Vladimir Osechkin is on the Kremlin’s “black list”: The activist, defender of a growing number of senior Russian officials who defected to the West, has been living in secrecy and under constant police protection in France since 2015.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown his determination to hunt down perceived enemies of the Kremlin abroad. Osechkin was arrested in absentia in Russia and is currently on the Russian authorities’ “wanted list”. Osechkin’s work as an investigative journalist and anticorruption activist is a thorn in the side of many powerful Russians. As the founder of Gulagu.net in 2011, a cooperative human rights organization focused on corruption and torture in Russia, he led a series of highprofile investigations accusing Russian institutions and ministries of a variety of crimes.
Putin’s socalled “military special operation” was not the only action taken by Russia after February 24. It also caused “a big wave” of officers leaving Russia, he said. “Every day they ask for our help,” he told CNN. Many are lowranking soldiers trying to escape Putinimposed partial mobilization, but there are some “trout”: a former government minister and a former threestar Russian general. It was Osechkin who helped a former Wagner Group commander to flee Russia on foot to neighboring Norway and seek asylum.
Included in the escape deal is the provision of information about the internal workings of the Kremlin, and some of this information ends up in the hands of European intelligence agencies, with whom Osechkin is in regular contact a former senior FSB lieutenant created the FSB guidelines on Russia’s espionage operations in Europe, which it would later offer to western agencies.
A former FSB officer, Navruzbekov, said despair over Russia’s chances in Ukraine is driving many of his colleagues to look for a way out. “In the FSB now everyone is on their own, everyone wants to escape from Russia. Every second FSB officer wants to flee,” he denounces. “They already understood that Russia will never win this war, they will just do everything to find a solution.”
Osechkin stressed that the Ukrainian heritage and family ties of many Russian officials played a key role in his defection. “There is no truth in this war,” he said. “It’s the war of a man who wants to save his power, his control of Russia and go down in international history and in school books.”
European allies are increasingly aggressive against Russian espionage: according to British intelligence services, 600 Russians were expelled from European countries last year, 400 of them as spies. Many worked as diplomats.
Osechkin also thinks that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a turning point for the Russian leader, who has shattered decades of Russian stability under his rule. “He has many enemies in his system because they worked with him for more than 20 years for stability, money and a beautiful life for the next generations. And now, this year, Putin has canceled that perspective on her life,” he said.