The Council of Europe said Russian authorities notified it of the denunciation on October 30, 2025; President Vladimir Putin signed the law a month earlier. Russia had been a party to the convention since 1998.

Between 1998 and 2021, representatives of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) made 30 visits to the country and inspected more than 450 places of detention. Russian authorities allowed only four reports to be published.

According to the Council of Europe, Russia was the only party to the convention that refused to disclose the results of inspections. Reports on ten visits to Chechnya and the North Caucasus between 2000 and 2017 remain unpublished, among others.

After the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the committee received numerous reports of alleged torture and ill-treatment by Russian officials, both inside Russia and in occupied areas of Ukraine. Inspectors could not verify the accounts on the ground because Moscow refused to cooperate.

The Council of Europe noted that this lack of cooperation contrasts sharply with the position of the Ukrainian authorities, who continue to admit CPT visits to any place of detention on Ukrainian territory at any time the committee chooses.

The committee repeatedly complained that Moscow ignored its requests, both for visits and regarding high-profile cases, including the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny at the Polar Wolf colony in the winter of 2024.

CPT head Alan Mitchell said Russia's withdrawal from the convention means the end of independent oversight of places of detention in the country. According to him, such inspections remain one of the main ways of protecting people from torture and ill-treatment. Mitchell added that the organization will continue its work in the other 46 member states of the Council of Europe.

A report titled "Without Waiting for Freedom" by the Support for Political Prisoners. Memorial project said that at least 69 political prisoners have died since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, 16 of them in 2026. Rights advocates link at least 29 deaths to illness and the lack of medical care, and at least 20 more to beatings, torture and their consequences.