UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : HRC 60 - Human Rights in Russia

OK, dear colleagues, we will now begin the interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur and the Russian Federation.

It is my pleasure to welcome the mandate holder, Mrs Mariana Katsarova.

The list of speakers will be closed in 15 minutes and I'll give the floor to Miss Mrs Katsarova for to present the report.

Madam, please, you have the floor.

Mr Vice President, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, it is my honour to present to the Human Rights Council my latest report on the human rights situation in the Russian Federation.

Over the past year, we have seen an alarming trajectory, widening discrimination, the consolidation of authoritarian rule and intense, intensifying repression with prosecutions under the rubric of national security legislation, a central instrument of coercive rule.

In Russia, the authorities are deliberately using the law, the judiciary and law enforcement institutions as a political weapon to suppress civil and political rights and freedoms.

This strategy is implemented, pursued and sustained by coercion, detention and torture, and it is carried out on a scale that is both widespread and systematic.

The report I present today looks at the core instruments used to restrict fundamental rights, freedom of expression, freedom of association, the right to peaceful assembly and to participate in public affairs.

In practise, these tools are used to crush civic space, silence the media, dismantle the legal profession, eliminate political opposition, suppress culture, erase historical memory, distort historical truths and stifle the diversity of voices and identities across Russian society.

Such targeting is not incidental.

It is coordinated and central to state policy and used to manufacture what are referred to as internal and external enemies of the motherland, against whom they justify repression at home and aggression abroad.

This strategy deepens discrimination, normalises violence and emboldens impunity.

To those ends, Mr Vice President and Excellencies, during this year, 2025, Russian authorities have sharpened the laws on so-called foreign agents and undesirable organisations, targeting human rights defenders, civil society and independent media.

These laws are not just restrictive regulations, they're systematic tools of political repression, unique in the ways they combine heavy administrative burdens, criminal penalties, social stigma, financial strangulation and isolation.

Today, 1040 individuals and organisations are labelled foreign as foreign agents.

Once so designated, organisations and individuals are banned from providing education, stripped of income, blocked from media, fined heavily and even held liable for activities abroad.

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For example, the systematic dismantling of the Nobel Peace Prize affiliated Memorial Network.

In 2025, Memorial's website was blocked through Russia's central censorship body, Roscom Nazor, while one of its leading defenders, Sergei Davidis, was charged in absentia with justifying terrorism in 2025.

Russia uses this framework against groups engaging with the United Nations, exploiting the foreign agent label as grounds to prevent or cancel their ECOSOC accreditation, effectively excluding independent Russian voices from the United Nations deliberations.

Thus, Mr Vice President, by mid 202546 new organisations had been designated and banned as undesirable, bringing the total to 245 human rights groups, educational initiatives, independent reporters all silenced, including the indigenous fund Batani targeted in reprisal for engaging with UN mechanisms.

Association with these groups is itself criminalised.

Grigori Malkonians, Co chair of the election monitor Golos, received five years in prison.

At least twelve others remain imprisoned on the same charges.

Let me emphasise, Excellencies and distinguished delegates, that the Russian Federation is now the third largest gaoler of journalists in the world, with 50 media professionals currently behind bars, including 29 Ukrainians.

In the past year alone, 89 criminal cases have been opened, some resulting in heavy sentences of up to 12 years, including in absentia trials against journalists and media workers in exile.

And yet, Mr Vice President, and all of us gathered here today, it is essential for us to recognise that human rights defenders, civil society and independent media refused to be silenced inside Russia.

They continue to function under the constant threat, closely cooperating with colleagues in exile.

But sustaining this work is harder than ever.

Survival and sustained resistance to repression now depend on comprehensive and committed support from Member States, including funding and flexible assistance to exiled organisations and their family members, while also ensuring protection from Rafael Moore with torture and arbitrary detention awaiting those sent back.

Laws targeting the so-called fake news and discrediting the army charges adopted hastily in March 22, became and remained primary tools to crash anti war dissent by 25 while prosecution slowed.

It is not a sign of fizzing, but the fear and self censorship taking deeper and deeper root along with an equal and steady increase in laws that weaponize and strive to legitimise charges of counterterrorism and extremism.

The most common charges to which I now draw your attention include calling for terrorist activity or justifying terrorism.

These prosecutions rarely assess any real public danger.

Instead, courts focus on the political message ascribed to the accused.

