The first structural datum, the one that has been coming back like a fixed buzz behind every news item in recent days, is the quantitative and qualitative increase in repression: the database linked to Memorial(Rights in Russia) records a sharp rise in the number of people deprived of their liberty for political reasons in 2025, from 2,662 to 4,884 in just one year, and the list of ‘political prisoners’ rises from 803 to 1,268.

Along with this, the weight of the most serious accusations grows, because about 45% of the new political persecutions use ‘anti-terrorism’ norms and about 27% ‘treason’ norms.

The shift is decisive: it is no longer just a matter of sanctioning opinions, but of turning opposition – even minimal opposition – into an existential threat to the state.
It is a paradigm shift: if you are a ‘terrorist’ or ‘traitor’, you are not a citizen to be challenged; you are an enemy to be neutralised.

This explains the lengthening of sentences, the more frequent use of pre-trial detention, the pressure on families, but also a more modern and more devious trait: contemporary repression is based on the selection of the visible, on making the ‘defenceless’ cases disappear and leaving in view only those useful to the power narrative. Hence the importance of noting down not only the famous cases, but also the apparently marginal ones: that is where the structure can be seen.

Paradoxically, one of the faults where society returns to ‘speak for itself’ is ecology, precisely because it is both everyday and political: air, water, urban greenery, territory. On 8 January, a geography of ecoprotests opens up, running from Kaliningrad to Čeljabinsk and beyond, while even the VCIOM polling institute admits how widespread the perceived environmental problems are.

The ecological agenda remains among the most ‘protesting’: in three years, at least 4,738 ecological actions have been registered, and the beginning of 2026 confirms the growth. Kaliningrad: authorised meeting against the reduction of green areas, ‘spot’ building and the dismantling of the tram network, with an explicit invitation to the governor Aleksej Besprozvannych and an implicit question that weighs heavier than any slogan: will he have the courage to show up?

Čeljabinsk: petition with 5,714 signatures against construction on the ski base near the ‘Severo-Zapadnyj’ ecopark, the ‘lungs of the city’ in an already critical ecological context.

And then the Bajkal: over 117,000 signatures against the flush cuts; the collection continues even after the presidential signing, with the law taking effect on 1 March 2026, and in Irkutsk several hundred people are calling for a review of the law.

In parallel, more than 19,000 signatures against a bill that would allow expropriations of land in protected areas and change the boundaries of OOPTs (specially protected natural territories) for ‘objects of state importance’, with constructions allowed ‘for defence’ and ‘for socio-economic development’ and decisions entrusted to a commission of officials without listening to scientists and ecologists.
Here too, politics reappears in elementary form: not ideology, but survival of places.

In the meantime, censorship is no longer just the prohibition of content: it becomes manipulation of the environment, training in loss. On 12 January, a figure emerged that seems technical and instead tells of a philosophy of power: in 2025, communication interruptions have become a central instrument of pressure on society; in one year, more than 37,000 hours of blockades, an absolute record.

It is no longer just ‘you can’t read’: it is ‘you can’t connect’, and above all ‘get used to not relying on the signal’, as one gets used to an intermittent right.
To this line is added the tightening of escape tools: on 22 January, the Roskomnadzor accelerates the war against VPNs (439 services blocked since the beginning of the month, new protocols closed), and yet use grows: a typical scene of this era, where those who command tighten and those who live invent side-scrapes to breathe.

The same logic can be seen in culture: when power cannot ‘convince’, it closes down.
On 13 January, the Popcorn Books publishing house announces its closure: founded in 2018, passed in 2023 under the control of the Eksmo group, it ends up being crushed after the law against so-called ‘LGBT propaganda’ and, in 2025, after proceedings against employees for ‘organising the activities of an extremist organisation’, up to and including its inclusion in the list of ‘terrorists and extremists’.

In their farewell, they thank authors and readers and leave a sentence that sounds like an epitaph: if the books remain ‘on the shelf, in the memory or in the heart’, then it was not in vain.

The next day, 14 January, proceedings for ‘LGBT propaganda’ also start against top managers of large online cinema platforms (Kinopoisk, Ivi, Wink, Amediateka). And on the same day another fault line appears: in 2025 Russia records the highest number of serious and particularly serious crimes in the last 15 years (627.9 thousand), while the total number of recorded crimes decreases. Less overall crime, more serious crime: a society stiffening, and a power trying to keep the surface smooth while inside the friction increases.

Against this current, an opposite, fragile but real gesture emerged on 15 January: the New Year’s Day collection of the ‘Ty ne odin’ (‘You are not alone’) fund, created by FBK with Meduza, Mediazona, Dožd’ and Služba podderžki, exceeded three million roubles.
Concrete requests from political prisoners and families (medicine, warm clothes, prison account top-ups, help with interviews), and a stated rationale that says a lot: not just money, but a sign of solidarity; reminding those behind bars that they have not been erased.

Then, on 16 January, the penal colony No. 2 in Pokrov (IK-2), where Aleksej Naval’nyj had been detained, was officially closed down: inmates transferred, fate of the buildings postponed, as if the locations also had to be rewritten.

