects but do not really damage them (which would be an ordinary religious hate crime). However, the sanctions predominantly target statements, including street performances.
The definition of extremism also contains an element, similar to the one above but nevertheless distinct, of “propaganda of the exceptional nature, superiority or deficiency of persons on the basis of their … religious … affiliation, or attitude to religion.”Footnote 23 This norm, copied from the Constitution of Russia (art. 29, part 2), supposedly assumed a ban against calls for discrimination. However, it is conceivable that this phrasing could be interpreted in such a way that asserting the superiority, religiously speaking, of one’s faith followers over others or engaging in any other impassioned religious debate might be considered a potentially criminal act. Once authorities make a finding of “propaganda of … superiority,” or other signs of extremism, these findings can serve as a foundation for further measures, both judicial and extrajudicial. For instance, an organization may be deemed extremist and subsequently shut down, and then we see criminal prosecutions of believers, as discussed further below. When prosecuting individuals, the “propaganda of the exceptional nature” element of the definition of extremism leads to charges of the aforementioned humiliation of the dignity of a group defined by its particular religious affiliation or its attitude toward religion.
Additional provisions impacting religion under the definition of extremist activities were introduced in 2013 and 2016. Since 2013, the law on countering extremist activities, bans people who have committed extremist crimes or offenses not only from leading religious associations but even from participating in them.Footnote 24 This norm grossly violates their right to freedom of conscience, but, fortunately, is not enforced in practice. In 2016, as part of counterterrorism efforts (technically, within the counterterrorism package of amendments known as the Yarovaya Package), the so-called anti-missionary amendments were introduced to the law on freedom of conscience and religious associations, and related laws.Footnote 25 These amendments were designed to hinder the preaching of views unacceptable to the state on behalf of or under the cover of registered religious organizations, such as the preaching of radical preachers in the courtyard of a mosque. As a result, the use of these amendments affected a variety of religious movements, primarily Russian Protestants,Footnote 26 but not the groups already targeted under more stringent counter-extremism legislation.
As already mentioned, counter-extremism legislation was originally intended as a comprehensive set of measures and sanctions against organizations or media institutions more than sanctions against individuals. But the regulation of organizations and individuals are interconnected. Organizations, of course, are responsible for people, such as their members or participants, and, to an even greater extent, their leaders. On the other hand, people are also responsible for organizations. If a group of people commits or plans “crimes of an extremist nature,” whether hate crimes, incitement to hatred, public calls for extremist activity, or similar acts, then members of such a group can be additionally punished for participation in this group under Article 282.1 of the Criminal Code.Footnote 27 Similarly, this applies to “crimes of a terrorist nature” under Article 205.4 of the Criminal Code, including justification of terrorism. Anti-terrorism legislation also exists independently, but it was developed later, and terrorism is, by definition, a type of extremism. Finally, if an organization is recognized as extremist or terrorist, then continuing its activities—a broad category especially with respect to religious organizations—is also a crime and is punishable under Articles 282.2 or 205.5 of the Criminal Code, respectively.
Counter-extremism legislation targets not only people and their associations but also extremist ideology. The term extremist ideology is not found in the law but has been introduced into government policy by the Strategy for Countering Extremism in the Russian Federation until 2025, adopted in 2014.Footnote 28 In fact, however, this element has been present in the legislation from the very beginning through provisions for banning literature (and “informational materials” in any other format). Materials banned by courts are included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials,Footnote 29 the size of which had already exceeded 5,400 entries by the end of 2023. Mass distribution, including any online publication, of such materials is an offense under Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses. This mechanism, without parallels in Europe (albeit later copied by several post-Soviet countries, including Belarus), is essentially archaic. As the internet spreads, this legal mechanism becomes increasingly and obviously meaningless, but it remains in use.
Numerous religious texts, particularly those from the medieval period, are on the Federal List of Extremist Materials, as it can be readily argued that these works exhibit the state-defined signs of extremism, especially in their emphatic declarations of the inferiority of followers of different beliefs. Of course, like all counter-extremism law enforcement, prosecutions of these bans are highly selective. The effectiveness of the 2015 legislation that banned the courts from prohibiting the key texts of world religions, such as the Quran, was in question from the very beginning.Footnote 30 While no one in Russia was going to ban the originals of these texts in their respective languages, translations are viewed as a work different from the original and, therefore, not necessarily a central religious text that must be allowed under the 2015 legislation. This is exactly what happened two years later, with the ban on the Russian translation of the Bible used by Jehovah’s Witnesses.Footnote 31
The desire to enforce the bans against literature posted online quickly led to the practice of blocking materials on the internet. The practice has been rapidly developing in recent years. Now materials can be blocked for reasons other than their extremist or terrorist content; moreover, the direct connection with the Federal List of Extremist Materials has been lost. In the overwhelming majority of cases, blocking is carried out not based on court decisions, but extrajudicially, based on orders from the Prosecutor General’s Office. Not the actual content of the material, but the very fact that the material is owned by a banned organization, including a religious one, is a sufficient reason for an order to impose restrictions.
An important element of the counter-extremism legislation is the ban on the public display of symbols similar to the Nazi ones and symbols of banned organizations. It is punishable under Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, and since the summer of 2022, a repeated offense within a year becomes a criminal offense under a new norm, Article 282.4 of the Criminal Code. The problem of Nazi symbols is relevant for some religious movements of Eastern origin that use the swastika. Since 2020, Article 20.3 was amended so that display of Nazi symbols is not considered an offense, if the condemnation of Nazism is expressed at the same time (the same is true for symbols of banned organizations). Still, it is hardly reasonable to demand that believers make disclaimers at every turn that their swastika has nothing to do with Nazism. The use of swastika-like symbols by Russian and Slavic neo-pagans represents a more complicated case. The fact is that some of these groups indeed espouse ultra-right or openly neo-Nazi views, and their reference to traditional swastika patterns is an opportunity to express their political beliefs. However, in many cases no neo-Nazi propagandizing ever took place, but people faced punishment, nonetheless.
