Who Is Inside the Machine: What 217,814 Triples Reveal About the People Russia Prosecutes
The first report found the machine. This one found who is inside it.
The initial analysis identified three charging regimes, structural breaks at 2017 and 2019, and a single-article production line running at 85% efficiency. Those are systemic findings. They describe what the machine does. This follow-up asks a different question: who does the machine do it to? The answer, extracted from the same 217,814-triple knowledge graph, is that Russia is prosecuting 14-year-old children under terrorism charges, subjecting 84 people to compulsory psychiatric detention, and has prosecuted Alexei Navalny eight times across six years before his death in custody. 101 people in the dataset are dead. 252 are over 65. An 88-year-old Jehovah's Witness is among them. These are not outliers. They are the output of the machine the first report described.
the system
psychiatric detention
terrorism defendant
ICCPR violations
Russia is prosecuting 14-year-olds under terrorism charges.
206 people in the dataset were under 20 at the time of prosecution. The youngest were 14. Anna Zhuravleva, age 14, was charged under Article 205.5 (participation in a terrorist organization) in 2023. Egor Lauskis, age 14, was charged under Article 205 (terrorism) the same year. A 14-year-old who wished to remain anonymous was charged under Article 214 (vandalism) and 354.1 (rehabilitation of Nazism) in 2024. These are not juvenile-delinquency proceedings. They are terrorism charges carrying sentences of up to 20 years, applied to children.
Art. 105 (murder) + Art. 205.5 (terrorist organization)
Youngest named terrorism defendant in the dataset
Art. 205 (terrorism)
Charged under the baseline terrorism article at 14
Art. 205.1 + 205.5 + 222.1 + 223.1
Four charges, including two terrorism articles
Art. 205.3 + 222.1 + 223.1
Terror training charge applied to a child
Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which Russia ratified in 1990, the best interests of the child must be a primary consideration in all actions concerning children (Art. 3). The CRC Committee has stated that children should be diverted from the criminal justice system wherever possible. Prosecuting 14-year-olds under terrorism statutes carrying 20-year sentences is not a gray area. It is a violation of the CRC that compounds the ICCPR violations documented in the primary report.
An 88-year-old Jehovah's Witness is a political prisoner.
252 people in the dataset were over 65 at the time of prosecution. The oldest is Rimma Vashchenko, age 88, prosecuted under Article 282.2 (participation in an extremist organization) in 2018. Her crime: attending Jehovah's Witnesses meetings after the Supreme Court designated the organization extremist in 2017.
The charge distribution of the elderly is dominated by Article 282.2 (extremist organization). Vashchenko (88), Elena Zaishchuk (84), Irina Klimova (82), Zinaida Minenko (81), Elena Savelieva (80), Nadezhda Korobochko (78): all prosecuted under the same article, all Jehovah's Witnesses. The state is prosecuting 80-year-old women for attending Bible study. Under ICCPR Article 18 (freedom of religion) and Article 26 (non-discrimination), this is not a marginal case. It is the modal one: the single largest category of elderly political prosecution in Russia.
The machine does not distinguish between a 14-year-old charged with terrorism and an 88-year-old charged with attending a prayer meeting. Both are processed by the same system, under the same legal framework, with the same structural outcome. The absence of distinction is the finding.
101 people in the dataset are dead.
The knowledge graph records 101 persecutions where the person's current status is "Deceased." The most prominent is Alexei Navalny, who was prosecuted eight times between 2011 and 2021 and died in custody in February 2024. Alexander Dolmatov, charged under Article 212 (mass riots) after the 2012 Bolotnaya Square protests, died in a Dutch deportation center in 2013. Sergei Mokhnatkin, prosecuted five times under Article 318 (violence against a police officer) between 2010 and 2016, died in 2020.
The deceased charge distribution reveals which charges carry lethal risk. The terror complex (Art. 205, 205.1, 205.5, 278) and organizational charges (282.2) dominate. Speech charges (207.3, 280.3) account for fewer deaths, not because they are less oppressive, but because they are newer: the wartime speech articles were enacted in 2022, and the deaths have not yet accumulated. OVD-Info's data team identifies three factors driving mortality in terrorism cases: (1) sentences are significantly longer, and conditions in Russian prisons are harsh enough that time served directly correlates with health deterioration; (2) prison staff and investigators treat terrorism defendants more severely, including through greater use of torture; (3) in cases involving Crimean Tatars, many defendants are older individuals whose health is already compromised at the time of prosecution. OVD-Info's research on healthcare access in occupied Crimea documents these conditions in detail (reports.ovd.info/en/krym_medicine).
Compulsory psychiatric treatment is back.
84 people in the dataset are currently held in compulsory psychiatric treatment. The practice, which the Soviet Union used systematically against dissidents and which was condemned by the World Psychiatric Association in 1983, has returned. Aleksandr Gabyshev, the Yakut shaman who walked across Siberia to Moscow to "exorcise Putin," is detained under Article 318 (violence against a police officer). An unnamed 18-year-old woman is in psychiatric detention under Article 354.1 (rehabilitation of Nazism), a speech charge. Nikolay Kadyrov and Maxim Lypkan are in psychiatric detention under Article 207.3, the wartime "fake news" article.
