Russian courts issued 186 verdicts between July and September 2026 in criminal cases involving treason, espionage, confidential cooperation with foreigners, and assistance to an adversary. At least 203 people were affected. Both figures were the highest recorded since monitoring began, according to an October 23 study by the human rights project Pervy Otdel and Parubets Analytics.
During the first nine months of 2026, the researchers documented at least 459 verdicts involving 487 people. Those totals already exceed the figures for the whole of 2025, when 458 verdicts involving 478 defendants were recorded.
The number of verdicts increased throughout the year, from 111 in the first quarter to 162 in the second and 186 in the third. Courts issued 67 verdicts in both July and September, the highest monthly figure since monitoring began. Another 52 verdicts were issued in August.
Military courts heard a substantial share of these cases. They accounted for 89 of the 186 third-quarter verdicts, or 47.8%. The Southern District Military Court alone issued 33 verdicts involving 36 people.
The researchers also found that national security charges were increasingly being combined with terrorism-related accusations. In the third quarter, such charges appeared in cases involving 87 of the 203 defendants, or 42.9%.
Another notable trend was the withholding of defendants' personal information. According to the study, the names of 167 of the 203 people, or 82.3%, were not disclosed in publicly available court records.
The number of new cases also remained high. At least 191 new proceedings reached the courts between July and September. By the end of September, at least 242 cases involving 279 people were still under consideration.
The authors note that their statistics are based on accessible court records and represent a documented minimum. Because information about some proceedings is not made public, the actual scale of prosecutions may be greater.