Critics accuse Kremlin of targeting its foes abroad with killings, harassment
Attacks on and harassment of Russians across Europe and elsewhere have been blamed on Moscow’s intelligence operatives since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the Ukraine invasion in 2022; but Kremlin has denied the claims multiple times and remai
military defector was killed in a hail of gun re and then run over by a car in Spain. An Opposition gure was struck repeatedly with a hammer in Lithuania. A journalist fell ill from a suspected poisoning in Germany.
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, attacks on and harassment of Russians — prominent or not — have been blamed on Moscow’s intelligence operatives across Europe and elsewhere.
Despite attempts by Western governments to dismantle Russian spy networks, experts say the Kremlin apparently is still able to pursue those it perceives as traitors abroad in an attempt to silence dissent. Opponents of Mr. Putin increasingly fear the long arm of Moscow’s security services, including in countries they once thought were safe.
“We just escaped Russia and had this illusion that we’ve escaped prison,” said journalist Irina Dolinina, who works for the independent outlet Important Stories, based in the Czech capital of Prague.
Ms. Dolinina and her colleague Alesya Marokhovskaya were harassed in 2023, leading to fears they were under surveillance. They were sent threatening messages via comments
Aon the media outlet’s website and told not to travel to a conference in Sweden. To underscore the point, the threat included their airline ticket numbers, seat locations and hotel booking.
“It was a mistake for us to think that here, we are safe,” Ms. Dolinina said.
The Kremlin, which routinely denies going after its opponents abroad, has been blamed for decades for such attacks.
Notorious cases
The most famous cases include Soviet revolutionaryturned-exiled dissident Leon Trotsky, who was killed in 1940 in Mexico after being attacked by a Soviet agent, and Georgi Markov, a dissident working for the BBC’s Bulgarian language service, who died in 1978 in London after being jabbed with a poison-tipped umbrella.
Britain was the site of other poisonings blamed on Russian security services under Mr. Putin. Defector and former intelligence ocer Alexander Litvinenko died after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210 in 2006, and former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter fell gravely ill but recovered following an attack with a Sovietera nerve agent in 2018. The Kremlin repeatedly denied involvement in the British cases.
Now, with a full-scale domestic crackdown underway inside Russia, most of the Kremlin’s political opponents, independent journalists and activists have moved abroad. There are strong suspicions, as well as accusations from of
cials, that Moscow is increasingly targeting them.
There are multiple reports of exiles being persecuted not only in former Soviet countries with a large Russian diaspora but also in Europe and beyond.
Activists and independent journalists have reported symptoms that they suspect to be 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 an attempted killing.
Natalia Arno, the head of the U.S.-based Free Russia Foundation, said she still suers from nerve damage after a suspected poisoning in Prague in May. She believes Russian security services tried to “silence” her because of her pro-democracy work.
In an especially brutal incident, the bullet-riddled body of pilot Maksim Kuzminov was found in La Cala, Spain, near the eastern port of Alicante, after being shot and run over with a car. Threats against him surfaced soon after he stole a Russian Mi-8 helicopter in August, ew it to Ukraine and defected.
Kuzminov became a “moral corpse” the moment he planned his “dirty and terrible crime,” said Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service.
In March, Leonid Volkov, chief of sta to the late Opposition politician Alexei Navalny, had his arm broken in a hammer attack in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
Lithuania’s security service said the assault was probably “Russian-organised and implemented.” On April 19, Polish police detained two people on suspicion of attacking Mr. Volkov on the orders of a foreign intelligence service.
In the decades Mr. Putin has held power, the Kremlin has denied multiple times that it is targeting its enemies at home and abroad. It has not commented on the suspected poisonings and Mr. Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, declined comment on Mr. Volkov’s case, saying it was a matter for Lithuania’s Interior Ministry.
Even edgling anti-war groups nd themselves in Moscow’s sights.
Russians in Stockholm, Sweden, who in May 2022 formed one of the rst organisations to support Ukraine and political prisoners, burned an egy of Mr. Putin labelled “war criminal” outside the Russian Embassy.
Six months later, Russian authorities designated the group an undesirable organisation, threatening members with nes and prison. Their relatives were visited at home in Russia by police, and their personal data was leaked, members said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fears for their security.
The Russian Orthodox Tsargrad media outlet suggested the group’s members could be recruited by foreign intelligence services and dubbed them “terrorists.” The pro-Kremlin outlet warned them of a nasty surprise if they continued opposing the war.
Even though Western countries expelled hundreds of Russian spies in coordinated actions after the 2018 poisoning of the Skripals and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russians abroad say they are concerned Moscow still can reach them.