The Fictitious Anti-terror Industry: How Russia fought terrorism and its results
Rubber pentagon of anti-terrorism
The terror attack at Crocus City Hall was the largest failure of the Kremlin and Russian law enforcement agencies in the fight against terrorism since the early 2000s. Back then, after a series of terrible terrorist attacks — the 1999 bombings of residential buildings (314 dead), the seizure of more than 900 hostages in the Dubrovka Theatre Centre (130 to 170 dead) in 2002, and more than 1100 held hostage in the Beslan school (315 dead) in 2004 — the fight against terror was proclaimed the central task of security forces and arguably the entire state. The resources allocated to this fight were steadily increased, and the powers of law enforcement agencies were expanded.
However, after 2004, as separatist resistance in Chechnya was eradicated, the scale of terrorist activity began to decline. In March 2010, there was a double suicide bombing in the Moscow metro (36 dead), and in January 2011, a suicide bombing at Domodedovo airport (37 dead). Finally, in April 2017, there was an explosion in the St Petersburg metro that killed 67 people. Meanwhile, the number of individuals accused of terrorism grew almost exponentially throughout the 2010s. It might be assumed that the decline in terrorist activity was a consequence of the growing number of convicted terrorists. However, an analysis of the prosecution statistics for terrorist activity instead indicates that the fight against terrorism has been subject to departmental and political logic, becoming increasingly detached from reality and being replaced by propaganda framing and the task of persecuting 'enemies of the regime'.
As the chart below shows, a sharp rise in the number of convictions for terror charges began immediately after Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency in 2012. In 2009-2011, an average of 16 people a year received sentences under Article 205 of the Russian Criminal Code ('terrorist act'), while in 2012-2013 the average number of such sentences rose to 28. However, the real surge in the campaign to imprison 'terrorists' began after new articles and corpus delicti were added to the Criminal Code in 2013 ('training for the purpose of engaging in terrorist activities', Article 205.3; 'organisation of a terrorist community and participation in it', Article 205.4; 'organisation of the activities of a terror organisation and participation in the activities of such an organisation', Article 205.5).
Number of individuals convicted on terror charges, 2009-2023
The expansion of 'anti-terror' norms in the Criminal Code began as early as 2002, when after the attack on Dubrovka, Article 205.1 on 'assisting terrorism' was introduced. In 2006, after the tragedy in Beslan, the ‘counterterrorism’ law was adopted, and 'public incitement to terrorist activities' and 'public justification of terrorism' were added to the 'terrorist' provisions of the Criminal Code (Article 205.2). However, the first sentences handed down under this article appeared much later. Shortly after the annexation of Crimea, the punishment for committing terrorist offences, as well as for financing terrorism, was increased to 15-20 years imprisonment. In 2016, criminal liability was introduced for 'failure to report a terrorist offence', the sentences for 'organisation' and 'participation' were toughened; in addition, the age limit for criminal liability for terrorist offences was lowered to 14 years of age. In 2017, terrorist 'propaganda' was added to 'public justification of terrorism'.
As a result, the rubber-stamp anti-terrorism legislation currently covers five main functions: 1) actually carrying out a terrorist act (Article 205), 2) facilitation of a terrorist act, as well as inducement, involvement in and training for terrorist activities (Article 205.1, 205.3), 3) involvement in a terrorist organisation (Article 205.4, 205.5), 4) failure to report the planning of a terrorist act (Article 205.6) and 5) public calls for terrorism or justification of terrorism (Article 205.2).
This rubber pentagon of anti-terrorism has allowed law enforcement agencies to use charges of terrorism without any connection to real or alleged criminal events — specifically terror acts. In other words, it has enabled the imprisonment of those whom law enforcement deemed 'inclined' towards terrorism and has ensured a surge in cases under terrorist articles, thereby justifying budgets and maintaining the impression of the severity of the terrorist threat despite its actual decline.
Wave and trend: How the number of terrorists has increased fortyfold
Amendments to the Criminal Code in 2013 opened the floodgates to an explosive growth in the number of those convicted on terror charges. During the same year as the first invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, it doubled from the previous year to 58 people, and in 2016 it reached 167. That is, it surpassed the average figures of 2009-2011 by 10 times. Moreover, 40% of those convicted were accused of belonging to a terrorist organisation.
