Report on Human Rights Violations in Adygea

August 2026
Hava Beshtoeva

In the context of monitoring law-enforcement practice in Adygea for August 2026, the most resonant precedent became the deprivation of acquired Russian citizenship of local residents, the pretext for which was their disagreement with the conduct of the special military operation. This case remained the main and most discussed event in the regional information field, demonstrating a rigid tendency of applying new legal norms to persons who publicly do not support the aggressive state policy.

Practice of deprivation of Russian citizenship for disagreement with the Special Military Operation

The FSB stated that citizenship had been deprived of eight “natives of the Central Asian region and Transcaucasia.”

A resident of Stavropol Krai, according to the agency’s data, “participated in the implementation” of measures for foreigners “aimed at the formation of a negative perception of Russian culture and a negative attitude towards persons of Slavic nationality.” In addition, the special service asserts, he called for the “sabotage of the unified state social policy of support” for participants in the war against Ukraine.

A resident of Adygea, for his part, criticised the participation of Muslims in combat operations on the territory of Ukraine as part of the armed forces of the Russian Federation. “In addition, he was a supporter of ideas of ethnic superiority, did not wish to integrate into the linguistic and cultural environment surrounding him, and displayed a contemptuous and consumerist attitude towards the Russian Federation and its indigenous population,” the message on the agency’s website states.

Other persons deprived of citizenship who were natives of other countries resided in Tuva, Chelyabinsk Oblast, and the agency also reported the deprivation of citizenship of two natives of Transcaucasia who were allegedly involved in the incitement of inter-ethnic enmity.

https://www.interfax.ru/russia/1111940
https://expert.ru/news/fsb-lishila-vosem-vykhodtsev-iz-tsentralnoy-azii-i-zakavkazya-grazhdanstva-rf

This case demonstrates that public criticism of the participation of citizens in combat operations is now equated by the agencies with a threat to national security and entails punitive legal consequences, which creates risks of selective law enforcement and requires close monitoring on the part of human rights institutions.

https://caspianpost.com/regions/russia-revokes-citizenship-of-eight-people-from-central-asia-south-caucasus
https://caliber.az/en/post/russia-revokes-citizenship-of-eight-over-alleged-national-security-threats
https://newdosh.media/en/news/fsb-annulirovala-grazdanstvo-rf-zitelej-adygei-i-stavropola-za-kritiku-ucastia-musulman-v-vojne-protiv-ukrainy-2?categoryAlias=

Real prison terms for leaving the unit during the period of mobilisation

The courts of the Southern Military District, which includes both Adygea and Karachay-Cherkessia, stably appoint real terms of deprivation of liberty. For example, in the spring of 2026 this same court in Maykop sentenced the multi-child father and contract serviceman Muraz Salimov to 8 years in a general-regime colony for leaving the unit. Under the current legislation, if a serviceman is absent from the unit for more than one month “during the period of mobilisation”*, Article 337 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation provides for punishment of from 5 to 10 years’ deprivation of liberty.

In open access there are no data on judicial decisions in cases of unauthorised abandonment of the unit handed down in August 2026 by the Maykop and Pyatigorsk Garrison Military Courts (the latter has jurisdiction over military units and servicemen on the territory of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic). At the present moment no official publications or judicial acts on the indicated category of offences in these instances for the reporting period have been recorded in the information-telecommunications network Internet.

At the same time, on 21 September 2022 Vladimir Putin announced partial mobilisation, and on 28 October of the same year the Minister of Defence reported to the president on its completion; however, no corresponding decree followed. Lawyers came to the conclusion that for the completion of partial mobilisation a presidential decree is not required, the press secretary of Putin explained.

It is important that all the above-described incidents occurred much later than 28 October 2022, that is, after the completion of partial mobilisation.

On 24 September 2022 Parts 2.1, 3.1 and 5 of Article 337 on unauthorised abandonment of the unit or place of service during the period of mobilisation were introduced into the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The amendments provide for deprivation of liberty for a term of up to 10 years. The toughening of the laws after the announcement of mobilisation led to harsher sentences for absence from the military unit.

At the same time, as of the end of June 2026 from the beginning of the military operation in Ukraine at least 141 servicemen from Adygea have been officially recognised as killed.

