Russian Federation
Russia performs in the low range across all Global State of Democracy (GSoD) categories of democracy. It falls in the bottom 25 per cent of the world with regard to several factors of Representation, Rights, Rule of Law and Participation. In the last five years, it has experienced significant declines in fifteen measures in the GSoD, including Rule of Law, Civil Liberties, Effective Parliament, Absence of Corruption, Economic Equality and more. Russia is an upper middle-income country, heavily dependent on hydrocarbon and mineral exports. The early 2000s commodities boom funded the country’s recovery from the catastrophic post-Soviet transition to a market economy in the 1990s. The rapid economic growth of the early 2000s provided President Vladimir Putin with sufficient public legitimacy to entrench his hold on power, and his increasingly authoritarian rule has been marked by the concentration of powers in the executive branch, emasculation of institutions of representative democracy, electoral manipulation, and pressure on independent media.
In 2014, Russia responded to the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity by launching a proxy war in the country’s east and illegally annexing Crimea. In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Western nations responded with wide-ranging sanctions that seriously damaged the Russian economy, and Russia responded by cracking down on any and all independent civil society activity, antiwar protest, and remaining media freedom.
Russia is the largest country on earth by land area and a complex multi-confessional and multi-ethnic society, composing roughly four broad socioeconomic groups: Westernized and wealthy urban centers, mid-sized towns and cities dependent on state or major industrial employment, isolated and economically precarious villages, and “ethnic republics” that are a mix of the previous two groupings. In President Putin’s two decades in power, these “four Russias” were controlled through what the Kremlin euphemistically referred to as “managed democracy,” which in turn produced an increasingly personalized leadership system and the progressive depoliticization of various parts of Russian society. The persistence of the current political system lies in its ability to provide sufficient economic spoils to loyal elites while alternatively rewarding and disciplining various parts of Russian society through the provision of adequate economic stability, the stoking of nationalist-conservative sentiment, the maintenance of an encompassing propaganda apparatus, and repressive and deadly violence. In recent years, the sticks of repression and more overt control and censorship of the media and internet have crowded out the carrots of economic growth and personal autonomy as the main tools of governance, culminating in the wide-ranging crackdown on activism and even mild dissent in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
While the GSoD Indices data show that Russia’s performance on gender quality has been static (at mid-range) for the past several decades, the increasing repression has likely impacted the state of equality. Despite equality guaranteed by law, studies indicate an increase in gender inequality in recent years due to lack of a clear state policy and propaganda that reinforces patriarchal attitudes, making women more vulnerable to violence, discrimination, and lack of political opportunities.
Russia’s political trajectory in the years to come will be determined by the progress of its war on Ukraine. The country is currently undertaking a defensive authoritarian consolidation, but potential elite fractures and the slowly increasing cost of international sanctions may lead to a chaotic breakdown of the current government system. However, the closing-off of public information spaces makes ascertaining the course of public opinion nearly impossible. All feasible outcomes point towards significant declines across measures of democracy as the country continues to depart further from the rule of law in order to maintain its war effort.
Updated: September 2024
https://www.idea.int/democracytracker/
May 2025
‘Illegal’ migrant registry includes the names of one in nine migrants
A government-run registry of migrants deemed to be living illegally in Russia, launched in February, had grown to include at least 685,000 names by March, as reported by the British Broadcasting Corporation in May. This is equivalent to one in nine foreign citizens in the country. Both the size of the registry and reports from migrants and rights organizations indicate many individuals are included by mistake or without cause, and appeals are lengthy, costly, and uncertain to succeed. Those whose names appear in the register are barred from legally changing their residence, leaving the region in which they live, buying or owning property, opening a bank account, or withdrawing more than RUB 30,000 a month (USD 379).
Sources: British Broadcasting Corporation Russian, Kommersant, Meduza
Police raid publishing house over LGBTQIA+ literature
Moscow police arrested 10 and charged 3 employees of the Eksmo, the country’s largest publishing house, with violating anti-extremism laws as part of an investigation into publishing ‘LGBT propaganda’. The case marks a new and significantly broader interpretation of anti-extremism laws as including ‘using one’s official position.’ Prosecutors claim that by publishing books with LGBTQIA+ themes, Eksmo involved readers in the activities of what it calls ‘the International LGBT Social Movement’. Those charged face up to 12 years in prison. The basis for the charges is a list of books including LGBTQIA+ themes primarily published not by Eksmo, but by Popcorn Books, a publishing house which Eksmo acquired in 2023. Eksmo attempted unsuccessfully to avoid prosecution by instructing booksellers to destroy or return all copies of the books in question on 13 May.
