Russia: wartime personalist autocracy (2022–present)

Background

On 24 February 2022 Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The decision was taken by Vladimir Putin and a very small circle; the televised Security Council meeting of 21 February, at which members were asked to endorse recognition of the separatist "republics", became a symbol of how little the formal institutions constrained him. In September 2022 the government announced a "partial mobilisation" of reservists and claimed to annex four partially occupied Ukrainian regions. The war continued into 2026.

How it is governed

• Personalised command. Decisions on war and peace rest with the president. Freedom House describes a political system in which power is concentrated in Putin's hands, with subservient courts and security forces and a legislature made up of a ruling party and pliable factions.
• Elections without opponents. In March 2024 Putin was credited with 87.3 percent of the vote on a reported record turnout of 77.4 percent, after genuine opposition candidates were barred; the vote was also held in occupied areas of Ukraine. Since 2024 people designated as "foreign agents" cannot stand for office.
• Elite discipline. The mutiny of the Wagner mercenary group under Yevgeny Prigozhin in June 2023, which marched towards Moscow before standing down, was followed by Prigozhin's death in a plane crash two months later. In 2024 long-serving Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was moved to the Security Council and several senior defence officials were arrested for corruption.
• Classification. V-Dem's Regimes of the World still classifies Russia as an electoral autocracy, because multiparty elections are held. This atlas records the period as personalist rule because the war showed that the president's personal decisions are not constrained by the party, the legislature or the elite councils.

Repression and rights

• Wartime censorship. Laws adopted in March 2022 made spreading "false information" about the armed forces and "discrediting" them criminal offences. The remaining independent broadcasters and newspapers closed or moved abroad; major foreign platforms were blocked; "foreign agent" and "undesirable organisation" designations were extended to media and individuals in exile.
• Protest and prison. The rights group OVD-Info counted more than 20,000 arrests at anti-war demonstrations, nearly all in 2022; as of December 2025 it counted 1,902 people imprisoned or otherwise deprived of liberty for political speech or activity. Treason, espionage and terrorism convictions have risen sharply.
• Deaths in custody. Aleksei Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024, months after a further conviction on extremism charges lengthened his imprisonment by 19 years. A 2025 report by the UN special rapporteur on Russia described torture in detention as "systematic and widespread".
• Mobilisation and minorities. Rights groups report that ethnic minority regions have been disproportionately targeted by mobilisation, and prisoners and migrants have been recruited or pressured into military service.
• International accountability. On 17 March 2023 the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin for the alleged unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine.

Economy

Sanctions cut Russia off from most Western finance and technology, and Western states froze central bank reserves. Exports were redirected to China, India and Turkey, and military spending drove growth in 2023–2024. Freedom House reports growing strain by 2025, including fuel shortages after Ukrainian strikes on refineries and restrictions on gasoline exports. Natural-resource rents remain central to the budget.

Debates

• Spin to fear? Guriev and Treisman's distinction between "spin dictators", who rule mainly by manipulating information, and "fear dictators", who rely on open violence, is widely used to describe the shift since 2022; how far it has gone is debated.
• Support for the war. Polls show majority support for the "special military operation", but under censorship and criminal penalties respondents may not answer sincerely; researchers disagree about how much the numbers mean.
• Durability. Some analysts see wartime mobilisation and repression as consolidating the regime; others point to elite fragility revealed by the Wagner mutiny and to economic strain.

Lessons for institution design

• Personalisation removes the brakes on war. Where councils exist only to ratify, a single person can take the decision to invade.
• Censorship laws work through fear of the exceptional case. A small number of long sentences can silence millions.
• Elections can survive as rituals of loyalty even when the outcome is not in doubt.

Further reading

• Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2026: Russia
• Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman, Spin Dictators (Princeton, 2022)
• V-Dem Institute, Democracy Report 2026