When Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian human rights activist living in France, wants to take his children to school or go to the supermarket, he doesn’t leave home before calling the police. That’s the price of his life since 2022, the year French authorities gave him round-the-clock protection, firmly believing Russia is trying to murder him.
Those fears received chilling confirmation in April 2025. Confidential French court documents obtained by the Associated Press reveal that a cell of Russian men surveilled Osechkin’s home and the surrounding area in southwestern France for hours. The men filmed video and took photos in what appeared to be meticulous preparation for an assassination. Osechkin himself said that several years earlier, a red dot—which he identified as a rifle’s laser sight—appeared on his home’s wall.
Osechkin’s story is not an isolated case. The AP investigation exposes a sprawling network of foiled Russian murder plots across Europe. In Lithuania, authorities thwarted a plot to kill a Lithuanian supporter of Ukraine and another plot against a Russian activist. In Germany, security forces uncovered two plots—one to attack the head of a German arms company supplying equipment to Ukraine, and another against a Ukrainian military officer.
In Poland, a man was arrested in 2024 on suspicion of involvement in a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That same year, a Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine was murdered in Spain—with Russian agents the immediate suspects.
Three Western intelligence sources from different countries confirmed to the AP that Russia’s targeted assassination campaign in Europe has “intensified significantly” since President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The sources noted that Russia’s security services have become “more brazen” in selecting their targets.
If in the past the targets were mainly military defectors or double agents, today the Kremlin is actively pursuing both Russian activists and foreign citizens expressing support for Ukraine. “This campaign is not random or a matter of chance,” said one senior European intelligence official. “It has high-level political approval.”
Intelligence experts link the assassination campaign to Russia’s broader effort to undermine European countries supporting Ukraine. The AP mapped no fewer than 191 acts of sabotage, arson, and disruption across Europe linked to Russia since the war began.
French court documents and information from the Lithuanian prosecutor reveal Moscow’s new operating method: using “proxy agents.” Instead of sending trained Russian intelligence officers, the Kremlin recruits local criminals or refugees from former Soviet states as cheap “execution contractors.” This model makes operations harder to attribute directly to Russia.
The AP spoke with three people marked as assassination targets: Osechkin, Lithuanian activist Valdas Bartkevicius, and Ruslan Gabbasov, who advocates for the independence of Russia’s Bashkortostan region. Their testimonies expose the brutal dilemma the Kremlin places before them.
Court documents reveal that three of four men arrested by French police in the plot to kill Osechkin traveled to the resort town of Biarritz, where he lives, in April 2025. The documents state they surveilled his home “with the aim of assassinating him and then intimidating all political opponents of Russian authorities living in France.”
All four were born in Russia’s Dagestan region. One had an extensive criminal record, while another said he was arrested by Russia’s internal security service and fled the country to avoid being sent to fight in Ukraine. Osechkin, who founded a prisoners’ rights organization in Russia, said threats against him intensified after he began investigating Russian crimes in Ukraine and helping military defectors escape.
On the other side of the continent, in Lithuania, Ruslan Gabbasov, a Bashkir activist advocating for his region’s independence, discovered an Apple AirTag tracking device hidden in his car in February 2025. Police instructed him to leave the device and tracked the people following him.
Several weeks later, Gabbasov received a frantic phone call from police while at Lithuania’s Independence Day celebrations with his wife and 5-year-old son: “Don’t come home.” The next day, officers told him: “Yesterday, a killer was arrested near your house. He was waiting for you with a gun… He was prepared to wait for you all night.”
Lithuanian authorities offered Gabbasov the opportunity to “disappear” completely—change his name, move apartments, and stop his public activity. He refused. “I can’t betray everyone simply by disappearing, especially out of fear,” Gabbasov said, adding that’s exactly what Moscow wants. “What does it matter to them? They can kill me… or I can hide from everyone and stop engaging in political activity. That’s exactly what they want.”
Lithuanian authorities made the same offer to Valdas Bartkevicius, an activist raising funds for Ukraine, after discovering a plot to kill him using a bomb planted in his mailbox in March 2025. For him too, disappearing is not an option. He said it would be “social death.”
Lithuanian prosecutors filed charges against 13 people from at least seven countries for involvement in both plots. The prosecutor’s office said those involved in the Lithuanian cases received direct instructions from Russian military intelligence, and some had ties to Russian organized crime.
Moscow’s shift toward relying on proxy agents stems, according to intelligence experts, from the previous failed assassination attempt: the 2018 poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England. Britain accused Moscow of carrying out the attack using military intelligence officers. In response, Britain and other Western countries expelled hundreds of Russian diplomats and spies, making direct operations by Russian officers in Europe much harder. A Western intelligence source noted that the fact most plots publicized since 2022 were foiled may indicate it’s harder for Moscow to execute them using proxy agents compared to its own officers.
Still, the assassination attempts may serve additional purposes, including intimidating Kremlin opponents into silence and wasting European law enforcement resources. A senior European official summed up the situation grimly: “Even if you foil an operation once, you still need to be prepared in case they strike again. Targets will never be safe.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the AP he sees “no need” to respond to the findings. Russian authorities have previously denied that Moscow is behind attempts to kill its opponents abroad.