NEW YORK – Repression in the Russian Federation has hardened into an ordinary mode of governance, fused with the war against Ukraine, a UN expert told the General Assembly today, warning that the State sustains its authoritarian rule by manufacturing “enemies” as repression becomes increasingly militarised and transnational.
“National-security narratives recast the peaceful exercise of human rights as a threat, and portray human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers, Indigenous Peoples, LGBT persons and anti-war activists as “traitors to the Motherland” that need to be punished at all costs,” said Mariana Katzarova, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Russian Federation, presenting her latest report to the UNGA.
“Repression at home dismantled the constraints on aggression abroad,” Katzarova said. “The war now justifies deeper repression at home. Repression at home and aggression abroad are one policy. Transnational repression is where the two meet.”
By September 2026, 4,968 people faced politically motivated prosecution in Russia, 2,178 of them in detention. Average sentences have risen from under seven years in 2021 to 11 years today. In 2025, treason and espionage convictions rose 30 per cent to 468, with no acquittals. The “terrorists and extremists” register now lists 22,000 names. This year, the Supreme Court declared Nobel laureate Memorial “extremist,” and OVD-Info soon after.
“Violence and persecution no longer stop at Russia’s borders,” the Special Rapporteur said.
In her September report to the UN Human Rights Council entitled, “Nowhere is safe: exporting the rule of fear beyond borders – transnational repression by the Russian Federation,” Katzarova examined Russia’s transnational repression to target the Government’s real or perceived political opponents, journalists, human rights defenders, anti-war critics and dissidents abroad.
“Transnational repression is the continuation beyond Russia’s borders of the same structural, State-sponsored system of repression I have documented at home – deliberate, institutionalised and adaptive. It must be stopped,” she said.
Her report noted sentences in absentia increasing from four in 2022 to 157 by 2025, and the abuse of INTERPOL red notices, extradition requests, “terrorists and extremists” listings copied unverified into the compliance databases of foreign banks and financial institutions, and a law inflicting “civic death” on critics abroad, with relatives at home held hostage.
The current report documents the militarisation of childhood. Since September 2026, basic military training has risen from around 20 to 50 per cent of school teaching time. Nearly 1,100 people were added to the “terrorists and extremists” register as children, most since February 2022, and criminal responsibility for terrorism now begins at 14.
“Children are pushed towards military recruitment at one end and into the criminal courts at the other,” Katzarova said.
The Special Rapporteur also raised the trafficking of foreign nationals from more than 45 countries into the Russian armed forces. Kenya reported over 1,000 Kenyans recruited; Peru identified 459, of whom 11 had been killed and 114 were missing.
“Men are recruited through poverty, debt, prisons and torture,” Katzarova said, noting that Russians from the poorest regions, Indigenous and minority communities were targeted first, followed by migrants and now other foreign nationals forced to fight through coercion.
Torture remains widespread and systematic, and Russia’s withdrawal from the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture takes effect on 1 November. At least 55 political prisoners have died in detention since 2022, and Ukrainian authorities report 438 Ukrainian detainees have died in Russian captivity.
“Accountability cannot wait for a change of Government in Moscow,” Katzarova said. “States must preserve evidence for future courts, use universal jurisdiction, sanction responsible officials, refuse politically motivated extraditions and INTERPOL requests and protect the “traitors to the Motherland” who have fled.”
