The Prosecutor General’s Office revealed the structure of crimes of Russian organized crime groups
From the beginning of the year to the end of August, more than 33 thousand crimes of organized crime were investigated, the Prosecutor General’s Office said. More than 3,600 women and 579 teenagers were involved in gang activity
Last year, 50,908 crimes committed by organized criminal groups and communities (OPG and OPS) were investigated in Russia. From January to August this year, 33,135 such crimes were investigated, the press service of the General Prosecutor’s Office told RBC. At the same time, while last year almost half of them – 25.8 thousand – were related to drugs, for eight months of this year only 6.3 thousand crimes were associated with drug trafficking.
If in 2025 in Russia were identified 15 658 people who committed crimes in the criminal group, then for eight months of 2026 — 13 848. Among them last year there were 4,327 women, in 2026 - 3,681, the Prosecutor General's Office said.
In 2025, 521 minors were involved in crime as part of organized groups, and 579 in January-August 2026.
The statistics provided by the department included crimes investigated under three articles of the Criminal Code: Article 209 of the Criminal Code “Banditism”, Article 210 of the Criminal Code “Organization of a criminal community (criminal organization) or participation in it (it)”, Article 210.1 of the Criminal Code “Occupation of a higher position in the criminal hierarchy”.
Of the total number of crimes committed by gangs investigated in 2025, more than half (36.4 thousand) were committed using information and telecommunication technologies. Almost half (25.8 thousand) were associated with drug trafficking, of which 24.7 thousand - with sales. Another 15,900 were directed against property.
For the first eight months of this year, the structure of crimes was similar: 19.5 thousand were committed using IT technologies, 6.3 thousand were related to drug trafficking (of which 5.7 thousand were related to sales), 18.2 thousand crimes were committed against property.
According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the most investigated crimes of organized crime in 2025 were in Moscow (11.5 thousand), Krasnoyarsk Krai (2.6 thousand), Sverdlovsk region (2.1 thousand), Chelyabinsk region (1.7 thousand), St. Petersburg (1.2 thousand), Bashkiria (1 thousand) and Moscow region (1 thousand).
In January-August of this year, 8.6 thousand crimes were investigated in Moscow, 2.1 thousand in the Sverdlovsk region, 1.4 thousand in the Moscow region, 1.2 thousand in St. Petersburg, and 1.2 thousand in the Nizhny Novgorod region.
The Prosecutor General’s Office stressed that it is quite difficult to establish the exact amount of damage caused by the actions of organized crime groups, since the crimes were committed in different periods, and the amounts vary depending on the scope of activities of the groups.
One of the largest lawsuits for the seizure of property of gang members was registered in October in the Ivanovo region, where since the 1990s the Ivanovo gang operated under the management of two local residents with the status of a thief in law and a protector - Ruben Kosyan (known as Ruben Ivanovsky) and Denis Kartashov (Denis Kartash). Together with 12 participants, according to the prosecution, they were engaged in extortion, robbery, robbery, forcible redistribution of economic spheres of influence and intimidation of competitors, were associated with the recognized extremist and banned AUE movement.
The gang members own about 40 companies and more than 250 expensive real estate objects, including production sites in Ivanovo, Vichuga and Moscow. The Prosecutor of the Ivanovo region sent a lawsuit to the court to ban the activities of the association as extremist and the circulation of property of participants and their shares in companies worth more than 6 billion rubles to the state revenue. The court imposed interim measures on the property. This practice has already been used: earlier, the court recognized the extremist Chelyabinsk organized crime group Makhoninsky and turned its assets into state income by 2.5 billion rubles.
According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, it is difficult to make a single portrait of the organizer of an organized crime group, however, according to an expert study conducted in one of the criminal cases, most often such a person is characterized by quite high activity in the field of social and interpersonal interactions, ease in establishing communicative ties, relaxation, self-confidence, the desire to be in the center of events and attention, independence in decision-making.