The mid-2010s marked an era of hunting for potential terrorists within the Muslim community. In essence, the expanded anti-terrorism legislation and its loose interpretation allowed law enforcement agencies to label supporters of various unconventional Islamic movements as (from their perspective) terrorists In the FSB's official list of 50 banned terrorist organisations, 36 of them are in one way or another connected with Islam. It is this mechanism that ensured the growth of the number of those convicted under terror articles during this period. As early as 2003, the Supreme Court recognised Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami as a terrorist organisation, and in the 2010s mass persecution of its members and associated individuals began. As of March 2024, according to Memorial, at least 320 people have been prosecuted on this basis, 271 of whom have been convicted, and 115 of whom have been sentenced to terms of 15 years or more.
After the annexation of Crimea, this model proved to be a convenient tool for persecuting Crimean Tatars: they were also accused of 'participation' in the activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir or of 'organising' these activities (the organisation is not banned in Ukraine). In such cases, evidence usually consisted of testimonies from 'classified witnesses', who were secret service or police officers. In turn, public doubts about the fairness of such verdicts were interpreted as justification for terrorism — individuals such as Bashkir politician Ayrat Dilmukhametov and human rights defender Bakhtiyar Khamraev received sentences for this (Russia's anti-extremist legislation also has the same circular mechanism).
In 2018, the number of people convicted on terror charges doubled again compared to 2016 (336 individuals). However, the share of those convicted under the basic article punishing the actual commission of a terror act (Article 205, Section 1-3) decreased to 7%. The diagram below shows how the distribution of sentences changed over a 10 year period. In 2014, 50% of those convicted were sentenced under the basic article on a 'terrorist act', another 30% for the article on 'aiding and abetting', and only 20% under articles on incitement and justification of terrorist activity and on involvement in a terrorist organisation. The mid-2010s saw the peak of the trend for convictions for involvement in a terrorist group, with the relevant articles 205.4 and 205.5 accounting for 40% of sentences. Meanwhile, the share of convictions for failure to report a terrorist act (in the absence of terrorist acts) was growing rapidly.
Proportion of different charges in terror-related sentences, 2014-2022, %
In the early 2020s, the proportion of those convicted for involvement in terrorist communities decreased, while law enforcement's focus shifted towards 'words', namely, cases of 'public justification of terrorism' and 'incitement to terrorism.' The share of these charges now exceeds 40% of all verdicts, with another quarter of convictions related to 'assistance' and 'involvement,' whereas only 2% of all anti-terrorism verdicts pertain to the actual commission of terrorist acts. The overall tally of terror-related convictions in 2022 (665 individuals) was double that of 2018. Further, compared to the levels of 2009-2011, the number of individuals convicted for 'terrorism' increased by 42 times in 2022.
A time of war: counterterrorism as a tool of terror
The shift of counterterrorism efforts towards prosecuting 'words’, that is, targeting expressions, reflects the political dynamics of the pre-war period and especially wartime, when political persecution became the regime's primary concern, overshadowing the actual fight against terrorism, albeit fictitious. Since 2010, the number of convictions under Article 205.2 ('public justification' or 'propaganda' of terrorism) has been increasing by one and a half times annually, and as a result, the number of those convicted under it in 2022 (274 individuals) increased by 27 times compared to 2014. According to Mediazona, 'for the past two years, more than 350 criminal cases have been brought to courts in Russia under Article 205.2 of the Criminal Code on justifying terrorism'. Its only competition comes from Article 207.3 on 'discrediting' the army. Article 205.2 has ultimately transformed into a tool for political persecution.
For example, in 2020, the 2nd Western Military District Court found Aitakhadzhi Khalimov guilty and sentenced him to three and a half years in prison for saving (not even publishing) several videos with footage from the chronicles of the First Chechen War on his VKontakte page. Mikhail Kriger was convicted for approving the actions of Mikhail Zhlobitsky, the suicide bomber at the FSB building in Arkhangelsk, receiving two years of imprisonment. Yaroslav Shirshikov received the same sentence for commenting on the death of propagandist Vladen Tatarsky, while a serviceman named Bondarenko received two years imprisonment for a comment approving of the explosion on the Crimean Bridge. Sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky received a five-year prison sentence for the same offence. However, the most notorious and absurd among these cases is that of Zhenya Berkovich and Svetlana Petriychuk. In 2022 they were awarded the ‘Golden Mask’ for their performance of 'Finist the Bright Falcon', but in 2023, they faced criminal charges and have been in pretrial detention for almost a year.
