Russia’s FSB security service publishes dramatic videos of political arrests. A human rights group says roughly a quarter of the arrest scenes it examined were staged.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, began posting far more short videos online showing the detention of people facing political prosecution in Russia. The videos are often staged to intimidate government opponents and show off the security service’s effectiveness and power, according to a study by Memorial’s Support for Political Prisoners project. The researchers analyzed 70 criminal cases in which those facing prosecution appeared in such videos.