The News
Russia is quietly targeting exiled citizens across the world in a repression campaign that deserves more global attention, an investigative reporter for Meduza argued in The New York Times.
Moscow began targeting high-profile opposition figures and journalists after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but low-profile Russian dissenters, from school teachers to toy-shop owners, have also been surveilled or kidnapped in several countries.
“The Kremlin is hunting down ordinary people across the world, and nobody seems to care,” Lilia Yapparova wrote, noting the lack of protection for Russians abroad and that host countries are often complicit.
SIGNALS
An accelerated decline in human rights
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine accelerated the “steady decline” of human rights in Russia, a recent UN report found, culminating in a “systematic crackdown” on the Russian people. The report highlighted how new laws have facilitated mass arbitrary arrests and long prison sentences for minor acts of dissent. It also mentioned how Russia’s Indigenous communities — normally exempt from conscription — are being forced to join the front lines, to the extent that “Indigenous people… are really facing extinction if this continues,” Mariana Katzarova, the UN special rapporteur, wrote. Human rights abuses under Russian President Vladimir Putin have been well documented, but conditions have “severely deteriorated,” the BBC reported.
Russian foreign agents given the ‘red carpet treatment’
Eight Kremlin spies — detained across the globe on charges of murder, espionage, and hacking — arrived on Russian soil after the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War last month. Putin greeted them with a red carpet and military orchestra: A warm welcome home serves to “encourage other Russian agents to continue sabotage attacks in Western countries,” a Russia expert argued for the think tank Chatham House. Though Western countries received some high-profile detainees in the swap, including The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Putin’s “tactic of hostage diplomacy has paid off,” one expert told Al Jazeera, whereby Russia is encouraged to arrest foreigners for the sake of negotiating with foreign adversaries.