French Police Detain Four Russian Nationals in Biarritz

French police detained four men in Biarritz in connection with surveillance of Russian activist Vladimir Osechkin in April 2025, according to French court documents seen by The Associated Press. The men, all born in Russia's Dagestan region, were held after a crew of Russian men staked out Osechkin's home and surrounding area for several hours, taking videos and photos.

Three of the four traveled to the beach resort that month.

One of the men has multiple criminal convictions. Another told authorities he had been arrested by Russia's domestic security service and fled the country to avoid being sent to Ukraine. The court documents describe the suspected plot as intended to assassinate Osechkin and intimidate political opponents of the Russian authorities living in France.

Osechkin founded a rights group for prisoners years ago and runs a project exposing abuses in Russia's prison system. He moved to France in 2015. French officials received information in 2022 that his life was in danger, and he has lived under police protection since then.

“If it weren’t for them, I probably would have been killed,” Osechkin said of the French police protection. He said that when he wants to take his children to school or go to the supermarket, he calls the police. Several years earlier, he said, a red dot that he thought was a laser sight for a gun appeared on his wall.

The Biarritz case forms part of a series of law-enforcement actions across Europe. Lithuanian officials disrupted a plot in 2025 to kill activist Valdas Bartkevičius; a bomb was discovered in his mailbox in March 2025. In February 2025, Ruslan Gabbasov found an Apple AirTag tracker on his car.

Lithuanian police followed individuals who were following Gabbasov after he left the tracker in place. In 2025 authorities detained a man with a gun near Gabbasov's house. Lithuanian prosecutors charged 13 people from at least seven countries with involvement in the two plots.

Lithuanian authorities have detained, charged or identified at least 20 people involved in such plots in Europe over the past year.

German officials broke up a plot to target the head of a German weapons company supplying Ukraine and a plot against a Ukrainian military official. Polish authorities arrested a man in 2024 in a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. A Russian helicopter pilot who defected was killed in Spain in 2024.

Three Western intelligence officials from different countries stated that a Russian campaign of targeted killings has ramped up since President Vladimir Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. ” Western officials have linked 191 acts of sabotage, arson and other disruption to Russia across Europe since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

Cmdr. Dominic Murphy, former head of the counterterrorism squad at Britain’s Metropolitan Police and a lead investigator into the 2018 Skripal poisoning, was cited in connection with that earlier case.

In 2018 former Russian spy Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury, England. Britain and other Western nations expelled hundreds of Russian diplomats and spies afterward. Dmitry Peskov told AP he didn't see “any need” to comment on the accusations. Russian officials have previously denied that Moscow is behind attempts to kill its opponents abroad.