In Spain, a military defector was killed by a hail of bullets and then crushed by a car. Opposition leader in Lithuania repeatedly attacked with a hammer. Journalist falls ill from suspected poisoning in Germany.
since President Vladimir Putin Since launching its invasion of Ukraine, Russians have been accused of attacks and harassment – major or not – on Moscow’s intelligence operatives across Europe and elsewhere.
Despite efforts by Western governments to dismantle Russian spy networks, experts say the Kremlin is apparently still able to pursue people it considers traitors abroad in an effort to silence dissent. Putin’s opponents increasingly fear the long arm of Moscow’s security services, including in countries they once considered safe.
“We have just escaped from Russia and we had the illusion that we had escaped from prison,” said Irina Dolinina, a journalist who works for the independent outlet Important Stories, based in the Czech capital Prague.
Dolinina and colleague Alesya Marokhovskaya were harassed in 2023, leading to fears that they were being monitored. He was sent threatening messages through comments on the media outlet’s website and asked not to go to a conference in Sweden. To underline the issue, the threat included their airline ticket numbers, seat locations and hotel bookings.
“It was a mistake for us to think we were safe here,” Dolinina told The Associated Press.
Russian defector Maxim Kuzminov attends a press conference in Kiev, Ukraine, on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023. Spanish police say the bullet-riddled body of a man found in a Spanish city was that of Kuzminov, 33, who flew in the Russian military. Helicopters on the front lines in Ukraine last year. Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, said Kuzminov became a “moral corpse” from the moment he planned his “dirty and terrible crime”. (AP Photo/Vladislav Musienko, File)
The Kremlin, which routinely refuses to go after its opponents abroad, has been blamed for such attacks for decades.
The most famous cases include those of the Soviet revolutionary-turned-exiled dissident Leon Trotsky, who was murdered in Mexico in 1940 after being attacked by a Soviet agent with an ice axe, and a dissident who worked for the BBC’s Bulgarian language service Georgy Markov had died. After being stabbed with a poisoned umbrella in London in 1978.
Britain was the site of other poisonings blamed on Russian security services under Putin. defector and former intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko died from drinking 210 ml of tea containing radioactive polonium in 2006, and former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter fell seriously ill but recovered after a Soviet-era nerve agent attack in 2018. Went. The Kremlin repeatedly denied involvement in British affairs.
Now, with a full-scale domestic crackdown underway inside Russia, most of the Kremlin’s political rivals, independent journalists and activists have gone abroad. There is strong suspicion, as well as allegations from officials, that Moscow is increasingly targeting them.
The number of individuals pursued by Russia, “even if they appear and sound completely insignificant,” said security expert Andrei Soldatov, is because Russian officials believe they are “in the country Can come back and destroy it completely.”
There are numerous reports of exiles being persecuted not only in former Soviet countries with large numbers of Russian emigrants, but also in Europe and beyond.
Activists and independent journalists have reported symptoms that lead them to suspect poisoning.
Investigative journalist Elena Kostyuchenko fell ill on a train from Munich to Berlin in 2022, and German prosecutors later said they were investigating it as attempted murder.
Natalia Arno, head of the US-based Free Russia Foundation, told the AP she still suffers from nerve damage after a suspected poisoning in Prague in May. He believes that Russian security services tried to “silence” him because of his pro-democracy work.
In one particularly brutal incident, was riddled with bullets Body of pilot Maxim Kuzminov He was found in La Cala, Spain, near the eastern port of Alicante, after being shot and run over by a car. The threats against him came shortly after he stole a Russian Mi-8 helicopter in August, flew it to Ukraine and fled.
Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, said Kuzminov, 33, became a “moral corpse” when he planned his “dirty and terrible crime.”
In March, Leonid Volkov, chief of staff to late opposition politician Alexei Navalny, had his arm broken in a hammer attack in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
Lithuania’s security service said the attack was probably “Russian-organized and executed.” On April 19, Polish police detained two men on suspicion of attacking Volkov on the orders of a foreign intelligence service.
In the decades since Putin took power, the Kremlin has repeatedly denied that it is targeting its enemies at home and abroad. It has not commented on the suspected poisoning and Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on Volkov’s case, saying it was a matter for Lithuania’s Interior Ministry.
Even budding anti-war groups find themselves under Moscow’s charms.
Russians in Stockholm, Sweden, who formed one of the first organizations supporting Ukraine and political prisoners, burned an effigy of Putin outside the Russian embassy in May 2022, calling him a “war criminal”.
Six months later, Russian authorities designated the group an undesirable organization, and threatened members with fines and prison. The members told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear for their safety, that police visited their homes with relatives in Russia and that their personal data was leaked.
The Russian Orthodox Tsargrad media outlet suggested that members of the group may have been recruited by foreign intelligence services and labeled them “terrorists”. Pro-Kremlin outlets warned of serious surprises if he continued to oppose the war.
A few days later, while visiting relatives in St. Petersburg, a group member named Marina said that as she walked out of a store, a police car stopped right in front of her. Three men came out, asked for documents from him, forced him into the car and drove towards the police station with sirens blaring.
“It was really scary. How the hell did they know my exact location?” Marina declined to give her last name, she told the AP, because she fears for her safety.
He was confronted with leaked data and video of the embassy protests and investigators demanded he identify other members of the group, disclose its funding source, and ask about his views on the war. One even questioned why she was leaving Russia before her father’s birthday – making it clear that they knew the identity of her family.
They were charged with administrative violations, which usually resulted in fines. Marina said, as the police prepared to take her to her parents’ apartment, it was suggested to her that if she wanted to see her family again without fear of detention she should “cooperate” and Must become an informer.
“It is a known way for Russian intelligence and the Russian regime to pursue opponents of Russian emigrants in other countries and subject them to various types of harassment or intelligence operations,” Swedish Security Service spokesman Fredrik Hultgren-Freiberg told the AP. ” ,
Soldatov said the Kremlin is going after a wide range of opponents because it fears pro-Western insurgencies such as in Georgia and Ukraine and wants to prevent the seeds of dissent from sparking “something new.”
Even though Western countries expelled hundreds of Russian spies in a coordinated action following the Skripals poisoning in 2018 and the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russians abroad say they worry Moscow could still reach them .
Investigative journalist Marokhovskaya in Prague received anonymous threats, one of which hinted at closer surveillance, saying, “Wherever she walks her wheezing dog, we will find her.”
She and Dolinina told the AP that they have experienced such observations inside russiaIncluding publishing an award-winning investigation into corruption in Putin’s family.
After moving to Europe, Dolinina said she initially thought she was experiencing “constant paranoia”. However, when she received anonymous threats and was chased through the streets of Prague, she realized that the fear was justified.
Neither journalist has concrete evidence that Russian security services targeted them, but they said they believe personal data – flight information, passport numbers and home addresses – and physical surveillance were likely a State actor.
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“I was really surprised that this was happening in Europe,” Dolinina said.
Although the West has blamed the Kremlin for many of the incidents, leading to speculation that Moscow may still threaten Russians abroad, not everyone has been silenced.
“This is not a reason to step down,” Marokhovskaya said. “It’s a reason to keep working.”