In April 25, former deputy Alexei Gorinov's additional three-year sentence for so-called justifying terrorism was upheld on appeal, coming into force on top of the seven years he was already serving for fake news about the army simply for condemning the killing of Ukrainian children.

The crackdown has also suffocated culture and literature.

In July, 25 well known and respected novelist Boris Akounin was sentenced in absentia to 14 years in prison on charges of justifying terrorism, facilitating terrorist activity and violating foreign agent laws.

His real crime was dissenting against the war and supporting Ukraine.

The books of the only living Nobel Prize laureate for literature who writes in Russian language, Svetlana Alexievich are banned from Russian school curricula and she is branded enemy of Russia, Russian culture and the Russophob.

Both writers are with us here today in this room.

Mr Vice President, Excellencies, distinguished delegates and honoured guests gathered here today.

Extremism related charges are being systematically applied against the late Alexei Navalny's organisations.

Supporters are even accused of using extremist symbols associated with Mr Navalny's name and photos.

At least 13 individuals remain imprisoned, including journalist Olga Komleva, who was sentenced in 25 to 12 years imprisonment for alleged involvement with Navalny's campaign offices and for fake news about the Russian army.

The crackdown has even reached lawyers themselves.

3 of Navalny's legal defenders were sentenced in January.

In Kaliningrad, lawyer Maria Bonsler were detained on spurious charges, denied counsel of her choice, and forced into sham process for defending clients accused on politically motivated grounds.

Additionally, the abuse of extremism laws now targets minorities, with a rise in the number of prosecutions against LGBT individuals and those running LGBT friendly spaces.

In 25, coordinated raids hit publishing houses accused of distributing LGBT literature, with staff prosecuted for extremist activities.

This expansion of repression extends online.

New laws mandate restrictions on access to extremist materials listed in the Ministry of Justice Federal List of Extremist Materials by monitoring and prosecuting simple online searches and criminalising the use of VPNs to circumvent blogs.

Mr Vice President, Excellency's distinguished delegates, it cannot be emphasised enough that torture remains systematic and widespread, with 258 cases documented alone in 2425, including the use of punitive psychiatry as a political tool.

Journalist Maria Ponomarenko was sentenced to one additional year and 10 months in prison in order to undergo compulsory psychiatric treatment upon release to punish her for maintaining Canante war stands even in prison.

Particularly shocking is the role of doctors and medical personnel in the heinous and gruesome torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian detainees, which I have personally documented first hand from a number of victims and witnesses.

Ukrainian victims testimonies expose not only extreme overcrowding and starvation, but use of electric shocks, rape and sexual sexualized violence and killings in detention.

By May 25, at least 206 Ukrainian prisoners of war had died in Russian captivity, their bodies showing signs of torture, such as the body of 27 a rolled Ukrainian investigative journalist and human rights defender Victoria Roshina, who was killed in Russian detention.

In public testimony before the military court in Rostov on Dong, civilian detainee Natalia Vlasova described being subjected to electric shocks and gang raped repeatedly by 15 armed men, followed by the use of a metal file to file her teeth down.

The court failed to investigate the torture and sentence her to 18 years into months imprisonment and the Russian terrorism related charges.

What emerges with standing clarity, Mr Vice President Excellencies, is that justice and accountability inside Russia are virtually unattainable.

Since my last report, the authorities have taken steps to withdraw from the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture, shielding perpetrators of such heinous crimes.

Efforts directed at accountability must therefore mobilise international frameworks, including the exercise of universal jurisdiction, to prosecute perpetrators of torture and other crimes.

I deeply regret the Russian Federation's continued non recognition of this mandate.

Energy immediate steps to rescind repressive laws and politically motivated prosecutions, release all those arbitrarily detained, and erase and ensure sorry accountability for torture and other human rights violations because the victims of such brutalities deserve nothing less.

I am confident that we can all help to see justice being done.

Mr Vice President, Excellencies, I look forward to our interactive discussion and to your questions.

Thank you all for your attention.

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Now, in accordance with our practise, we will begin by giving the floor to the delegation of the country concerned.

And as I can see, and I was told that it's that the delegation of the Russian Federation is not present in the room.

So from that we will move to the open the interactive dialogue with the interested delegations to ask their questions and make comments.

HRC 60 - Human Rights in Russia - 22 September 2025