From the beginning of mobilisation in the autumn of 2022 an unprecedented historical maximum of more than 20 thousand criminal cases against servicemen on charges of refusal of service entered Russian military courts.

The absolute majority of these cases (more than 18 thousand) were initiated under Article 337 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation — unauthorised abandonment of the unit during the period of mobilisation.

Hundreds of these cases fall on the garrison courts of the Southern Military District, including the courts of Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia and Stavropol. The military courts of the Caucasus demonstrate extreme cruelty, handing down real sentences of terms of up to 5–7 and more years of deprivation of liberty even for short-term abandonment of units by refuseniks.

These figures clearly demonstrate: Caucasian youth do not want to participate in this war. Before thousands of young people stands a tragic choice: to become accomplices in war crimes, to perish on foreign soil, or to receive a lengthy prison term.

And there are those who attempt to find alternative ways of solution, for which they also undergo criminal prosecution, for example:

• Serviceman Denis Babushkin was sentenced by the court in Nalchik to eight years’ imprisonment, having been found guilty of giving a bribe to the commander for the possibility of avoiding being sent to the zone of combat operations.
  According to the case materials, serviceman Denis Babushkin in the period from 5 October 2024 to 26 May 2025 gave the deputy commander of the battalion of the military unit a bribe in the amount of 1 million 140 thousand roubles in order to avoid being directed to the line of combat contact and to perform service in the rear.
  The Nalchik Garrison Military Court found Denis Babushkin guilty of giving a bribe on an especially large scale and sentenced him to eight years’ deprivation of liberty in a strict-regime colony, the press service of the court reported today on its page in the social network VKontakte.
  https://vk.com/public215822488

Official summary data on losses among natives of the Republic of Adygea for August 2026 are absent in open access. The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation does not publish detailed regional statistics, and local bodies of power limit themselves to scattered publications as individual mourning events are conducted. The filling of specialised memorial registers (in particular, the project “Heroes of the Special Military Operation”) takes place with a significant time delay conditioned by procedures of verification and logistics; the latest verified information on Adygea on this resource relates to March 2025. Specialised monitoring initiatives (“Caucasian Knot,” “Mediazona,” the portal svo.rf.gd), which accumulate data on the basis of obituaries in the media and social networks, at the current moment also do not contain confirmed information for August 2026.

However, it is known that the total number of those killed in Ukraine from Adygea is 141.

https://xn—-dtbbip9adlm.xn--p1ai/geroi
https://200.zona.media/
https://svo.rf.gd/

Activists against the Special Military Operation

Many national activists spoke out against the participation of their people in the invasion of Ukraine. Thus, the first to declare this was the leading Circassian activist Ibragim Yaganov, stating that “this is not our war.” In March 2026 similar conclusions were voiced by Aydamir Kazanokov:

“Circassians are not allowed to be a people — but they are allowed to be expendable material.

Circassians are forbidden rallies, processions and any forms of self-organisation. We are not allowed to be a people in our own home: we are not allowed to hold Adyge Dzhegu – traditional games, we are not allowed to fully celebrate 14 March — the Day of the Circassian Language, we are not allowed to celebrate 25 April — the Day of the Circassian Flag, we are not allowed to honour the memory of those who fell for the freedom of Circassia on 20 May, we are not allowed on 21 May to go out on a procession on the anniversary of the end of the Russo-Circassian war of 1763–1864.

But under the same national-ideological and religious sauce — it is possible to go to a foreign war. It is possible to die for the interests of the state that destroyed our country, scattered the people and to this day forbids us to restore historical memory and to develop our own culture. The only question is: why are we not allowed to live as a people — but allowed to die as a resource?”

https://t.me/The_Circassian_Times/14514

He also noted: “Recently calls to join volunteer battalions have been heard more and more often. Newspapers, advertising of contract service and interviews with front-line soldiers create the sensation that the youth should strive more and more to go to war.

The head of the volunteer subunit ‘Elbrus’ calls to follow him and tells about ‘comfortable conditions’ at the front. When the zone of combat operations is described as a ‘sanatorium with a religious bias,’ a sensation of absurdity arises. Halal food and rooms for prayer are worthy conditions for life, but can they be an argument for participation in the heaviest military conflict?

