Russia: FSB regains control of pretrial detention centres
Twenty years on, the FSB has regained its pre-trial interrogation centres, with experts calling it the “basis for a new GULAG’’. Will these detention centres really be more dangerous than their current counterparts? And who do they intend to put in them?
16.07.2025
Article published on the meduza.io website
What has happened?
The State Duma has passed a law that once again gives the FSB the right to establish their own system of pre-trial detention centres. Deputies plan to preside over two other supporting bills with amendments to the Code of Administrative Offences, the Criminal Code, and the Criminal Procedure Code during their first reading on 17 July. All three of these documents are due to enter into force on 1 January 2026.
Why is the law “returning?” Did the FSB previously have its own pre-trial detention centres?
Yes, up until 1st January 2006.
In July 2005, Vladimir Putin issued a decree, transferring the FSB’s pre-trial detention centres to the control of the Federal Prison Service (FSIN) under the aegis of the Ministry of Justice until the following year. Amendments to federal laws that gave effect to the President’s wishes were only passed in April 2006.
Why did Putin take the pre-trial detention centres away from his “native” security service?
Formally, he was fulfilling a commitment that Russia made upon joining the Council of Europe in 1996. At the time, the authorities promised to place the prison service under the control of the Ministry of Justice “as soon as possible’’.
With this, the Ministry of Internal Affairs disposed of “its’’ prisons and pre-trial detention centres, handing them over to the Ministry of Justice in 1998. But the FSB’s pre-trial detention centres remained untouched by this change. And for quite a long time, the authorities ignored the findings of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s special monitoring committee, which regularly demanded that that the security service be deprived of its pre-trial detention centres.
In the 2005 Presidential decree, the reason for the transfer was stated as follows:
- In order to provide additional guarantees to ensure the protection of the rights, freedoms, and legitimate interests of those suspected or accused of committing crimes, taking into account the recommendations of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
What were these “additional guarantees?”
A person placed in an FSB detention centre was effectively under the total control of the security service, which monitored both his/her detention and trial procedures, including access to legal representation. In the absence of any independent oversight, it was far easier for FSB investigators to put pressure on the accused.
Is this why detention centres are now being returned to the security service?
The FSB clearly wants to restore its powers.
- In the Explanatory Note, the deputies and senators listed as authors of the bill explicitly state that after the “termination of [Russia’s] membership’’ of the Council of Europe in 2022, the country is “no longer bound by any of the Council’s obligations’’.
- The same document also states that within the context of the “Special Military Operation’’, it will be necessary to take “additional measures to protect State secrets”. To protect against the “increased interest on the part of representatives of foreign Governments and organisations’’ suspected or accused of treason, espionage, secret cooperation with foreigners, terrorism and extremism.
Will the FSB have any special rights compared with the Federal Prison Service?
It is hard to say for certain. Formally, the FSB will have exactly the same rights to guard, escort, and deliver suspects or the accused for interrogation as is currently the process followed by the FSIN.
However, in an interview with Advokatskaya Gazeta, a lawyer Alexander Polchenko drew attention to the fact that the head of the FSB will now have total control over the procedure for guarding and carrying out punishment in detention centres. The Director will not be bound by the norms of the federal law “On the Detention of Suspects and Accused of Committing Crimes’’, or the Criminal Procedure Code.
We do not even know whether the documents approved by the Director of the FSB will be made publicly available. Before their transfer to the Ministry of Justice, the internal regulations of FSB detention centres were regulated by classified procedures. In 2003, using the “Lefortovo prison’’ as an example, Novaya Gazeta explained that none of the lawyers whose clients were being held had had a chance to familiarise themselves with the text of detention centre regulations approved by the head of the security service.
On the whole, Polchenko expects a new and stricter prison access regime and worries about the confidentiality of meetings between lawyers and their clients in FSB detention centres.
There are also more pessimistic assessments of the current restructuring among experts. In their analysis of the bill on FSB pre-trial detention centres, Russian security services researchers, Andrey Soldatov and Irina Borogan, called the centres the “basis for a new GULAG’’, and predicted increased repression in the country.
Special wagons, ships, planes and powers to escort prisoners – all of which are now under the control of the FSB, indicates preparations for repression on a scale we have not seen before.
Which pre-trial detention centres will be handed over to the FSB?
We do not know the exact list. But in the Explanatory Note, the authors of the bill mentioned the following detention centres currently under the control of the FSIN:
- Pre-trial detention centre No.1 (Moscow, 18 Matrosskaya Tishina Street);
- Pre-trial detention centre No.2 (Moscow, 5 Lefortovsky Val);
- Pre-trial detention centre No.3 (St Petersburg, 25 Shpalernaya Street);
- Pre-trial detention centre No.4 (Rostov-on-Don, 31 Bolshaya Sadovaya Street);
- Pre-trial detention centre No.5 (Krasnodar, 22 Krasnoarmeyskaya Street);
- Pre-trial detention centre No.6 (Vladikavkaz, 6 Mordovtseva Street);
- Pre-trial detention centre No.7 (Chelyabinsk, 70 Kommuny Street).
These are the very same pre-trial detention centres that were taken away from the FSB twenty years ago.
