Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law that imposes new restrictions on Russians convicted in absentia, tying those penalties to the country's expanding framework of "foreign agent" and "undesirable organization" designations [1]. The measure reaches people tried and convicted while outside Russia, a category that in practice covers many exiled opposition figures, journalists, and activists who left the country and continue to criticize the government from abroad.
The Russian legal-rights group First Department, which defends people in politically charged cases, described the law as a "de facto deprivation of citizenship" [1]. The phrase captures the group's argument that attaching new penalties to in-absentia convictions leaves those affected as citizens in name while removing much of what citizenship is meant to guarantee.
In-absentia prosecutions have become a common tool against Kremlin critics who have fled abroad, letting the state convict people it cannot physically detain. A law that attaches fresh penalties to those convictions extends that reach further, to Russians the government has no way to arrest.
The specific provisions of the law were not itemized in the reporting available to us. First Department's framing, a de facto loss of citizenship, signals that the group considers the restrictions severe enough to equate with losing one's nationality, a characterization that will be tested as the law is applied to named individuals already living in exile.