The application of this complex set of norms relies crucially on the support of academic experts. Their scientific (or quasi-scientific) conclusions are the de facto indispensable and often principal evidence in all cases related to counter-extremism legislation. Complaints about the quality of the expert examination itself and its application are numerous.Footnote 32 Most importantly, experts, law enforcement agencies, and courts evaluate texts in a very literal manner, with no reference to the context, whether communicative, historical, or religious. However, the courts almost never examine the actual texts, relying entirely on experts and do not assess the real extent of the statements’ public danger. All these issues have already been raised many times in decisions of the European Court of Human Rights concerning cases that involved charges of extremism related to religion, as I discuss below.
Since its early years, counter-extremism legislation and its application have raised concerns of potentially contradicting Russia’s international legal obligations. This was pointed out both in the Council of Europe and in the United Nations.Footnote 33 In connection with the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Zoe Knox wrote about the inevitability of the European Court’s assessing these persecutions.Footnote 34 By the time her article was published, the European Court of Human Rights had already delivered its first verdict, in the case of the ban on Said Nursi’s books (see below), pointing out shortcomings in the applicable law and particular problems with the use of expert examination.Footnote 35 This decision was followed by a series of other rulings repeating and elaborating on these complaints, beginning with the decision on Jehovah’s Witnesses.Footnote 36 Unfortunately, these verdicts were issued after Russia had already refused to comply with the court’s judgments in 2022.
The Dual Nature of Countering Religious Extremism
I have written elsewhere about how Russia’s counter-extremism legislation, in the part that affects religion, has combined two security objectives: protecting the state from groups and organizations whose activities are seen as a threat and protecting society from religious (or, conversely, anti-religious) trends that the majority or plurality of people see as morally unacceptable, unpleasant, or unusual.Footnote 37 The first threat has been usually described as the threat of terrorism, and the second as the threat of totalitarian sects, but the legislators have found a way to combine both these sources of threat within a broadly defined concept of extremism. The same mechanism can be seen in practice, for example, in the 2013 ban of the Horde (Orda), an association also known as the Path of Ancestors. It was declared extremist following the charges of engaging in illegal “healing” practices and also of “altering the consciousness” (traditional anti-cultist rhetoric on brainwashing) of its followers.Footnote 38
Similar problems arose in other groups. One such is the Allya-Ayat (Elle-Ayat) movement, which, like the Horde, came to Russia from Kazakhstan. The members of Allya-Ayat consider themselves not a religious association, but a healing one. However, some of their practices can also be called religious—such as worship of the sun or treatment by applying copies of their magazine to sore spots. Allya-Ayat groups have been repeatedly banned for engaging in illegal healing. In 2012, several of the aforementioned magazines were banned as extremist, and in 2019, an Allya-Ayat group in the Samara Region was recognized as extremist. On the other hand, the first criminal cases under Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code were initiated only in 2022.Footnote 39 The closed and apolitical community of Muslims in Tatarstan, known as Faizrakhmanists, was also recognized as extremist. They could have been accused, for example, of not allowing their children to receive secular education, but they were instead charged with extremism.Footnote 40 One of the outcomes of the ban was the conviction in 2019 of five community leaders.Footnote 41
The most famous and large-scale example of such a combination of security and anti-cultism is, of course, the ban against Jehovah’s Witnesses.Footnote 42 Attempts to ban their activities began as early as the late 1990s, but, at that time, they were based only on the idea of the unconventionality of Jehovah’s Witnesses for Russia, the isolation of community members from broader society, and their rejection of blood transfusions that endangered their members’ health. These attempts were unsuccessful. Events took quite a different turn when starting in 2009, law enforcement began to apply counter-extremism legislation against Jehovah’s Witnesses. Since 2009, the pressure on their organizations has been multifaceted. However, in legal terms, it was not charges related to prohibiting blood transfusions (as Russian law allows patients to choose) or any similar accusations that proved effective. Instead, the charges of asserting religious superiority, which are virtually impossible to disprove, emerged as the winning strategy. Based on these charges, an extensive array of Jehovah’s Witnesses literature was prohibited, followed by bans against several local organizations for using this literature. Eventually, in 2017, due to the persistence of such so-called violations, the Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses Administrative Center and all other local organizations that were considered its structural subdivisions, were banned. The prohibition against these organizations immediately led to the criminal prosecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses for continuing to operate the banned organizations, simply by holding their prayer meetings. Consequently, the state now primarily views Jehovah’s Witnesses as a security threat, yet almost any public discourse against them still incorporates anti-cult rhetoric.