The national milieu, language and faith must unite and preserve the people, and not serve as a beautiful wrapping for attracting people into the zone of combat operations.”

https://t.me/The_Circassian_Times/14515

From the point of view of fundamental international law, the actions of the Russian Federation on the mobilisation of the population for an aggressive war have no legal force and are criminal in their essence.

• Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) — Article 51: According to the norms of international humanitarian law, the occupying power “may not compel protected persons to serve in its armed or auxiliary forces.” Any propaganda or pressure in favour of voluntary entry into the army is categorically forbidden.
• Hague Convention (1907) — Article 52: Directly forbids demanding from the population of occupied or annexed territories participation in military operations against their own homeland or third states.
• The right to refuse military service on grounds of conscience: Enshrined in Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Compulsion to participate in combat actions contrary to the deep ethical, moral or religious convictions of a person is a direct violation of the right to freedom of thought and conscience.

Russia, being a signatory of these conventions, commits international crimes by involving the population of the territories occupied by it (as well as historically annexed republics with a vulnerable indigenous status) in the conduct of an aggressive war.

Conclusion

The events documented in the report for August 2026 in Adygea represent a visualisation of a steady vector towards the successive permanent violation of basic human rights.

In August 2026 regular monitoring of law-enforcement practice and the observance of human rights in the Caucasian Republics, including in Adygea, revealed a steady tendency towards the expansion of the scale and the toughening of the methods of repressive pressure on the part of law-enforcement and judicial bodies. The analysed period is characterised by the final formalisation of the “conveyor-belt” principle of persecution both for current manifestations of civil disagreement and within the framework of retrospective control of the digital space.

A key feature of the month became the introduction by the state of the practice of “double sentences” inside the penitentiary system for the indefinite isolation of disloyal convicts, as well as the demonstrative use of the updated legislation on citizenship as an instrument of ideological control. The force agencies continued artificially to construct criminal cases against the national intelligentsia, ignoring basic procedural norms, the principles of chronological sequence and the presumption of innocence.

In parallel an increase in pressure on the human rights community is recorded through extra-procedural holdings, informal interrogations and discriminatory filtration control at the transport hubs of the macro-region. The presented report records these violations in detail, distributed by key analytical blocks, and contains their independent legal assessment.

An alarming aspect of the repressions became the more frequent cases of persecution of activists, as well as of the civil population under “anti-war articles” and mass sentences for desertion (Article 337 of the Criminal Procedure Code) in the light of the policy of prolonged cultural colonialism.

In the Russian legal context “anti-war offences” first of all include criminal charges of the dissemination of “knowingly false information” about the Armed Forces (Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and repeated “discrediting” of the army (Article 280.3 of the Criminal Procedure Code), as well as the corresponding administrative offences. According to data of the human rights project “OVD-Info,” from February 2022 throughout the country more than 1,180 persons were subjected to criminal prosecution in connection with an anti-war position. Human rights organisations single out the North Caucasus as a region with an exceptionally high density of persecutions in anti-war cases. In the North Caucasus hundreds of administrative cases under Article 20.3.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences have been documented. Because of the legal mechanism of recidivism repeated administrative offences often grow into full-fledged criminal charges. The documented prison terms in these concrete districts number in the tens, mainly because of comments on social networks, solitary pickets or the distribution of anti-war literature.

Residents of both the Southern Federal District and the North Caucasian Federal District are regularly entered in national registers of political prisoners. In addition, in the southern regions a sharp growth is observed in the number of high-stakes criminal charges, including state treason, espionage and sabotage.

Political and anti-war persecutions in the North Caucasus have brightly expressed regional peculiarities. In addition to the standard laws on “fake news” and “discrediting,” the regional authorities actively use charges of extremism, terrorism and attacks on officers of law-enforcement bodies. In addition, punitive measures, as a rule, extend not only to individuals but also to the relatives of the accused.

Although summary regional judicial data for the Southern Federal District and the North Caucasian Federal District remain classified, human rights organisations invariably rank the North Caucasus among the regions with the greatest number of cases connected with desertion on the scale of the entire country. By the middle of 2025 more than 18,000 criminal cases of desertion had entered Russian courts. Leaked data from the databases of the Ministry of Defence showed that only in the Southern Military District more than 26,000 servicemen were classified as having unauthorisedly left the unit or the place of service.

Hava Beshtoeva,
Coordinator of human rights initiatives,
“International Circassian Center for Support and Assistance” (USA)