Russia convicts more people for treason in six months than in all pre-war years

Russian courts convicted 284 people on treason and espionage charges in the first half of 2026, according to a study by the human rights project First Department and the analytical group Parubets Analytics. The verdicts were handed down under Articles 275, 275.1, 276 and 276.1 of the Russian Criminal Code. Over the entire period from 1997 to the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, courts issued 170 such convictions, the report's authors noted.

In the second quarter, courts issued 162 verdicts, 46% more than in the first quarter (111). May saw a record 57 verdicts in a single month, followed by 50 in April and 55 in June. The monthly pace of at least 50 verdicts held for three consecutive months, with courts convicting nearly three people each working day on average.

Military courts issued nearly half of the second-quarter verdicts (72 of 162). Treason charges were increasingly combined with terrorism-related articles, applied to 71 of 170 defendants in the second quarter. The share of cases involving sabotage charges fell from 14.9% to 7.1%.

Courts did not disclose the names of 74% of those convicted. The average sentence was nearly 16 years in a penal colony, and two people received life sentences. No acquittals or dismissed cases were recorded in the six-month period.

Since the start of the invasion, courts have issued at least 1,372 guilty verdicts on state security charges. Researchers identified 1,635 defendants and convicts, 96% of whom were deprived of liberty. Ukrainian citizens make up more than a third of defendants; at least 73 Ukrainian citizens were convicted in the first half of 2026.

Yevgeny Smirnov, a lawyer with First Department, said that "the security services have completely devalued treason in Russia," turning it from a tool for exceptional cases into a convenient means of persecution. In his words, the typical "spy" is now a young man who "wrote too much on Telegram." The study's authors project that if current rates continue, the number of convicts could reach 600 by the end of the year.