Report on Human Rights Violations in the Chechen Republic

Period: February 2026

Introduction and Methodology of the Report

This report is dedicated to the analysis of the human rights situation in the Chechen Republic (Russian Federation). The document records a sharp escalation of repressive practices, expressed in the systematic violation of fundamental freedoms guaranteed both by the Constitution of the Russian Federation and by Russia’s international obligations under the UN Charter and applicable conventions.

Source Base

The conclusions and factual part of the report are based on comprehensive monitoring of open data, including:

  • Official acts: Published decisions of regional and federal courts, registers of Rosfinmonitoring, and official statements by officials of the security forces of the Chechen Republic.
  • Regulatory and legal analysis: Assessment of the impact of new federal laws (in particular, Article 13.53 of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation and anti-terrorism legislation) on law enforcement practice in the region.
  • Verified testimonies: Reports from independent media, data from human rights organizations (the “SK SOS” project, the “NIYSO” movement, “Kavkazsky Uzel”), and the results of investigations by independent experts.
  • Cross-verification: For the purpose of ensuring maximum reliability, each incident underwent a procedure of cross-verification across several independent information channels.

Subject and Limitations of the Report

This report is not an exhaustive inventory of all offenses in the region. Its goal is to focus on the key incidents of February 2026 that most clearly illustrate persistent patterns of systemic disregard for international standards of justice. These include:

  1. The practice of “cross-border abductions” and extrajudicial executions.
  2. The use of digital surveillance of citizens’ search traffic as a tool of criminal prosecution.
  3. The institutionalization of collective responsibility and the taking of relatives as hostages.
  4. The use of military mobilization as a form of extrajudicial punishment for dissent.

The presented materials testify to a profound erosion of the legal field and the transformation of the region into a zone of “legal exception,” where administrative tasks and personal instructions of the leadership prevail over procedures established by law.

Forced Mobilization

Case of Usman Arbashev

This case is a classic example of the “hunt for the vulnerable,” which has become a systemic practice in the Chechen Republic in 2025–2026.

1. Circumstances of the Abduction

  • Date: February 5, 2026.
  • Identity: Usman Arbashev, resident of the village of Alhan-Kala (Grozny district of the Chechen Republic).
  • Place of detention: Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Sernovodsk district. This is an important detail: abducted persons are often taken to neighboring districts so that their relatives find it more difficult to locate them and file a statement at their place of residence.

2. Motive and Selection Criteria (“Target for Results”)

This case reveals the social cynicism of the mobilization campaign in the republic:

  • National discrimination: for the pro-imperial authorities, Arbashev is a potential national activist who, if not made a conscious servant of the empire, may, if allowed to simply live, sooner or later begin to pose a danger as a supporter of national independence. Any adult men, and even teenagers, who are simply aware of their nationality and know their native language are considered dangerous to the imperial authorities.
  • Social vulnerability: Arbashev has no father or high-ranking relatives (“connections”) who could stand up for him or “buy” him out.
  • Logic of the security forces: for reporting to Grozny, district police departments (OMVD) need to supply a certain number of “volunteers.” Security forces select those for whom no one can raise a noise in the media or in the offices of power.
  • Goal: forced signing of a contract for dispatch to the combat zone in Ukraine.

3. Legal Vacuum

  • Detention status: officially, Arbashev is not listed as detained under the Criminal Procedure Code. His stay in the OMVD of the Sernovodsk district constitutes unlawful deprivation of liberty (Article 127 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
  • Reaction of the authorities: as in most cases recorded by the NIYSO movement and human rights defenders from “SK SOS,” the official structures of the Chechen Republic maintain complete silence. The absence of comments from the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the official ombudsman Soltayev confirms the extraprocedural nature of what is happening.

This incident illustrates the model of “administrative resource mobilization”:

  1. Selectivity: the poorest and most socially vulnerable segments of the population are persecuted, as well as national activists and people potentially disloyal to the authorities.
  2. Blackmail: detainees are given an ultimatum: either “voluntary” dispatch to the front, or the initiation of a criminal case under a serious article (often Article 208 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation — participation in an illegal armed formation, or drug-related articles).
  3. Terror through uncertainty: relatives receive threats that if they complain, the detainee will “disappear without a trace” even before being sent to the front.

The case of Arbashev is an example of forced mobilization as a form of discrimination on national and social grounds. It proves that in the Chechen Republic in 2026, the right to personal inviolability directly depends on nationality and the presence of “administrative resources” in the family. If there are none, a person becomes a “resource” for fulfilling the plan to send people to war.

https://newdosh.media/news/niyso-v-cecne-pohitili-muzcinu-dla-otpravki-na-svo?categoryAlias=

Cultural Censorship. Extraterritoriality of Chechen Culture

In 2024–2026, a transition from pinpoint censorship to systematic ideological control over art was recorded in the Chechen Republic. The introduction by the Ministry of Culture of the Chechen Republic of strict restrictions on musical rhythm (80–116 BPM) and the ban on public performance of works that have not passed the censorship filter is a violation of Article 44 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation (Freedom of Creativity). This has effectively placed modern genres (pop, trance, techno) outside the law and led to the removal from public space of works that have not passed the “filter” of the Ministry of Culture.

https://the-flow.ru/news/chechnya-v-ritme-80-116-bpm

The fate of M. Musaeva’s film “The Cage is Looking for a Bird” and the tacit ban on literature about women’s rights and historical research on the 1944 deportation indicate the creation in the region of a closed information space where any deviation from the official cultural doctrine is criminalized.

At the beginning of 2026, raids on bookstores and private libraries intensified in the Chechen Republic. Not only works on the history of the Caucasian War (for example, books that give a different assessment of the role of Imam Shamil or events of the 19th century, different from the official line) fall under the ban, but also modern Western psychology or literature touching on women’s rights. For example, the book “In Bed with the Tyrant” (and similar works about domestic violence) is tacitly withdrawn from sale, as it is considered “destroying traditional family values.”

The film “Ordered to Forget” (Ruslan Ibragimov, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIam0Wuvcdg), filmed earlier, but precisely in 2023–2026, its status as “absolutely prohibited” became a marker for the entire culture. This is a film about the deportation of Chechens in 1944 (the tragedy in Khaibakh). The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation refused it a distribution certificate several years ago, but in 2025–2026 in the Chechen Republic even mentioning this film on social networks or an attempt to organize a closed screening in a private premises leads to a visit from security forces. This is a fact indicating the suppression of historical memory, which goes against the official policy of “reconciliation.”

https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/243218

Malika Musaeva’s film “The Cage is Looking for a Bird” (2023), which became the first film in the Chechen language in the history of the Berlin Film Festival program, is in fact under a tacit ban in the Chechen Republic. The absence of legal screenings of the film, which tells about the desire of Chechen women for freedom, in their homeland confirms the existence of strict ideological censorship and the unwillingness of the Chechen Republic authorities to allow public discussion on women’s rights.

https://oc-media.org/review-the-cage-is-looking-for-a-bird-a-chechen-tale-of-womens-agency

Documentary films about the Chechen Republic are now shot either anonymously (“guerrilla filming”) or completely outside the republic using archival footage.

In the Chechen Republic in 2026, a situation of cultural apartheid has developed: art created by Chechens in the Chechen language and dedicated to Chechen problems legally exists everywhere except in the Chechen Republic itself. This indicates that the pro-imperial power of mankurts has monopolized the right to self-representation of the people, cutting off any alternative points of view as “alien” or “extremist.”

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