Of course, the scheme outlined above is somewhat of an oversimplification. In reality, the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses did not develop quite so straightforwardly. Nevertheless, the scheme has worked. Incidentally, Jehovah’s Witnesses were not its first victims. Before this, the followers of Said Nursi experienced a similar trajectory, starting with the ban on books authored by the moderate Turkish Muslim preacher, followed by the prohibition of his entire following under the name Nurcular (though the existence of such an organization in Russia remains debatable; followers of Nursi in Russia are not likely to form a centralized organization), and culminating in the criminal prosecution of people for meeting to study Nursi’s books. It is highly likely that the persecution was partly due to intelligence services failing to distinguish between followers of Fethullah Gülen and other followers of Nursi.Footnote 43 Of course, a more direct approach was possible—for instance, the ban on the Muslim pietist movement Tablighi Jamaat was imposed without any preliminary ban on its literature but resulted in a greater number of criminal cases later. In both cases, the ban was also based on a broadly understood assertion of “religious superiority,” and strong criticism of religious opponents was interpreted as inciting religious hatred.Footnote 44 Simultaneously, these religious movements were consistently deemed not traditional for Russia, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, as if the mere novelty of a religious movement within a given society poses a danger.
In many cases, the experts engaged by the courts focused specifically on demonstrating the nontraditional nature of certain religious beliefs, thereby concluding them to be extremist.Footnote 45 There were cases where an expert simply described certain doctrinal differences between, for example, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Orthodox Christianity, and then concluded that the relevant text was extremist without providing additional arguments.Footnote 46
This very idea lies at the core of counter-extremism policy in the realm of religion, as Marat Shterin correctly noted. Describing the lawmaking of the late 1990s and early 2000s, he pointed, in connection with the adoption of the 2002 law, to “a clear political intent by implying that anything socially unacceptable or non-traditional in the general sense was also politically subversive”Footnote 47—even though this political potential of counter-extremism legislation was not immediately revealed. Moreover, while the repressive potential of the 1997 law was later greatly weakened by the relevant decision of the Constitutional Court, nothing of the sort happened with the 2002 law.Footnote 48
In lawmaking, the 2016 Anti-Missionary Amendments serve as a prime example of how the anti-cult movement after numerous attempts to incorporate its language into legislation over the years, ultimately achieved success in alignment with the doctrine of combating terrorism.Footnote 49 Generally, the spheres of countering “sectarians” and “extremists” have always been understood as interconnected.
In practice, the link between countering extremism and defending traditionalism in religion is based on the real experience of Salafism’s development in the North Caucasus: Salafi preachers introduced ideas about Islam that were novel and nontraditional for the area, and their conflict with the local Islamic elite quickly escalated to the most radical forms aggravated by the state’s active intervention.Footnote 50 Consequently, Salafism (often referred to as and conflated with Wahhabism) became associated with terrorism in Russia for many years, even though this connection is by no means always accurate. However, following this logic, it is easy to make two mistakes simultaneously: first, to assume a causal relationship between non-traditionalism and radicalization, and second, to extend this connection to any other religious innovations (or what may seem like an innovation).
This theory fits well with the position of large and old religious organizations, whose representatives defend their dominant position with respect to other organizations and movements. It also aligns with political conservatism, which appeals to traditional values (usually not defined in any way or defined extremely carelessly) as the basis of stability and identity (including the political identity) of Russian society. It is also important that non-traditionality is always linked to influence from abroad.
In particular, the opposition of tradition vs. extremism is clearly visible in the counter-extremism strategy mentioned above—a conceptual document adopted in 2014 during the height of military operations in Donbas but prepared, importantly, before these events.Footnote 51 In the new version of this document, adopted in 2020, little has changed in this regard.Footnote 52
Traditional values also play an important role in strategy documents on national security. It is worth comparing the national security document from late 2015, adopted after the hot phase of the war in Donbas, with the subsequent one from July 2021 (a year after the amendments to the constitution), which included the language of “traditional values.”Footnote 53 Certainly, these documents address more than just religion or the phenomena generally understood as extremism. They encompass various aspects of security and, to some extent, generally reflect the process of ideologization within the political regime. Initially, the Putin regime was explicitly and declaratively not based on any ideology; it gradually lost this characteristic throughout the 2000s. The first acceleration of ideologization happened in 2012 in response to mass protests, the second resulted from Russian intervention in Ukraine in 2014, but the third phase, marked by the 2020 constitutional reform, was no longer a response to specific external events. Since the beginning, the regime’s ideologization was founded on the idea of confronting the West in defense of a certain unique identity, which was defined in various ways over time, but has gradually become primarily associated with traditional values.
