The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Russian Federation on Monday presented a report to the Human Rights Council saying Russian security services have murdered or attempted to murder dissidents across Europe and been linked to suspected poisonings as part of a “systematic, institutionalized” campaign to silence critics abroad. The report calls for a binding UN convention to close what the author called a “dangerous protection gap.”
Mariana Katzarova’s report, titled “Nowhere is Safe,” draws on a database of nearly 400 documented cases and finds that the practice has been greatly intensified following that in Russia large-scale invasion of Ukraine In February 2022, there was an exodus of 650,000 to 900,000 people, according to the report, the largest such wave in over a century. Civil society data cited in the report shows that average annual incidents increased approximately eightfold in 2014-2021 compared to 2022-2024.
The report documents murders, including that of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, shot in Berlin in 2019 by a Federal Security Service employee who German courts found was acting on Russian orders, and Maxim Kuzminov, a military pilot who defected and was killed in Spain in 2024, a killing that Spanish authorities described as a targeted attack.
It also details forced returns, financial blacklists and abuses by the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), including a now-deleted Red Notice against a businessman Igor Pestrikov that INTERPOL’s own supervisory authority expressed predominantly political opinions.
The number of absentee convictions against critics abroad rose from four in 2022 to 157 in 2025, the report said, and a Russian list of “terrorists and extremists” that banks in America and Europe treat as a red flag has grown to 21,541 people. A similar terrorism case from October 2025 targeted members of the anti-war committee, including former political prisoners, according to the report Vladimir Kara-Murza.
A new law passed by Russia in August 2026 Federal Law No. 284-FZputs Russians abroad who are convicted of a crime or held liable under “foreign agents” or similar provisions on a public list that triggers 14 categories of restrictions, including frozen assets and revoked passports, which Katzarova says make them “de facto stateless.”
The report said Russia ignored Katzarova’s requests for information and repeatedly denied her a visit to the country during her time in office. It follows previous UN criticism of Russia tough crackdown at home on civil society, which, according to Katzarova’s report, was exported abroad through the same labels of “foreign agent” and “undesirable organization.”
No treaty specifically targets cross-border oppression as a separate legal category, although existing human rights conventions apply to the underlying abuses, the report said. Katzarova recommended that UN bodies support the development of a draft that defines the practice and establishes prevention and accountability obligations for states, along with binding regional standards and a suspension of the processing rights of Russia’s INTERPOL Central Office.
Any convention would still have to be negotiated and adopted by UN member states; a timetable has not yet been set as the 63rd session of the Human Rights Council runs until October 7.
