Bounty for soldiers and pardon for killers: Putin signed a record number of secret decrees last year | Ukraine-Russia war

49.5% of the 997 decrees signed by Putin in 2023 were classified as secret, writes the newspaper Mediazona.

Journalists from the news channel studied the presidential decrees published by the Russian authorities in January of each year. By looking at the registration numbers for the decrees and adding the missing numbers, journalists were able to determine how many documents had been signed but never published.

Putin secretly signed nearly half of the decrees. Thus, the president breaks his own record. In 2001, during the Second Chechen War, Putin carried out 47% of all decrees in secret. In 2022, the year Russia invaded Ukraine, a total of 996 decrees were signed, 45% of which were secret.

According to the Mediazona website, most of the decrees were related to rewarding soldiers and amnestying criminals who fought in Ukraine for at least six months.

In June, the Russian head of state confirmed that he had signed a decree to acquit former prisoners who went to the front. This would have led to the release of at least seventeen convicted killers in 2022 and 2023, a decision that has already drawn much criticism.

Recently, the Russian news website Agents Media compiled a list of released Russian killers and the crimes for which they were imprisoned. Among them, for example, is Dmitry Zelensky, who in 2018 strangled his 27-year-old girlfriend and turned her body through a meat grinder.