Russia under Putin has created a monopoly on exclusion, using labels such as “foreign agent,” “undesirable organization,” or “extremist” to systematically strip individuals and groups of rights, turning law into a tool for exclusion rather than protection.

This system targets political agency while permitting limited cultural expression, particularly affecting ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples; nearly 100 indigenous initiatives have been labeled terrorist or extremist.

The author warns that the return of hundreds of thousands of veterans from the Ukraine war could intensify this trend, potentially leading to new proto-state actors and further erosion of legal protections for dissent.

“Max Weber described the state as a structure possessing a monopoly on the legitimate use of force” but Putin’s Russia like in Nazi Germany, “the authorities have gone further: they are constructing a monopoly on the power to exclude individuals and groups from public life” and its legal protections, Ilya Shumanov says.

The founder of the Arktida project, which defends the numerically small peoples of the Russian north, says Moscow has “established an extensive nomenclature of labels” – such as........

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