Russia plans new prison complex in occupied Kherson Oblast among wider prison expansion
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Russian authorities plan to build a new large-scale prison complex in occupied Kherson Oblast as part of a program to construct seven such facilities across Russia and occupied Ukraine by 2035, The Moscow Times reported on Sept. 16, citing a Russian government program.
The new facilities will combine pretrial detention centers with penal colonies of different security levels and will have a combined capacity of more than 20,000 people, according to the The Moscow Times. Of those places, 5,380 are designated for pretrial detainees and 15,120 for prisoners serving sentences.
Apart from occupied Kherson Oblast, Russia plans to build the complexes in Kaluga, Astrakhan, and Tyumen oblasts, Buryatia, and Zabaykalsky Krai, while the first is expected to open in Tatarstan by 2030.
Each facility is expected to cost between 13 billion and 20 billion rubles (around $154 million and $237 million), The Moscow Times reports. Russia's Justice Ministry estimates that concentrating detention centers and penal colonies in the same complexes could reduce the cost of holding prisoners and detainees by 25-30%, allowing the projects to pay for themselves within about a decade.
Russian Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko said the facilities would use modern engineering and IT systems, while providing improved working conditions for prison employees and access to work, education, and medical services for inmates.
The new construction plans come as Russia expands its detention infrastructure in occupied Ukrainian territories. A Kyiv Independent investigation found that two new pretrial detention centers in occupied Crimea became part of a system used to unlawfully detain Ukrainian civilians.
Former detainees said civilians were held for months without formal charges, access to lawyers, or contact with their families, and described beatings, electric shocks, denial of medical care, and other abuse. One of the facilities is formally operated by Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service, while the other came under the direct control of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), in March 2026.
Russia has also used occupied Crimea as a hub for detaining civilians seized in occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.
According to estimates by Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, Russia unlawfully holds about 16,000 Ukrainian civilians in about 200 detention sites in Russia and occupied parts of Ukraine. Only a few hundred people have been brought back.