The National Security Strategy of 2015 spoke of the threat from NATO, but the West, in general, was understood more as an opponent pursuing a “policy of containment,” including “by manipulating public consciousness and falsifying history.” “Traditional Russian spiritual and moral values” were referenced, not as the foundation of society, but merely as one of its positive attributes, mainly associated with the absence of interethnic and interreligious conflicts. “Religious extremist ideology” held a modest position among various other forms of extremism or radicalism, with the primary emphasis placed on “color revolutions.”Footnote 54
In the strategy of 2021, the West was already portrayed as a collective adversary, its values clashing with Russia’s as the latter upholds traditional values while the Western liberal model faces a crisis. The West’s actions are limited to the “targeted erosion of traditional values, distortion of world history, and revision of Russia’s perceived role and place in it, rehabilitation of fascism, and incitement of interethnic and interfaith conflicts.” This time, the concept of traditional values is partially clarified, but, once again, through contrast—in opposition to the West, where “fundamental moral and cultural norms, religious principles, the institution of marriage, family values, and so on are increasingly being undermined.” This confrontation endangers the “foundation of cultural sovereignty” and the very existence of a “state-forming people” (a concept introduced in the 2020 Constitution as an official designation for native Russian language speakers).Footnote 55
At the same time, the strategy devotes noticeably more space to references to extremism, including those associated with religion. It lists, side by side, threats such as “religious radicalism” conceived as a political threat, “destructive religious movements” conceived as a moral threat coming from “totalitarian sects,” and “the formation of religious enclaves” understood as a threat related to the ethnic and cultural fragmentation of society. Interestingly, the threat to “traditional values” can come not only from the “USA and their allies,” transnational corporations, or foreign nongovernmental organizations but also from unspecified “religious, extremist, and terrorist organizations.” This juxtaposition could be a grammatical error by the authors—they probably did not mean that “any foreign religious organization” constitutes a threat to traditional values. The strategy does not always explicitly link religious extremism to Western influence. While it cannot be said to be directly inspired by the West, it can be assumed to emerge indirectly from Western policies, as explicitly stated in the same document regarding ISIS. Despite the lack of clarity typical of such documents, in the latest version of the National Security Strategy, the authorities directly indicate that “religious extremism” in general, as well as certain “destructive religious movements” related to it, are directly or indirectly connected with the West and constitute an important source of threat to interconnected foundations of Russian civilization—its “state-forming people,” “traditional values” and “cultural sovereignty.”Footnote 56
The outbreak of a large-scale armed conflict since February 24, 2022, has not, so far, led to a change in the conceptual state documents in this area, but it has dramatically changed the official rhetoric. The explanations for the decision announced by President Putin on that day have increasingly mentioned the “spiritual” confrontation with the West, which has been described using words such as “Satan” and other similar labels.Footnote 57 This argument is particularly characteristic of former president Dmitry Medvedev.Footnote 58 It is worth recalling that Medvedev is now known for his hawkish rhetoric, but his presidency was marked not only by the comparative softness of his policies but also by real reforms that expanded the influence of the church in schools and the army. The significance of religion-related security threats leads to an active repressive policy in this area, as can be seen when considering law enforcement practice during the period of the active ideologization of the regime since 2014.
Law Enforcement Practice 2014–2023
Much has already been written about the enforcement of counter-extremism legislation in the religious sphere. It is covered in detail in the annual reports of the SOVA Research Center, available on the center’s website in annual collectionsFootnote 59 Law enforcement abuses in the sphere of countering extremism usually attract the most attention.Footnote 60 Maria Kravchenko has authored a series of reports on this topic since 2013, the most recent one covering the events of 2023.Footnote 61 The enforcement of counter-extremism legislation also has a relatively legitimate component, described since 2011 in the broader context of counter-extremism policies by Natalia Yudina. Yudina’s latest reports cover the law enforcement on hate crimesFootnote 62 and other counter-extremism law enforcementFootnote 63 observed in 2023. Olga Sibireva has covered the application of some related norms in her reports on the situation in the sphere of freedom of conscience published since 2006, with the most recent report also describing the events of 2023.Footnote 64 Drawing on these reports and SOVA Research Center’s criminal law enforcement database,Footnote 65 we can provide a concise summary of the key law enforcement trends observed from 2014 to 2023, encompassing the time from the onset of the first armed conflict in Ukraine to the initial year of the second conflict, without the need for additional references.
Major Campaigns
The principal targets of anti-extremism policy—Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Muslim movements already mentioned above—had already commenced and were actively evolving prior to 2014; however, as of 2023, they continue to stand out as the most notable in terms of the breadth of law enforcement engagement. These specific campaigns, with some variations that we will address later, can be characterized as more consistent, while law enforcement efforts aimed at other religious goals tend to be less predictable in terms of their application.
The first printed materials and the first local organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses were banned as early as 2009. The first criminal case on the continuation of the activities of the banned organization was opened at the same time. Since then, the campaign has only been expanding. By April 20, 2017, when the Supreme Court ruled to ban all registered organizations of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the country, eight local organizations had already been banned by local courts. In August of the same year, among other printed materials, the Bible, in the translation used by Jehovah’s Witnesses, was recognized as extremist. For about a year after the total ban, law enforcement agencies paused and almost never opened criminal cases against Jehovah’s Witnesses. Meanwhile, the confiscation of the banned organizations’ property continued apace. Later such cases began to open in unprecedented numbers, never seen in any other campaign against extremism in the country. In 2017, according to the statistics collected by the SOVA Research Center, criminal cases were initiated against four people. In 2018 the number of defendants grew to 36, and in 2019, it reached 213. In 2020, it dropped back to about 110 but then increased to at least 142 in 2021. It is worth noting that neither the parliamentary elections held the same year nor the total ban and persecution against Alexei Navalny’s organizations were able to distract the law enforcement from escalating the campaign against Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2021. The fight against the group remained a priority. Only the armed conflict in Ukraine and the need to suppress anti-war protests finally affected the persecution campaign’s rate of growth. In 2022, only about eighty new cases were opened, but that drop was offset in part by 107 new cases opened the following year. Sentences have become more and more severe over time—until 2018, the verdicts did not involve real loss of liberty, but later real prison terms started appearing in sentences more and more often. However, the war has imposed certain adjustments once again: 33 imprisoned of 105 convicted offenders in 2021; 49 of 118 in 2022; 48 of 153 in 2023. Even a seventy-year-old woman was incarcerated. Since the beginning of the 2020s, a six-year term of imprisonment has completely ceased to be a rarity. The maximum known term at the time of writing is eight years.
In recent years, Jehovah’s Witnesses have made up the majority of people convicted under the article on continuing the activities of an extremist organization. Resentment against the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses as extremists was expressed quite often, especially considering the fact that, as a religious movement, the group is rather unpopular. It is worth recalling that Jehovah’s Witnesses are not merely pacifists but generally do not participate in politics out of principle.
