Two plainclothes police officers waited for Dmitry Gudkov when he arrived at London Luton Airport last summer. The Russian opposition politician, who lives in exile in an EU country, had flown to the UK to attend a friend’s birthday.
“They were there to intercept me right after I got off the plane,” Dmitry says. “That had never happened to me before.”
But the police didn’t arrest him, they actually wanted to warn him.
“They told me I was on a list of people in danger. They asked where I would be staying and what phone I would be using.”
Dmitry Gudkov is a co-founder of the Anti-War Committee, an organization that coordinates efforts to stop the war in Ukraine. He is wanted in Russia for “spreading fake news” about the Russian military.
The start of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to a massive crackdown on opponents in Russia. Almost all activists and independent journalists fled the country.
Now, a number of Kremlin critics based in Europe have told the BBC that Russia is stepping up its efforts to silence, threaten and persecute opponents abroad. Some did not want to share their stories publicly. The Russian embassy in London did not respond to a request for comment.
‘They can catch people almost anywhere’
Analyst Mark Galeottiwho studies Russia’s security services, agrees that the campaign against Russia’s “enemies” abroad is intensifying. “I think it reflects the Kremlin’s growing paranoia,” he says, “that it is engaged in an existential political struggle.”
Now that all dissension at home has been suppressed, Russia is turning its attention to opponents who have sought refuge in the West. Dmitry MedvedevA former Russian president who is now deputy head of the Russian Security Council described them as “traitors who have gone over to the enemy and want their homeland to perish.”
Another anti-Kremlin activist was also approached by British police. “They said they needed to discuss the safety of me and my family,” Ksenia Maximova tells me.
The founder of the Russian Democratic Society in London says police have advised her against travelling to certain countries where Russian agents operate more freely.
“(The Kremlin) is ramping up the campaign against ‘enemies,’ that’s absolutely true,” she says, “They are tightening the screws.”
She and her fellow activists have noticed an increase in cyberattacks and attempts to infiltrate the group online.
In a statement to the BBC, a spokesperson for the UK’s Counter Terrorism Policing said: “We have been open for some time about the growing demand within our casework in relation to countering state threats… We have actively increased the resources allocated to countering the activities of hostile states.”
In December, new UK legislation came into force giving police greater powers to tackle threats from hostile states such as Russia.
“Parasites cannot sleep in peace…” was one of the messages investigative journalist Alesya Marokhovskaya received last year.
The threats were accompanied by the name of the street in Prague where she lived. “I moved to make it harder for them,” says Alesya.
“We thought maybe it was just a crazy Czech man who was pro-Putin and had recognized me on the street.”
But then the messages became even more sinister: they called her a “scumbag” and promised to find her “wherever she walks her squeaking dog.”
Alesya’s dog really squeaks when he walks. She alerted the Czech police.
Later, Alesya would fly to Sweden to attend a conference. The sender then sent even more specific threats: details of her flight, seat number, and the hotel she had booked. “It was clear that they had high-level access to documents,” Alesya says. “It resembles the behavior of the Russian state.”
Years earlier, Alesya had been branded a “foreign agent” by the Russian government for her work at the independent Russian news website iStories.
“When I left Russia and came to Prague, I had this illusion of safety,” Alesya says. “Now I realize that (Russian intelligence services) can catch people almost anywhere in Europe. I can’t say I’m not afraid, because I am.”
But why is this happening now? Experts suggest that Russian security services are starting to activate operations abroad after a period of unrest. Hundreds of Russian diplomats believed to be intelligence agents operating under diplomatic cover were expelled from Western countries after the large-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“There was a period of confusion after 2022,” said Andrei Soldatov, a Russian journalist who covers the intelligence services. “In 2023, the services regrouped and found a new purpose. They got resources and started to increase the pressure.”
Mark Galeotti says authorities are increasingly turning to henchmen to do their dirty work: criminal gangs. “If you want to beat someone up or even have someone killed, they are much easier to use,” says Mr. Galeotti, who has written for years about the ties between the Russian state and organized crime.
“It will be some kind of villain – perhaps someone that the Russian-based organized crime groups have dealt with at some point.”
The Polish government believes this also happened in the case of Leonid Volkov, a prominent activist and ally of the late Alexei Navalny. He was brutally attacked with a hammer in Lithuania four months ago, but survived.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said a Belarusian man working for Russian intelligence paid two Polish football hooligans to carry out the attack. All three have been arrested.
“Intimidation is the idea,” suggests Mark Galeotti. “The idea that you have to keep your head down. It’s a way to deter the emergence of any kind of coherent political opposition (to the Kremlin).”
The Russian authorities also try to make the daily lives of opponents abroad as difficult as possible.
Activist Olesya Krivtsova, 21, escapes from Russia after he was arrested and threatened with prison for anti-war posts on social media. She now lives in Norway, but recently discovered that her Russian passport had been cancelled, meaning she cannot apply for travel documents.
“I think this is a new (method) of repression,” Olesya says. “They always think: how can we do more, how can we put pressure on them?”
Several other activists living abroad have also had their passports revoked without warning. Many have criminal cases pending against them in Russia – without a valid passport, they cannot hire lawyers or make payments in their home country. The only way to solve the problem is to return to Russia.
For Olesya, returning would mean arrest and imprisonment. She has now applied for a temporary Norwegian ID for refugees.
“In Russia, I now have only one right: the right to go to prison. My passport has been revoked. This shows the essence of their cruelty,” says the young activist.
“They have already completely destroyed my life and my family’s life… They will never stop.”