Sources: Meduza, OVD Info, The Insider
March 2025
Explicit ethnic discrimination becomes increasingly visible
An examination of public and private tenders for services and contractors by the Sistema investigative journalism project found that conditions specifying the ethnicity of the contractor to be increasingly common. Entities including the Center for Hygiene and Epidemiology, regional administrations, and private shopping centers across the country included specifications requiring all contractors to be of “Slavic appearance” or limiting employment only to “Slavic nationalities.” Contracts for security personnel in the private and public sector also included explicit instructions to more closely inspect individuals who appeared to be of “Caucasian or Asian nationality.” Russian rights expert Stefania Kulaeva agreed that despite being contrary to Russian discrimination legislation, such provisions are increasingly the norm in Russia.
Sources: Current Time, Kommersant
January 2025
Navalny's lawyers sentenced to prison
A court in Vladimir region sentenced the late Alexey Navalny’s three lawyers to between 3.5 and 5.5 years in a prison colony on 17 January in a closed-door trial. Although none of their conduct was, before this trial, considered outside the bounds of routine legal procedure, Vadim Kobzev, Alexey Lipster and Igor Sergunin were convicted of belonging to an “extremist organization” for passing letters and information between Navalny and his colleagues at the Anti-Corruption Foundation. This is the first time since the Soviet era that lawyers have been similarly punished. The independence and security of the legal profession in Russia has deteriorated significantly since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and human rights group First Department found 174 cases of legal harassment of lawyers in 2023. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Russia called for their release and described their sentences as “part of an alarming pattern of targeted repression and State control.”
Sources: Meduza, Reuters, United Nations
Scope of mandatory DNA collection expanded
As of 1 January 2025, a legal amendment to the law ‘On state genomic registration’ means that anyone found guilty of an administrative (i.e. non-criminal) offense will be required to submit a DNA sample to a federal DNA database. The collection of genetic material has been mandated since 2009 for major violent crimes and was expanded to include prisoners and those accused of committing a felony in 2023. While some social groups such as people with disabilities, employees of the Interior Ministry, and pregnant women are exempted, there is no further option to refuse to comply. Human rights activists have long warned that the mass collection of DNA would foster the creation of a police state and, given the wide range of law enforcement officials with access to Russia’s database, create major risks for abuse of the data.
Sources: Meduza,Novaya Gazeta Europe, Sistema Garant
December 2024
Migrant children must pass language test to enroll in school
A new law signed by President Vladimir Putin on 28 December requires the children of migrants to pass a Russian-language proficiency test before enrolling in school. The law will take effect on 20 April 2025 and has been criticized by rights groups and academics as discriminatory and likely to impede the integration of the children of migrants into Russian society. Precise data on the number of children likely to be affected is unavailable, but a 2023 survey by the Ministry of Education found that about 178,000 children, or one in every hundred, in Russian schools lacked Russian citizenship. It is unclear what proportion of non-citizen (or ethnic minority citizen) children speak Russian competently. There are no free language classes for foreigners in Russia and advocates worry that affected children and their families will be further marginalized from society.
Russia to add ‘extremists’ to terror watch list
The Russian State Duma amended 48 federal laws on 12 December to broaden the punitive measures previously reserved for those convicted or accused of terrorism-related offenses to be available in cases of “extremism” as well. The definition of “extremist activities” is broad and has in recent years been used to describe the work of a wide variety of media outlets, all anti-government and opposition political activity, and posts by private individuals on social media interpreted as criticizing Russia’s war on Ukraine. Official suspicion of any such offense is grounds for adding an individual to a state terror watch list, which results in the freezing of their and their dependents’ bank accounts and is typically accompanied by unemployment and social ostracization.
Sources: Meduza, Novaya Gazeta, Kommersant
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Global ranking per category of democratic performance in 2024
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