The memorial laws, in existence since 2014, have been widely applied since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The number of such prosecutions, according to 'OVD-Info'*, increases with each year of the war: since 2022, at least 212 criminal cases have been initiated, with more than 37% of them last year.
The first of the memorial laws was adopted in 2014, establishing an article on the rehabilitation of Nazism. In 2021, the State Duma adopted amendments to the existing memorial law, which expanded the article on the rehabilitation of Nazism, toughened the punishment for its violation, and also added new administrative articles that, among other things, prohibited comparing the USSR with the Third Reich.
Unlike European counterparts, which prohibit denying crimes against humanity, Russian laws also provide for criminal liability, including for expressing disrespect towards the Soviet authorities and the army during the Great Patriotic War.
At least 78 cases of rehabilitation of Nazism were initiated because the defendants 'showed disrespect' to the Eternal Flame memorials. For example, in Miass, Chelyabinsk region, a homeless man who warmed himself by the flame and dried his clothes on it was accused of 'rehabilitating Nazism' and sent to a psychiatric hospital. Turkish citizens received a year of imprisonment for wiping their shoe soles on a monument near the memorial. People also received real sentences for drinking by the Eternal Flame or cooking food on it.
Another 11 prosecutions were initiated due to anti-war actions, participants of which, in particular, spoke out against celebrating Victory Day. One of the defendants in such cases was Kazan resident Zulfiya Sitdikova because of a poster '9 way'.
Crimes of 'insulting historical memory' are punished not only by the article on the rehabilitation of Nazism but also by articles on vandalism, desecration of burial sites, propaganda of Nazi attributes or symbols of banned organizations.
* Recognized as a 'foreign agent' in Russia