The State Duma has approved amendments to Articles 73 and 81 of Russia’s Penal Enforcement Code that will take effect in June 2026. They deprive some prisoners of the ability to request transfer to another colony, even in cases involving personal safety, pressure from prison staff, or a need to be closer to relatives.
Formally, the changes apply to people convicted under “extremist” and “terrorist” charges, as well as foreign citizens and stateless persons. The new restrictions will also cover inmates whom pretrial detention centers or colony administrations deem to adhere to such ideology or to exert a “negative influence” on other prisoners.
According to Olga Romanova, head of the prisoners’ rights group Russia Behind Bars, inmates convicted of less serious offenses previously served their terms within roughly 500 kilometers of their place of residence, while those accused of terrorism had long been sent anywhere in the country. She said the number of “extremism” and “terrorism” cases in Russia has risen sharply, and that on occupied territories of Ukraine such cases are, in her estimate, nine times more frequent.
“People are taken in the occupied territories as terrorists and sent far away from Ukraine,” Romanova said, mentioning Omsk, Blagoveshchensk, and Minusinsk.
Rights advocate Sergey Davidis said decisions branding someone as committed to “extremist ideology” would be nearly impossible to challenge because the criteria are undefined. In his view, the amendments fix a “technical defect”: the law had previously allowed transfer requests even though the prison service in practice operated as if it did not.
Lawyer Ivan Pavlov said successful transfers had occurred, though rarely. In his assessment, adding foreigners to the list of inmates barred from seeking transfers reflects xenophobia intensified by the war. The sources interviewed by the publication agree that the new version of the code does not so much change the system as codify an existing practice, expanding the power of prison administrations over political prisoners and other vulnerable groups.