On 19 October 2026, the State Council of Tatarstan approved the appointment of Colonel General Alexander Lapin as deputy prime minister of the republic. Tatarstan head Rustam Minnikhanov signed the appointment decree the same day. Lapin had previously been appointed acting deputy prime minister on 29 September 2026.
For 10 years, the number of political prisoners in the Russian Federation has increased by more than 10 times and today stands at 553 people. This was reported by the Center for the Protection of Human Rights "Memorial".
According to human rights activists, entering the category of political prisoners is not a quick process, which is why these lists provide only a minimal estimate of their number. At the same time, in the current Russian Federation, the number of prisoners on the lists is already comparable to the scale of political prisoners in the late USSR, and the real numbers are clearly higher.
Full-scale aggression against Ukraine relies on repression within Russia and is only possible thanks to it, as Memorial noted. At the same time, against the backdrop of the war, attention to political prisoners inevitably declines.