Half of the decrees signed by Vladimir Putin in 2023 turned out to be secret – Mediazona’s editorial staff made the calculations.
The publication calculated how many of Putin’s decrees are not published on the official legal information portal. In 2023, the share of such documents amounted to 49.5 percent. This is the highest figure since the beginning of the publication of decrees, and the record is set for the second year in a row: in 2022, the share of secret decrees amounted to 45 percent.
Mediazona notes that secret decrees are used, among other things, to reward the military and pardon convicts who were recruited for the war from prisons.
Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, the highest number of secret decrees issued by the Russian president was in 2001, during the Second Chechen War. At that time, 47 percent of such documents were concealed.