Their plight was vigorously discussed at one of the annual meetings of President Putin with his Human Rights Council in December 2018, and there was even an official announcement that unspecified measures would be taken. In practice, however, 2019 turned out to be a record year in the number of newly opened criminal cases. Later, the president twice asked the Supreme Court to review law enforcement in the sphere of religion, the second time directly in connection with the cases of Jehovah’s Witnesses, as described below.
Made after the meeting of the president with the Human Rights Council in December 2020, the request to the Supreme Court focused directly on the problem in the application of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code. On the one hand, following the general meaning of this article, participation in the religious activities of a group can be viewed as a continuation of the activities of a banned organization if this group formerly belonged to such an organization – and this is a crime. On the other hand, Article 28 of the Russian Constitution guarantees the right to practice one’s religion “together with others,” and it is not clear what remains of this right once Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code is applied. In October 2021, the Supreme Court attempted to clarify that not every religious activity in a group constitutes an offense under Article 282.2. The explanation was not very clear,Footnote 66 but it still gave the judges a chance not to convict a believer in one specific case. This is remarkable, since the overall number of acquittals in Russia is negligible, and the numbers under Article 282.2 are even smaller. As expected, the effectiveness of the Supreme Court decision turned out to be less than stellar – out of 20 defendants in November-December of the same year, only one was acquitted. The practice of 2022 showed a similar proportion—with 118 found guilty, one was also acquitted, one case was closed, and three cases were returned to the prosecutor’s office. Worse, prosecutor’s offices appealed the acquittals, and previously acquitted believers were all, one by one, convicted again.
The campaign against Jehovah’s Witnesses has far surpassed substantially similar persecution campaigns against the Muslim movements Tablighi Jamaat and the followers of Said Nursi. However, both campaigns are also ongoing.Footnote 67
By now, very few followers of Nursi remain in the country, many have emigrated, but new cases are still being opened. For Muslim groups, in contrast to Jehovah’s Witnesses, the SOVA Center’s information is not as complete. It tends to be more accurate in terms of the number of verdicts we record, and less accurate in terms of the number of new cases we notice in a timely manner. So, the number of people convicted for discussing Nursi’s books was extremely volatile from year to year; from 2014 to 2023 it fluctuated between zero and ten per year, with no apparent trend. Most often, the punishment was a suspended sentence or a fine. The case in Tatarstan against Gabdrakhman (Albert) Naumov, a former imam and teacher, was a significant exception. In November 2021, he was sentenced to six and half years in prison for participation in Nurcular, which is extremely unusual for cases of this category. Next, in 2023, six members of the Moscow-based group of Nursi followers (Nurcus) were also sentenced to prison terms of up to six and a half years. Additionally, it is worth noting that many cases in this category are terminated, both by investigators and courts, particularly in Dagestan. This is not typical for counter-extremism cases. The inconsistency in the number of sentences over time, coupled with this fact, suggests that, when dealing with Nursi’s followers, law enforcement agencies may not be as formalistic as in other cases.
SOVA Research Center is aware of more cases and verdicts related to Tablighi Jamaat,Footnote 68 since its followers are more numerous—in part because this movement is legal in Kyrgyzstan, and many labor migrants from this country do not even know that it is prohibited in Russia. On the other hand, information about these cases comes almost exclusively from law enforcement agencies. We do not doubt that it is incomplete, but we have no idea to what extent. From 2014 to 2016 the number of convicted Tablighi Jamaat followers was insignificant: from zero to two a year. However, from 2017 to 2022 we recorded greater numbers, from fifteen to twenty-two guilty verdicts a year (except for 2020, when there were only seven). We know of no such verdicts in 2023, though new cases are still being opened. Obviously, we can say that law enforcement agencies have seriously focused on Tablighi Jamaat only since 2016, taking into account the usual length of investigations. At the same time, the percentage of sentences that involve incarceration, previously small, has risen sharply. We have no information on punishments imposed in 2017 or in the majority of cases in 2021. For 2018 and 2020 we only have the data on imprisonments, and for 2019—almost exclusively about imprisonments. The maximum term for this movement’s followers increased to seven years behind bars in 2021. It must be noted that the percentage of real prison terms fell again in 2022. Possibly, the shift of the law enforcement focus because of the ongoing armed conflict had an effect here as well.
Applying Ordinary Norms on Hate Crimes and Hate Speech in the Sphere of Religion
Not all forms and objectives of anti-extremism policy display high levels of activity comparable to the ones discussed above. Relatively few convictions have been recorded for violent hate crimes, primarily due to the limited number of such crimes motivated by religious hatred. Between 2015 and 2016, more than twenty serious attacks per year were documented—the majority of them against Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were at that point subject to a massive negative media campaign. Initially, these attacks went largely unpunished; subsequently, they dwindled in 2017 as properties were seized, and street or door-to-door preaching virtually ceased. As a result, we know of one violent hate crime committed on religious grounds in 2018, none at all from 2019 to 2021, and two or three a year in 2022–2023. Accordingly, we cannot name a single sentence for such crimes for the period under review.
Hate crimes targeting property, commonly referred to as vandalism in Russia, exhibit a somewhat different trend. While they continue to occur in greater numbers, a decline has been observed since 2014 compared to prior years. Between 2014 and 2017, there were around thirty such crimes annually; this figure dropped to fifteen to twenty in the following three years. In both 2021 and 2022, only twelve incidents were recorded each year and only seven in 2023. Orthodox Christian sites were the most frequent targets of these attacks almost every year, which is unsurprising given their widespread presence throughout the country. The dominant and most widespread religion also attracts the largest number of protests, motivated by a variety of reasons. Until 2017, the Jehovah’s Witnesses buildings competed with them, but then they disappeared. Muslim sites experienced fewer attacks but remained relatively common targets until 2016, after which such incidents nearly ceased. Jewish sites faced more consistent attacks, but no more than five per year, and only once in 2023. In 2020–2021, Jewish and Orthodox Christian sites encountered competition from neo-pagan targets, although the reasons for this are unclear.
