On the day Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was buried in Moscow's Borisovskoye cemetery in early March, only about 90 of his supporters were detained across the country. Given the scale of the previous crackdown on his followers and the total number of people who had come to pay tribute to the Kremlin's most vocal critic, the number seemed surprisingly small.
The queue at Navalny's funeral stretched for hundreds of yards. The pile of flowers almost entirely obscured the wooden cross at his grave.
The explanation for the police's initial hands-off approach, however, soon became apparent.
Many more detentions occurred days later, presumably drawing on data from facial recognition systems and cameras installed at the church in the south-eastern Moscow suburb where Navalny’s funeral service was held, and at the cemetery.
There are over 1 million video surveillance cameras in Russia. One in three is connected to a facial recognition system, according to data from Russian Minister for Digital Development Maksut Shadayev. About 230,000 are in use in Moscow alone.
In January, Moscow's Department of Information Technologies approved a procedure for connecting CCTV cameras to the unified state information system. City authorities have required owners of all cameras – both digital and analog – that record events “in public places” to connect their devices to this system.
By 2030, the number of working surveillance cameras in use across Russia is expected to approach 5 million. All of them are expected to be connected to systems that rely on artificial intelligence (AI) to process data.
Russian authorities are working to create a nationwide “center for video feed analysis,” Mattias Carlsson, a Swedish investigative journalist, told Eurasianet. His findings are based on leaked documents from sources reportedly close to Sergey Kiriyenko, the former prime minister who is now first deputy chief of staff in Vladimir Putin's administration. Kiriyenko is believed to wield significant influence over domestic policy.
Between 2024 and 2026, at least 11.2 billion rubles (over $126 million) is earmarked for the development of the analysis center, Carlsson said. “As I understand it, this center will receive feeds from all other [video surveillance] systems.”
It will be created “under the umbrella of GlavNIVTs,” he added, referring to Russia's Main Scientific Research Computing Center. GlavNIVTs operates directly under the Kremlin’s supervision and collaborates with the Artificial Intelligence Centre in St. Petersburg, as well as trains staff for the Russian Interior Ministry, among others.
According to Carlsson, part of the budget is specifically designated for the purchase of software licenses from NtechLab. This Russian video analytics provider uses AI technologies and biometric identification in developing new technologies. It has developed systems for “face, body, vehicle, and license plate number recognition.” The lab has also recently tested a “speech-enabled impact management” feature, which is essentially a generated voice response to various scenarios based on video analysis.
In 2024, about 83 million rubles (over $926,000) is projected to be spent on software procurement from NtechLab, rising to 86 million rubles (over $959,000) in 2025, Carlsson said.
Established in 2015, the lab initially focused on machine learning and neural networks. Over two years ago, its Russian founders, Artem Kukharenko and Alexander Kabakov, left the company.
“I wrote a resignation letter and left the board in December 2021, Artem [did the same] on the second or third day after [Russia's] war [in Ukraine] started,” Kabakov told Eurasianet in a LinkedIn message exchange. “We cut all ties with the company and also stopped being shareholders,” Kukharenko said. His explanation: The main shareholders and “their management had different views on the company's future.” Both Kukharenko and Kabakov had other visions.
The founders insist that they gradually came to oppose the continuation of projects in Russia, adding that they signed a petition against the war in Ukraine after the Kremlin launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Subsequently, the company's regular employees “were forbidden to communicate with us,” Kabakov claimed. He did not say who had been the source of the instructions. “After our anti-war statement,” Kukharenko added, “there is no way for us to return to Russia.”
In July 2023, Sergey Suchkov was appointed as the new CEO of NtechLab. But he lasted only six months before being replaced by Alexey Palamarchuk, a veteran of Rostelecom and ER-Telecom Holding. The official reason given was the need to implement a new strategy. Palamarchuk admitted that this included the development of new AI-based products for “public security.”
Another stated priority was expansion into new markets. According to the Russian state corporation Rostec, which positions itself as NtechLab's “technology partner,” the lab was in talks to test its FindFace Multi update with one of the largest construction companies in Central Asia.
In July 2023, the EU sanctioned NtechLab “for providing technical or material support for serious human rights violations in Russia.” However, this has not prevented the lab from gaining new markets. In 2023, it was named “Best Exporter of the Year in the Services Sector” by a leading Russian business group. In Dubai, for example, the lab's software has been used for demographic analysis. In India, NtechLabs' video analytics has been applied by the operator of one of the country's busiest railway networks.
“They [NtechLab] are experiencing some difficulties in Western countries. But of course, they want to export [to other regions],” said Carlsson, the Swedish investigative journalist. “That is one of their priorities.”