As of 21 January, the space narrows again. The Chechen movement NIYSO (‘Justice’) is recognised as ‘extremist’ and included in the Rosfinmonitoring registers; born in August 2022 and known for a Telegram channel, it calls itself ‘information resistance’ and publishes information about abductions, human rights violations and forced mobilisation in Chechnya.

The pressure, according to sources, also affects relatives of administrators, with confiscations, deportations and even kidnappings of family members used as leverage. Also on 21 January, Senator Artëm Šejkin confirms restrictive measures against Telegram, and Roskomnadzor admits a ‘phased’ strategy: first cutting audio/video calls, then slowing down the media, always with the justification of ‘preventing crimes’.

On the same day, a bust of Il’gam Ragimov, Putin’s classmate and ‘doctor honoris causa’, is unveiled at SPbGU; in the background, the names of the university and power network return, as a reminder of how in Russia academic careers and proximity to the centre often touch each other.

And as if that were not enough, recruitment advertisements for ‘contracts’ emerge through fake vacancies: they promise guarding the non-existent ‘Luganskaya AES’ (a nuclear power plant in Lugansk that does not exist), and then tell you that you will serve where ‘the motherland says’. It is the linguistic trap of the contract: you sign up for an imaginary place and then the real place no longer matters.

Meanwhile, the normalisation of war enters the school as an administrative routine. Also on 21 January, the equipment for OBZR(Osnovy bezopasnosti i zaščity Rodiny, fundamentals of homeland security and defence) is documented: kits for assembling drones, flight simulators, ‘aerogare’, and together models of AK and Makarov pistol, training grenades, military radios, night-vision goggles, resuscitation dummies, gas masks, mini-laboratories for radiological-chemical reconnaissance. Here, propaganda is not a poster: it is the object, the learning hand, the embedded habit.

Inside the same week, on 23 January, the General Prosecutor’s Office declares WhiteBit kriptobirža (cryptocurrency), founded in 2018 by Vladimir Nosov, ‘undesirable’, accusing it of ‘grey schemes’ and financing the Ukrainian army (with references also to United24 and the ‘Azov’ battalion in the charges). But on the same day another move also emerged, apparently administrative and in reality political: the MID (Ministerstvo inostrannych del) prepared a project to oblige Russians abroad to notify the consulates of their second citizenship or VNŽ (residence permit) within 60 days, with penalties of up to 200.000 roubles or compulsory work of up to 400 hours; it also enters a new definition of ‘citizen permanently abroad’ (more than six months out and legal basis for living), and jurists note the risk that the rule will also touch political refugees, whom international law should not force into contact with the home state; the entry into force, if approved, would be 1 January 2028.

At the same time, on 24 January, the idea of an internet ‘with a passport’ began to circulate again: MP Andrej Svincov insists against anonymity and speaks of an ‘honest, clean and legal internet’, with the elimination of anonymous accounts and identification behind each post; the official argument is scams, bullying, extortion, but the practical outcome is more straightforward: turning the word into a useful dossier for those who annihilate, even before it is a sentence.

On the geopolitical level, on 25 January, news arrives of trilateral negotiations in Abu Dhabi between Russia, Ukraine and the United States: the spokeswoman of the Ukrainian delegation of Rustem Umerov, Diana Davitjan, confirms the end of the talks; the Russian delegation, led by Igor’ Kostjukov, head of the Main Staff Directorate, returns to the hotel; the results are not announced and, according to sources, the question of territories remains the most difficult one. Even the mere fact that there is talk, after years of death, enters the diary like a low light enters a cold room.

And yet, within this week of closures, the point that remains is a gesture that is both tiny and huge, because it breaks the grammar of fear. Theatre and film actor Vadim Dzjuba spoke in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow about repression and political prisoners. The event, dedicated to the 130th anniversary of Sergei Esenin’s birth, took place last autumn, but the media only recently became aware of it.

Dzjuba announced from the stage that he wanted to talk about ‘such a forgotten concept and feeling as mercy’. The actor called his favourite poets Esenin, Blok, Gumilëv and Mandel’štam “Sufferers with a capital ‘S'” and stated that they taught him “not to ignore injustice with one’s head down out of shame”.

The actor’s speech was greeted with applause from the audience. “The fact is that today some poets, musicians, playwrights, doctors, teachers and journalists are in prison. But they have done nothing wrong. You probably know them all. Among them are my colleague and poet, director Evgenja Berkovič, playwright Svetlana Petrijčuk *applause from the audience*, paediatrician Nadežda Bujanova, engineer Igor Baryšnikov, journalist Maria Ponomarenko and municipal deputy Aleksej Gorinov,’ Dzjuba said.

The actor also named the political prisoners who died in custody: musician and writer Pavel Kušnir and journalist Viktoria Roščina. “And today, in this vile time of whistleblowers and denunciations, where else but here, in the hall of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, can we remember the Gospel verse: ‘Mercy I want, not sacrifice?'” he concluded his speech.

Dzjuba told ‘Agentstvo’ magazine that he decided to speak because he was ‘hostage to his conscience’. The actor said he had no intention of leaving the country, but described his speech as perhaps his last.