Vandals were rarely apprehended, and in at least some instances it is likely that no serious efforts were made to find them. As a result, convictions for religious vandalism were scarce during the years under review. From 2014 to 2017, there were two convictions per year, except for 2016, which saw three verdicts. In these cases, the targeted sites were Orthodox and Islamic each year, except for 2015, when a synagogue, not an Islamic site, was one of the targets. The number of convictions decreased further, with one each for attacks on Orthodox sites in 2018 and 2020, and none from 2019 to 2023.
Assessing the dynamics of criminal prosecutions for inciting religious hatred is problematic. In many cases we know the legal qualification of the case: the three most common criminal norms are Article 205.2 (calls for or justification of terrorism), Article 280 (calls for extremist activity), and Article 282 (incitement of hatred). However, we lack even approximate information on the actual content of the public statements that prompted these charges. Overall, during the period of the rapid increase in the number of sentences for public statements, that is, in the period 2013–2017, Article 282 of the Criminal Code undoubtedly dominated. Offenders were usually charged under it for inciting racial and ethnic hatred, very rarely, religious hatred, while supporters of militant Islamic movements more often faced charges under Article 205.2. The same picture has been observed until 2018, when the use of Article 282 became less frequent. Next, the situation changed dramatically with the partial decriminalization of Article 282, which entered into force at the beginning of 2019. Since then, this article has lagged significantly behind the other two in terms of frequency of use. However, all three articles have seen the increasing amount of use in the past few years. The increase in sentences issued under them was especially noticeable in 2021—these were the cases initiated on average a year earlier, in the year of constitutional reform. In 2022, the number of new cases grew markedly again, and then again in 2023.Footnote 69 How did this trend affect the percentage of offenders prosecuted for statements specifically related to religion?
The SOVA Research Center performed such calculations for the period 2020–2023, albeit for only those cases or which we had sufficient information. We categorized these criminal cases involving public statements into groups based on the target of the alleged hate speech. Unlike ethnic or political targets, religious ones were less frequent. We also excluded cases classified as “insulting the feelings of believers,” where the incriminated statements did not genuinely express hatred toward adherents of specific religions.
At the time of writing, we had the 2020 data on the content of statements that appeared in the verdicts. Focusing specifically on religious hatred, real or perceived, we see that in the vast majority of cases, the issue of religious hatred in law enforcement is associated with Islam, encompassing enmity toward Muslims, non-Muslims, or Muslims considered deviant from the perspective of other Muslim groups. Other objects of enmity were noticeably less numerous. This was true even for Orthodox Christians; the hate speech against them brought only a few convictions per year. The absence of any noticeable trends for other religions is striking.
Therefore, we can confidently state that the verdicts of 2021 indicated an increase in cases of religious hatred roughly proportional to the overall rise in sentences for extremist statements, and, since then, the number of sentences related to religion has declined both in absolute terms and, to even greater extent, as a percentage of the total.Footnote 70
Application of Norms Specific to Modern Russia
Significantly fewer bans of religious literature are on the basis of extremism.Footnote 71 However, the general dynamics of additions to the Federal List of Extremist Materials reflect a growth rate that peaked in 2016, and in the same year, the Prosecutor General’s Office centralized the process—the change that, in and of itself, led to a rapid reduction in the number of bans. However, religious literature was also specifically affected. The overall annual growth of the list decreased significantly—from 785 items in 2016 to 82 items in 2023. Similarly, the number of new items related to religion dropped from ninety-five to eleven during the same period, with 143 entries in 2018 the exception to the general trend. This nearly tenfold reduction is highly significant.
Paradoxically, the principal source of the additions to the Federal List of Extremist Materials related to religion in the past—the Muslim materials that actually called for violence or radical forms of discrimination or were created by active militants—were the one most affected by the changes. In 2014–2015, more than ninety such materials were included in the list every year, then a decrease began, going down to one item in 2023 (2018 was an outlier again at forty-three materials, but there were thirty the year before and sixteen the year after). In comparison, other categories of Muslim materials show no clear trends. In general, the number of banned materials from 2014 to 2023 fluctuated between twenty and one, except for two peaks: fifty-three in 2015 and sixty-one in 2018. These anomalous numbers are largely explained by group bans. For example, in 2015, a wide variety of books fell under the ban, from the writings of Said Nursi to ordinary collections of prayers to twenty-five items with the fundamentalist party Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami texts that contained nothing illegal. A similar picture was observed in 2018, and in other years, but on a smaller scale. Despite the control by the Prosecutor General’s Office, even classical medieval works are sometimes banned.
