Russian Federation provides for freedom of religion and the equality of all religions before the law as well as the separation of church and state. Vladimir Lukin claimed in his 2005 Ombudsman's report that "the Russian state has achieved significant progress in the observance of religious freedom and lawful activity of religious associations, overcoming a heritage of totalitarianism, domination of a single ideology and party dictatorship." However, reports of religious abuse continue to come out of Russia. According to International Christian Concern, during 2021 "crackdowns on religious freedom have intensified in Russia." During June 2021, Forum 18 highlighted that "twice as many prisoners of conscience are serving sentences or are in detention awaiting appeals for exercising freedom of religion or belief as in November 2020." Many religious scholars and human right organizations have recently spoken up about the abuses taking place in Russia against minorities. The U.S. State Department considers Russia one of the worlds' "worst violators" of religious freedom. Alvaro Gil-Robles emphasized the amount of state support provided by both federal and regional authorities varies for the different religious communities. In harmony with that, Catholics are not always heeded as well as other religions by federal and local authorities. Vladimir Lukin noted back in 2005, that citizens of Russia rarely experience violations of freedom of conscience (guaranteed by the article 28 of the Constitution)then. The Commissioner's Office annually accepted between 200 and 250 complaints dealing with violations of rights, usually from worshipers, who represent various confessions: Orthodox (but not belonging to the Moscow patriarchy), Old-believers, Muslim, Protestant and others. Anna Politkovskaya described cases of prosecution and even murders of Muslims by Russia's law enforcement bodies at the North Caucasus. However, there are plenty of Muslims in higher government, Duma, and business. Additional concerns arise over restrictions of citizens' right to association (article 30 of the Constitution). As Vladimir Lukin noted over 15 years ago, that the number of registered religious organizations were constantly growing (22,144 in 2005), however presently an increasing number of religious organization fail to achieve legal recognition or are striped of the legal recognition previously given: e.g. Jehovah's Witnesses, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, and others. The influx of missionaries over the past several years has also led to pressure by groups in Russia, specifically nationalists and the Russian Orthodox Church, to limit the activities of these "nontraditional" religious groups. In response, the Duma passed