The Russian government is ready to support a Supreme Court bill easing punishment for some drug-related offenses, but only in a reduced form. On April 20, 2026, Kommersant reported this, citing a draft opinion by the government commission on legislative activity.
The initiative followed a December 2023 meeting where Presidential Human Rights Council member Eva Merkacheva told Vladimir Putin that prison terms under Article 228 were excessively harsh. After that, the president ordered a review of sentencing practices for illegal drug trafficking.
In May 2025, the Supreme Court proposed avoiding prison terms for first-time offenders convicted under the least severe provisions, including Part 1 of Article 228, and also cutting maximum sentences under Part 2 of Article 228 from 10 to 5 years and under Part 3 from 15 to 10 years. For some first-time offenders, the court proposed broader use of mandatory addiction treatment instead of incarceration.
According to the Supreme Court’s explanatory note, in 2019–2024 those convicted under Articles 228–234 accounted for 13% of all convicted persons in Russia. In 2024, 69,921 people were sentenced for drug offenses; 33.8% were aged 18 to 29, and 1.8% were minors.
Now, according to Kommersant, the cabinet wants the bill’s second reading to remove the amendments lowering terms under Parts 2 and 3 of Article 228. A government source told the paper that such changes could trigger reviews of earlier sentences, the release of many prisoners, and their return to a criminal environment.
Lawyers, human rights advocates, and researchers interviewed by Novaya Gazeta Europe say that without revising those two provisions, the number of prisoners will not decline significantly. At the same time, experts describe a broader softening of court practice in recent years and an effort to distinguish drug users from those involved in distribution.