In all the years under review, the prohibited materials of religions other than Islam always included many works produced by Jehovah’s Witnesses. The total number of items that pertained to other religions from 2014 to 2021 ranged from one to twelve, with two notable outliers: twenty materials in 2018 and thirty in 2020. These outliers also involved a large percentage of Jehovah’s Witnesses materials (all twenty items in 2018). It is important to mention that, in 2020, bans on Jehovah’s Witnesses materials decreased to zero. Twenty of thirty bans issued in 2020 pertained to pamphlets by Protestant pastor William Marrion Branham,Footnote 72 and the remaining seven materials belonging to Orthodox fundamentalists. In 2022 and 2023, only one additional Jehovah’s Witness material a year was newly included on the Federal List of Extremist Materials. Thus, a variety of religious movements is represented in the list, albeit in small quantities.Footnote 73
In general, there has been a decline in the activity of the Prosecutor General’s Office in this regard. Two possible interrelated factors contribute to this trend. First, the bans themselves are not highly effective. If the material is in demand, people will still find ways to distribute it, even if anonymously, on the internet. Second, since the extrajudicial blocking mechanism for online materials was established and entrusted to the Prosecutor General’s Office, this approach has taken precedence. Tens of thousands of materials are blocked every year. Detailed data on the specific materials blocked is not disclosed; however, in 2020, the number of blocked or removed materials from ISIS, Jabhat an-Nusra,Footnote 74 and Hizb ut-Tahrir alone exceeded 47,000, which is considerably smaller than the total number of prohibited materials.
Nevertheless, the Federal List of Extremist Materials has by now accumulated a lot of banned religious materials; so, we could expect wide application of Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses to punish their mass distribution. Indeed, Article 20.29 was used widely. The number of cases that involved it grew rapidly in the first half of the 2010s, and, since 2016, exceeded one and a half thousand cases a year. In 2017, 2018, and 2020, the number of cases was more than 1,800 per year. Only in 2021 did a significant decrease begin—to 1,319, then to 869 in 2022, and to 415 in 2023.Footnote 75 The issue is that detailed information is not publicly available, so we are only aware of a very small percentage of these cases, making it difficult to assess the dynamics of punishments imposed specifically for distributing religious materials. While punishments for disseminating religious materials (or materials directed against a particular religion and its believers) are common, they constitute a clear minority of cases. For instance, in 2022, out of approximately 210 cases in which the SOVA Research Center knew the content of the materials involved, religious materials appeared in 35.
As for law enforcement under Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses on prohibited symbols, cases under this article in the religious sphere are to be expected, as mentioned above, but apparently, they are very infrequent, since we have identified no such cases since 2018.
The legislation on undesirable organizations, which has been developing since 2015, also applies in the religious sphere. In fact, it is very close to counter-extremism legislation: a foreign organization’s undesirability is determined by the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (without a trial) if it is viewed as presenting a threat to security or the constitutional order. Any cooperation with such an organization is an administrative offense (Article 20.33 of the Code of Administrative Offenses), and the same action repeated later within a year, as well as financing or directing such activities, is already a criminal offense (Article 284.1 of the Criminal Code). So far, this tool, created to combat political opposition, is infrequently used in the religious sphere, but the practice has been accumulating. It can also be used in combination with charges of extremism.
Texts important to practitioners of Falun Dafa (or Falun Gong) have been banned as extremist since 2008 (although the bans were sometimes successfully challenged) triggering prosecution under Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses. One of their regional organizations (in Khakassia) was recognized as extremist in 2020 (although, surprisingly, only on the second attempt). In the same year, seven of their organizations abroad were declared undesirable. Cases of persecution of Falun Dafa followers triggered by this decision started only in 2024. The persecution of Falun Dafa group is most likely driven by demands from the Chinese authorities. However, the categorization of Falun Dafa as a new religious movement still plays a significant role in the allegations against its texts, introducing anti-cult rhetoric into arguments against it.
A criminal case against Scientologists in St. Petersburg has been ongoing since 2017 and includes charges of inciting hatred against critics of Scientology. Five defendants were sentenced in August 2023. Interpreting the concept of incitement to hatred in this manner certainly looks exotic, but this case is by no means unique in Russian law enforcement. Next, in September 2021, the Prosecutor General’s Office recognized the activities of two American organizations—the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises International and the Church of Spiritual Technology, L. Ron Hubbard Library—as undesirable. The first criminal case under Article 284.1 of the Criminal Code was initiated in April 2022, opening up new and threatening prospects for Russian Scientologists.
In the Falun Dafa case, the anti-cult motivation could have been used as a cover for the actual political one. Meanwhile, in the case of the four Pentecostal churches of the New Generation movement recognized as undesirable in 2021, the political motivation was clearly in the foreground. The founder of the New Generation, pastor Alexei Ledyaev, actively (and often quite radically) speaks out on political topics, and, in particular, strongly criticizes the Russian authorities. In December of the same year, the special services carried out an unprecedented raid against a meeting of New Generation pastors near Moscow, and a major criminal case was opened. Since then, in the course of 2022, several pastors were punished under Article 20.33 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, and, in 2023, three of them were sentenced to an imprisonment for continuing their cooperation with the New Generation.
The cases of so-called undesirable Protestants involved no extremist charges. Since 2023, the practice of declaring organizations undesirable without adding extremism charges has expanded to affect additional religious groups.
Added in 2013, after the famous Pussy Riot case, the article on insulting the feelings of believers (Article 148 Parts 1 and 2, of the Criminal Code) reached a peak of use in 2017 and 2018, when it appeared in the sentences of ten and eight people, respectively. For the next couple of years, it seemed to have been almost forgotten. Then, in 2020, new cases started emerging against the background of the constitutional reform. The article was used in the verdicts against sixteen people in 2021, fourteen in 2022, and thirteen in 2023. Among these cases, SOVA Research Center sees its use against five people in 2021, five people in 2022, and nine people in 2023 as clearly inappropriate. Most of these verdicts were issued for photographs of scantily clad models in front of churches or for various manipulations with religious images posted on the Internet. New cases of similar content are currently under investigation, although some have been closed after heated discussions. Only one verdict involved real imprisonment—the defendant was a migrant and used not only a cathedral but also the Kremlin as the background for his photo session. Overall, the enforcement of this law appears to be primarily a propaganda tool.
