Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the record-high number of classified orders in July 2023 since 1999, Mediazona reports.
According to the media outlet, 62% of all the presidential decrees signed in July were not made public.
Mediazona counted the number of confidential orders based on their numbers. The documents are numbered in order from the beginning of the year. The omitted numbers reveal that these decrees are secret.
The only time during Putin’s presidency when the number of classified documents was higher was recorded in January 1999. Moreover, based on the first seven months of 2023, the current year ranks the first based on the number of confidential decrees.
Putin signed the most classified documents since the Ukraine war broke out between 27 and 31 July: 12 such orders.
Last year, Mediazona discovered that the number of these documents had increased since the invasion of Ukraine began. According to the media outlet, the share of these documents always goes up during wars and “special military operations”, like during the First and the Second Chechen Wars, the 2014 Crimea events, and when the Donbas conflict emerged.
Mediazona believes that the decrees relate to awards for the killed military personnel.
Moreover, these orders are possibly related to the pardoning of convicts recruited by the mercenary Wagner Group.
Earlier, IStories revealed that the Wagner Group let go all of their recruited prisoners after the rebellion. Many of them were housed in hotels of the Russian resort city of Anapa, awaiting pardons. They were promised to be released to go home later. In particular, some reports suggest that the recruits were supposed to be pardoned before the end of July.