Capital punishment in Russia

Capital punishment in Russia has been indefinitely suspended, although it is de jure allowed, with the only legal execution method being shooting. There exists both an implicit moratorium established by President Boris Yeltsin in 1996, and an explicit one, established by the Constitutional Court of Russia in 1999 and most recently reaffirmed in 2009. Russia has not executed anyone since 1996, although the death penalty remains codified.

In medieval Russia capital punishment was extremely rare, and was even banned in many, if not most principalities. The Law of Yaroslav (ca 1017) put restrictions on what crimes warranted execution. Later, the law was amended in much of the country to completely ban capital punishment.

The Russian Empire practiced the death penalty extensively, as did almost all modern states before the 20th century. One of the first legal documents resembling a modern penal code was enacted in 1398, which mentioned a single capital crime: a theft performed after two prior convictions (an early precursor to the current Three-strikes laws existing in several U.S. states). The Pskov Code of 1497 extends this list significantly, mentioning three specialized theft instances (those committed in a church, stealing a horse, or, as before, with two prior "strikes"), as well as arson and treason. The trend to increase the number of capital crimes continued: in 1649, this list included 63 crimes, a figure that nearly doubled during the reign of Tsar Peter I (Peter the Great). The methods of execution were extremely cruel by modern standards (but fully consistent with the standards of the time), and included drowning, burying alive, and forcing liquid metal into the throat.

...
Wikipedia