Since 2019, human rights activists have noted an increase in the number of criminal cases related to terrorism propaganda within places of detention, predominantly targeting representatives of religious minorities, as highlighted by OVD-Info in their overview of the dynamics of political repression in 2023. In 2023, similar cases began to emerge against other political prisoners: for instance, individuals previously convicted for anti-war statements, such as Alexei Gorinov and anarchist mathematician Azat Miftakhov, were charged with 'justifying terrorism' in conversations with cellmates. In other words, the article on ‘justifying terrorism' has become a tool for extending the sentences of those whom the authorities do not want to release from prison, and is being enforced with the help of administration-dependent cellmates.
The second wartime innovation was the reclassification of direct action anti-war protests as terrorism. As previously earlier, the proportion of cases under the main 'terrorist' article 205, sections 1-2 ('terrorist act') has consistently decreased over the past decade. However, recently Mediazona published a graph indicating that, in 2023, there were three and a half times more cases brought to court under this article than in previous years (statistics from the Judicial Department for the entire 2023 year are not yet available, and the majority of these cases will be reflected in the sentencing statistics for 2024).
The primary factor behind this surge was the classification of arson attacks on military enlistment offices as terrorist acts. As of 1 April, 2023, Mediazona was aware of 113 arson attacks since the beginning of the war (39 before mobilisation and 74 after). The arson attacks during the 'first wave' were initially classified as 'destruction or damage to property' (Article 167, section 2 of the Criminal Code), given their symbolic nature. However, the lenient sentences under this article (up to five years) failed to serve the purpose of deterrence. By the end of spring, these acts of protest against the war began to be classified as terrorist acts. Many cases filed under Article 167 were reclassified under Article 205.
The first 'terrorist' verdict for an arson attack at a military enlistment office was handed down in January 2023: the Central District Military Court sentenced Vladislav Borisenko from Nizhnevartovsk to 12 years at a strict regime colony. The culmination of brutality and an act of public intimidation was the case of Alexey Nuriev and Roman Nasryev, who each received 19 years of imprisonment for arson at a military enlistment office. According to the database of politically motivated criminal prosecutions compiled by OVD-Info, as of today, 51 individuals have been charged under Article 205 for arson or attempted arson at military enlistment offices (or other government buildings). In total, over the course of the first two years of the war, the project documented 66 politically motivated charges under Article 205 (authorities also classify arson attacks on railroad relay cabinets and police vans as terror acts).
Moreover, in 2023, the authorities prepared for further expansion of 'anti-terrorism' terror. On 9 May, 2023, amendments came into force, allowing for up to 20 years imprisonment under Article 205, section 1 (without aggravating factors; previously, it was 15 years). Since 27 November, 2023, all nine district military courts have been empowered to consider terrorism cases — instead of four as it was previously. Thus, the authorities preemptively prepared the capacity to increase the flow of terrorism cases further.
As seen from this overview, after Putin's return to the Kremlin in 2012, the fight against terrorism in Russia has turned into a full-fledged industry of expanding repression, very loosely and hypothetically linked to any real terrorist activity. From the beginning of 2012 to the first half of 2023 — in the absence of a significant wave of terrorism — 3373 individuals were convicted under the 'terrorism' article 205. The secrecy of investigations, complete loyalty of the courts, and lack of independent oversight prevent even an approximate assessment of the effectiveness and justification of these prosecutions. However, numerous cases of framing, provocation, torture, and coercion of witnesses to give false testimonies indicate that the growing wave of terrorism-related cases is intended to both exaggerate the terror threat and obscure the effectiveness of countering it. Moreover, the fight against terrorism has evidently been used for political purposes, for the repression and intimidation of politically disloyal communities (Muslim activists, Crimean Tatars, human rights defenders who express doubts about the validity of verdicts, opponents of the war in Ukraine, leftist youth movements). It is not surprising that this industry of combating imaginary terrorism has resulted in a complete misunderstanding of the changing map of terrorist threats (→ Re:Russia: Authoritarian Incompetence and the Geography of Terror) and the helplessness of law enforcement agencies in the face of numerous warnings about impending real terror attacks.