Secrecy Surrounds 45% of Putins 2025 Executive Decrees, Revealing Growing Obscurity in Governance

According to an analysis by the exiled investigative outlet Vyorstka, approximately 45% of over 1,000 executive orders signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2025 were kept confidential. This finding was revealed in a report published on Tuesday.

The investigation indicated that among at least 1,010 decrees, 449 were marked as classified on the official Russian government portal for legal documents last year, resulting in a secrecy rate of 44.5%.

Although this reflects a 3.4 percentage point rise compared to 2024, the current level of confidentiality is still slightly lower than the historic highs recorded during the initial two years of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Of the 561 decrees that were made public, Vyorstka highlighted that 52 were specifically related to awarding honorary titles to certain military units.

The outlet points out that classified decrees are commonly utilized for extremely sensitive administrative decisions, such as bestowing military honors on soldiers actively engaged in combat or posthumously, as well as granting pardons to convicted individuals who have been recruited into the armed forces.

In a notable instance, the BBC’s Russian service reported that in 2006, Putin signed a secret decree awarding the late leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Medal of the Order «For Merit to the Fatherland» of the first class.