The review, titled "FSB Reels: Behind the Scenes of Spectacular Arrests," was published on October 20. According to Memorial, the Federal Security Service releases hundreds of short videos each year showing arrests, searches and suspects' confessions, while the actual circumstances of the cases often differ substantially from what is shown. In some cases, detainees were brought to locations specifically for filming and made to repeat prepared actions.
Memorial also calculated that since the start of the war the share of TASS and RIA Novosti reports mentioning the FSB has grown 2–3 times. The share of such publications with video content nearly doubled, from 23% in 2021 to 40% in the first half of 2026.
The videos follow a single template, Memorial notes: operational footage, the arrest, a display of search results, transport of the detainee and a confession. Operational footage appears in only six of the 70 cases studied. All six, according to the rights defenders, were based on FSB provocations in which officers posed as representatives of Ukraine.
Security officers try to make arrests look as harsh as possible: suspects are thrown to the floor, their arms are twisted, they are grabbed by the hair. Camera operators often arrive at the scene before the security officers, and detainees behave unnaturally on camera — for example, ignoring approaching armed men until the last moment. Filming rarely ends in a single take, so arrests are preferably shot in deserted places: among garages or in an open field.
Confessions appear in nearly two-thirds of the videos studied. Detainees often use official language, reproducing the wording of criminal articles. Crimean artist Bogdan Ziza said FSB officers filmed at least five versions of his confession and apology, and that he was beaten when officers believed he was not repenting sincerely enough.
Romanian citizen Adrian-David Kercho was detained by Abkhaz security services in November 2024 and handed over to the FSB on December 13. According to Memorial, he was then beaten and forced to confess to espionage. Security officers filmed a staged arrest video only on April 15, 2025, and published it 10 days later — April 25 was announced as the official date of detention. Kercho was subsequently sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Yuri Kaev, a defendant in the "Kherson Nine" case, said that after his de facto detention he was tortured for a week. About a month later he was taken onto a street in Kherson, given a bag of belongings and ordered to walk along the sidewalk, having been warned about filming. Kaev was told he had to fall in a way that would not damage his face in front of the camera.
The Insider previously found a discrepancy between an FSB video and the actual circumstances of the detention of Ruslan Sidiki, convicted over a drone attack on the Dyagilevo airfield. According to the criminal case materials, on November 29, 2023, a police officer stopped him near a house in Ryazan and asked him to come to the station. In the published video the man is detained differently: a car drives up to him among garages and armed security officers run out of it. Between the actual detention and the filming he was tortured with electric shocks and beaten.
Sergei Davidis, head of the "Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial" project, suggested in a comment to Ekho that an identical video template in different regions could not have emerged on its own. In his view, a centralized structure has people responsible for propaganda support and, probably, a unit that coordinates this activity.
Davidis believes repression is functional: its primary goal is control over society, intimidation of the population and the creation of a template for "correct" behavior.