Putin’s global hunt: Russian defectors tracked and terrorized

Journalist Lilia Yapparova is an investigative reporter for the independent Russian news service Meduza. The author writes from Riga, Latvia. Her article on the surveillance of Russian citizens worldwide was published in "The New York Times."

The journalist emphasized that Russian intelligence officers have been sent to monitor diasporas in Germany, Poland, and Lithuania. Other emigrants are persecuted and intimidated in Rome, Paris, Prague, and Istanbul.

It’s a terrifying thing: The Kremlin is hunting down ordinary people across the world, and nobody seems to care - wrote Yapparova.

Yapparova describes how, in November 2022, her colleagues advised her to be cautious about what she eats and to stop ordering takeout. She realized the significance of these warnings when, just a month later, her colleague, Elena Kostyuchenko, was poisoned in Germany. It was most likely an assassination attempt by the Russian state.

Russia also uses provocation and deceit. Lev Gyammer, a refugee activist in Poland, has been receiving text messages from his mother for two years. "Levushka, son, I miss you so, when will you visit me?" reads one of the messages cited in "The New York Times." Another one reads: "Son, I’m waiting for you. Come back soon." The man ignored the texts. His mother, Olga, died five years ago.

Another targeted defector was less fortunate. His parents are still alive and are very sick. The man believed the assurances of a person who called him, pretending to be a nurse, claiming that there was a fire at his parents' home. The man left Finland to visit his parents in Russia. Upon arrival, he was immediately taken to prison, where he was tortured. There was no fire.

While Russian journalists and oppositionists are well aware that they remain targets of Russian intelligence even in exile, ordinary citizens are often unaware of the danger. Hundreds, even thousands, of Russians who were forced to leave their homeland because they wanted nothing to do with Putin's war are being surveilled and kidnapped.

Repressions against them occur in silence—away from the spotlight and often with the silent consent or insufficient prevention of the countries to which they fled. In the summer of 2023, civil society groups appealed to the European Parliament for help legalizing those who refused to fight in Putin's army. So far, they have not received a significant response.

Exiled opponents of the war are supported by a handful of human rights organizations perpetually on the brink of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, Russia allocates enormous resources to finding and persecuting exiles. The Moscow regime discredits them in their homeland, accusing them of treason and terrorism and pursuing them worldwide.