Western Officials Report Increase in Russian Plots to Kill Opponents in Europe

Three Western intelligence officials from different countries have told The Associated Press that Russia has increased a campaign of targeted killings in Europe since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The officials said Russia's security services have become more brazen, going after Russian activists and foreign supporters of Ukraine along with military defectors.

One senior European intelligence official stated that the campaign has political authorization. All three officials spoke on condition of anonymity. Russian officials have previously denied that Moscow is behind such attempts. Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told AP he did not see any need to comment.

Russian activist Vladimir Osechkin has lived under police protection in France since 2022 after French officials received information that his life was in danger. In April 2025, four men from Russia's Dagestan region surveilled his home in the Biarritz area for several hours, according to French court documents seen by AP.

The documents state the surveillance was conducted with a view to assassinating him and intimidating other political opponents of the Russian authorities living in France. Osechkin founded a rights group for prisoners and runs a project exposing abuses in Russia's prison system.

He said threats against him increased after he began investigating alleged Russian abuses in Ukraine and helping military defectors flee. Osechkin told AP that if it were not for police protection he probably would have been killed. Several years earlier he said a red dot that he thought was a laser sight from a gun appeared on his wall.

Lithuania, authorities disrupted a plot last year to kill a Lithuanian supporter of Ukraine and another against a Russian activist. Lithuanian prosecutors charged 13 people from at least seven countries with involvement in two plots. Police later told him they had detained a man near his house who was waiting for him with a gun.

Authorities offered to help him change his identity and relocate but he declined. Bartkevicius, who raises money for Ukraine, turned down the offer saying it would amount to social death.

German officials broke up two plots, one targeting the head of a German weapons company supplying Ukraine and another against a Ukrainian military official. Polish authorities arrested a man in 2024 in a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

In Spain, a Russian helicopter pilot who had defected was killed in 2024 with Russian operatives considered the prime suspects. The pilot, Maxim Kuzminov, had been threatened on Russian state television.

The intelligence officials and Lithuanian prosecutors link the killing campaign to Russia's broader efforts to undermine European countries that support Ukraine. Western officials have linked Russia to 191 acts of sabotage, arson and other disruption across Europe since the start of the war.

Many of those involved were recruited as proxies for Russian intelligence. The shift to using such proxies followed the 2018 poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England. After that attack, Britain and other Western nations expelled hundreds of Russian diplomats and intelligence officers.

Cmdr. Dominic Murphy, the former head of counterterrorism at Britain’s Metropolitan Police, told AP that the expulsions made it harder for Russian officers to operate directly in Europe. One of the Western intelligence officials said most plots made public since 2022 have been foiled, suggesting it is more difficult for Moscow to succeed using proxies.

The official added that the attempts may also aim to intimidate opponents into silence and consume law enforcement resources. The European intelligence official said targets will never be safe because Russia's security services can carry out killings in Europe when they choose to do so.

>"This campaign is not by accident or chance.