The old criminal article, which during Soviet times was frequently referred to as “anti-sectarian,” is now formulated as “creating a religious or public association, whose activities are associated with violence against citizens or other harm to their health, as well as leadership of such an association.”Footnote 76 Participation in such an association is punishable under Part 3 of the same article (previously Part 2 until 2013). Its use has been relatively rare in the post-Soviet era; the number of convicted offenders sentenced under Article 239 has never exceeded ten per year and was typically much lower. This norm can be applied to various religious leaders—Protestant pastors, participants of the already mentioned organization Allya-Ayat, or Vissarion, the leader of the Church of the Last Testament. However, since the beginning of 2023, penalties for all parts of the article have become more severe, and this is often perceived as a signal for that the state is using it more actively.
Conclusion
What could be called countering religious extremism, if such terminology were used in Russia, has been created and developed in two parallel perspectives. On the one hand, legislation and its enforcement aim to cover as widely as possible all threats related to religion, whether real or imagined by the authorities. On the other hand, these norms and their use are an organic part of the broader task of protecting state and public security, that is, part of the regime’s general repressive policy determined by political considerations. In both perspectives, we observe the norms and their enforcement practices that are quite normal for a democratic society, the norms and their enforcement typical of an authoritarian ideocratic regime, and a wide range of intermediate norms and law enforcement practices.
It is important to note that the first perspective, associated with the increasingly proactive religious policy of the state, took shape during the initial decade of Putin’s rule. This perspective continues to evolve, seemingly driven by inertia, without adopting new forms. However, this inertia could still lead to widespread persecution. The second, more politically charged perspective, emerged in 2012 during the year of mass protests when discussions on the bill to protect the feelings of believers began. This perspective has continued to develop, with the introduction of the law on undesirable organizations, although the momentum in this direction remains relatively modest. Both perspectives—the one addressing religious threats in general and the one viewing them as part of the political extremism spectrum—are closely interlinked.
The calculations provided above demonstrate that, while the overall enforcement of counter-extremism legislation has been steadily expanding in scope after 2019, the percentage of criminal or administrative cases related specifically to religion has been decreasing just as steadily. This applies to hate crime norms and all laws on public incitement, with the criminalization of the latter continuously expanding in Russian laws.
In absolute numbers, only persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses grew during the period covered in this article, while persecution of Muslim minorities did not show a clear trend. Since 2017, the number of bans against various informational materials, including religious ones, has been decreasing at an accelerating rate. It seems that this instrument itself is gradually dying out: it appears that prosecutors have also come to view it as useless. One might interpret this as a sign that in recent years, the state has perceived fewer threats related to religion. With the onset of the major war in 2022, authorities have shifted their focus to other priorities, so that even the persecution against Jehovah’s Witnesses has decreased in scope.
Meanwhile, the number of confessions that face persecution, never limited to only one or two targets, continues to expand. And although Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslim minorities remain those most targeted, since 2022, the persecution of clergy for anti-war speech has also contributed to the statistics, albeit slightly.Footnote 77
Enforcement of counter-extremism legislation is closely linked to the authorities’ ideological motivation to protect traditional values, which, as noted in this article and by other authors, can now be regarded as the primary ideological construct. The anti-extremism repertoire continues to expand as the understanding of traditionalism broadens, with its perception as something needing protection becoming increasingly mainstream. For instance, many cases related to protecting the feelings of believers represent a typical defense of traditionalism. These cases primarily serve propaganda purposes rather than prosecutorial and are often simply closed after receiving extensive media coverage.
It would be mistaken to assume that authorities protect religion in general or any specific denomination through this approach. The concept of traditionalism is understood in a broader, more secular context, and such interpretation can sometimes create tension within religious communities.Footnote 78 In fact, this approach often leans more on Soviet tradition than it does on religious tradition.Footnote 79
The ideological basis of persecution is closely linked to the anti-Western course of the existing regimeFootnote 80 and to Putin’s particular version of nationalism.Footnote 81 The Russian authorities’ decision to engage in a radical confrontation with the West in 2022 was largely presented under the guise of protecting traditionality. Consequently, they have adapted and intensified their repressive policies to further this cause. However, the anti-Western aspect of repressive policies should not be overemphasized. In the religious sphere, sanctions under counter-extremism legislation extended far beyond groups of Western origin. Similarly, in politics, anti-extremism targets not just the liberal opposition, but also the ultra-right, ultra-left, jihadists, and many other groups.
In general, the ideological evolution of Putin’s regime has been examined more than once. Key milestones include the ‘conservative turn’ of 2012–2014 and the constitutional reform, followed by the onset of a major war from 2020 to 2022. At the core of what can be termed Putin’s ideology is Russia’s role as a defender of traditional values, primarily but not exclusively against Western influence.Footnote 82 Repressive policies, including the use of counter-extremism legislation in the religious sphere, were initially aimed at protecting the political regime and public security, but are now increasingly aligned with the regime’s ideology.
Acknowledgments and Citation Guide
The author is the director of the SOVA Research Center, a group of researchers whose interests include the problems of nationalism and xenophobia, the relationship between religion and society, and the formation and implementation of anti-extremist policy in Russia. The SOVA Research Center’s research informs this article. The article is cited consistent with the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition. Unless otherwise noted, translations are those of the author.
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