Over the course of more than a quarter century of Putin’s rule, political emigration from Russia has transformed from isolated cases of the expulsion of individual “inconvenient” oligarchs from the country to the outflow of the intellectual and cultural elite who dared to express public disagreement with the Kremlin’s policies. If in the early 2000s, the country was left mainly by those who lost the apparatus struggle for media and resources, such as Boris Berezovsky or Vladimir Gusinsky, then later, and especially after 2022, emigration became the only way to avoid persecution and save lives for a number of opinion leaders, public figures and ordinary citizens. In 2025, the share of sentences handed down in Russia under “repressive articles” (on treason, discrediting the army and fake news) increased to 67%, and in early 2026 the level of repression in the Russian Federation reached a historical maximum. According to human rights organizations such as OVD-Info and Human Rights Watch, the number of officially identified political prisoners in Russia has exceeded 4,800 people.
Against this background, political emigration from Russia has also become a cover and an opportunity for Russian special services to infiltrate their agents into Europe. Over the past few years, Western special services have repeatedly exposed Russian “oppositionists” who worked for the FSB or military intelligence (GU General Staff of the Russian Ministry of Defense). Russian special services are most interested in foreign branches of its diaspora, opposition, criticism of the regime, and penetration into Western decision-making centers. Political migrants and opponents of the regime outside Russia pose no less a problem and danger for the Kremlin.
This category of citizens is most involved in social and political life in exile and maintains a presence in the information field, criticizing the Russian government. There are many examples when, under the legend of a persecuted activist, Russian special services actually send their informant, whose task is to monitor and collect information about the activities of the Russian opposition and critics of the regime. After moving, such individuals try to integrate into opposition structures such as Open Russia and Navalny’s headquarters, where they collect data on the funding, personal connections, and plans of activists. They are also often tasked with provoking internal conflicts and minimizing the effectiveness of opposition cells.
One of the most famous is the case of Igor Rogov, a former activist of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia and former deputy head of the headquarters of Alexei Navalny, who was granted political asylum in Poland in 2022. Polish investigators found that Rogov collected data for the FSB not only about Russian oppositionists who emigrated to Europe, but also about local structures that helped Russian emigrants. He also tried to obtain information about the work of the units of the Polish Foreign Ministry responsible for the Russian direction. After his arrest in 2024 in Poland, Rogov admitted in court that he had collaborated with the FSB. He claimed that the FSB had put psychological pressure on him and blackmailed him by threatening to mobilize the oppositionist’s father for the war against Ukraine.
Polish investigators established that Rogov was the recipient of a package discovered in the summer of the same year containing components for creating a bomb: nitroglycerin, a detonator in the form of a power bank, and a metal thermos with a cumulative component. Law enforcement officers found photos of strategic objects, including a gas pipeline, on Rogov’s phone, which indicated FSB plans to use it for sabotage.
In the UK, the fight against Russian agents has also moved beyond passive surveillance and detection to real prison terms. Russian intelligence services have increasingly begun to use “disposable agents” who are recruited from among local residents or migrants via social media. They are given various tasks of a subversive, intelligence or openly criminal nature. In 2024, a network of “proxy agents” was exposed in the UK who were working remotely with the Wagner PMC. Two British citizens, Dylan Earl and Jake Reeves, were convicted of organizing the arson of a warehouse storing humanitarian aid and Starlink terminals intended for Ukraine. The investigation later established that they were recruited through one of the Telegram channels associated with the PMC. In addition to sabotage, their criminal group was supposed to monitor the whereabouts and movements of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the famous British critic of V. Putin, Bill Browder.
The Insider described a series of revelations about how the FSB and Center E (the Main Department for Countering Extremism of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs) recruited young activists to be integrated into the cells of opposition parties and movements. The most famous was the case of Vsevolod Osipov, an activist of the Libertarian Party of Russia and a former volunteer of Navalny’s headquarters, who was recruited by Center E as a teenager. On the instructions of the special services, he went to Georgia and for many years transmitted data on internal relations, private correspondence and movements of members of the Libertarian Party of Russia, most of whom were forced to leave the Russian Federation due to repression.
In Lithuania, after moving, Navalny’s team faced infiltration attempts by Russian special services. In the Vilnius office, the security service of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) discovered individuals recruited by the FSB who were trying to volunteer in the IT department and logistics department. Another well-known revelation concerned a group of Bulgarian citizens living in the UK who, on behalf of the Russian special services, were monitoring the well-known Bulgarian journalist and investigator Hristo Grozev. The group followed him on all his trips abroad and established his circle of contacts.
The status of a “victim of the regime” and the declared critical attitude towards the Russian regime should not serve as a reason for unconditional trust. Informants of the Russian special services are able to mimic and pretend to be critics of the regime. The most vulnerable category are migrants whose relatives and close friends remained in Russia. Russian special services can blackmail refugees by creating problems for their families and relatives. Most ordinary political refugees usually have low or no official income, they live mainly on social support from the host country, so living beyond their means should arouse suspicion.
An important asset of the Kremlin in Europe is the “sleeper agents” – recruited Russians or even active employees of the special services, who under various pretexts and legends at one time left Russia and settled here for permanent residence. They lead a law-abiding lifestyle, pay taxes, engage in a variety of activities, including entrepreneurial ones, but can secretly carry out the tasks assigned to them or wait for the “X” time to intensify their subversive work. It is extremely difficult to detect them, but certain markers can still give them away, such as a loyal attitude to the Kremlin’s policies, criticism and hostility towards the West and close ties with Russia.
For a long time, European countries did not realize the level of threat posed by Russia to their societies and national security. Now they are entering a new phase of their existence, where in order to preserve their historical and democratic values, they will have to increase vigilance and counterintelligence measures. It is important to prevent the European democratic space from becoming a haven for Russian spies and agents of influence, who will destroy it from within and create new challenges and threats.