The use of psychiatric detention for speech offenses violates the UN Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness (1991), which state that no person shall be involuntarily admitted to a mental health facility on the basis of political opinion. The 84 people in compulsory treatment are not a footnote. They are evidence that the Soviet psychiatric abuse the international community condemned four decades ago has been reactivated under new article numbers.
Additional monitoring: the Sakharov Center maintains ongoing surveillance of political abuse of psychiatry in Russia (sakharovcenter-vdu.eu).
311 people have been prosecuted more than once.
Repeat prosecution is evidence of persecution, not law enforcement. When the same person is charged under different articles in different years, the state is not responding to discrete criminal acts. It is targeting an individual. The knowledge graph identifies 311 people prosecuted more than once, including three people prosecuted eight times. OVD-Info documents a growing trend of new charges filed against people already serving sentences on politically motivated convictions, effectively extending imprisonment from inside prison. Cases include Azat Miftakhov (mathematician, new extremism charges while serving), Alexei Gorinov (new charges while serving his 207.3 sentence), Zarema Musaeva, Maria Ponomarenko, and Nikita Uvarov (the Minecraft teenager, new charges while already imprisoned). The system does not wait for release to re-prosecute. It fabricates new cases against people who are already in its custody.
Art. 128.1, 151.2, 159, 160, 174
Died in custody, February 2024
Art. 142, 159, 174, 205.2, 207.3
Navalny's chief of staff, charged across five years
Art. 105, 159, 160, 174, 174.1
Prosecutions span 22 years
Art. 318, 319, 321
Died after five prosecutions for protest-related charges
Navalny was prosecuted eight times, under five different articles, across six years. The state did not stop when the first charge failed to silence him. It added more. The knowledge graph records every charge, every year, every article. The ratchet is personal.
Women are prosecuted for speaking. Men are prosecuted for existing.
The gender breakdown by charge reveals a stark pattern. Article 207.3 (wartime "fake news") is 25.9% female, the highest proportion of any major charge. Article 282.2 (extremist organization membership) is 19.8% female. But Article 205.3 (terror training) is 0.0% female: 288 prosecutions, every single one male. Article 205.5 (terrorist organization) is 5.8% female. The state applies speech charges to women and terror charges to men.
This is not a reflection of participation patterns. It is a gendered application of the repressive apparatus. Under ICCPR Article 26 (non-discrimination) and Article 3 (equal enjoyment of rights), a charging pattern that systematically applies heavier charges to one gender constitutes discriminatory treatment. The data shows the discrimination is structural, not anecdotal: zero women out of 288 people charged with terror training is not a sampling artifact. It is a structural pattern. OVD-Info notes an ethical complexity in this argument: when the absence of the death penalty for women was cited as gender discrimination in debates over capital punishment, the logical remedy was extending execution to women. Similarly, framing the absence of terrorism charges against women as discrimination risks implying the remedy is to charge more women with terrorism. In October 2025, the first case against women for alleged involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir appeared in occupied Crimea, including terrorism-related charges, suggesting the pattern may already be shifting. The gender dynamic in Russian repression is real but requires careful framing.
1,570 people face charges violating three ICCPR articles simultaneously.
The SKOS vocabulary maps each Criminal Code article to the ICCPR provisions it violates. Some charges violate one article (207.3 violates Art. 19). Some violate two (282.2 violates Art. 18 and Art. 22). When a person is charged under multiple articles, the violated ICCPR provisions compound. The knowledge graph computes this per person.
The most common compound pattern is Art. 18 (conscience) + Art. 19 (expression) + Art. 22 (association), affecting 1,570 people. These are overwhelmingly Jehovah's Witnesses charged under 282.2 (violating Art. 18 and 22) alongside a speech-related charge (violating Art. 19). 144 people face charges violating four ICCPR articles simultaneously: Art. 14 (fair trial) + Art. 18 + Art. 19 + Art. 22.
For WGAD submissions, compound violations strengthen the Category III finding. A single ICCPR violation makes the detention potentially arbitrary. Three simultaneous violations, applied to 1,570 people by the same system, make it systematic.
The first report documented a machine. This one documented its intake. A 14-year-old charged with terrorism. An 88-year-old charged with attending a prayer meeting. 84 people in psychiatric wards for speech. 311 people prosecuted repeatedly until the state achieved the outcome it wanted. 101 people who died before the machine finished with them. Every name, every charge, every year is recorded in 217,814 triples. The knowledge graph does not open the cell. It writes down who is inside, what they were charged with, and how many rights the state violated in the process. That is not a remedy. It is a precondition for one.
Method note · How we found this
This follow-up uses the same merged knowledge graph (217,814 triples) produced by the six-step pipeline described in the primary report. The difference is the query type. The primary report used charge co-occurrence (which charges cluster together) and temporal analysis (when the structure changed). This follow-up uses entity-crossing queries: joining persecutions to persons to charges to ICCPR mappings, computing age at prosecution (birth year minus prosecution year), and counting compound ICCPR violations per person. None of these queries can run on a flat CSV. All require the A-Box. The code is open on GitHub.