TNR Watch: Transnational Repression for Hire

The Russian government hired members of a Polish criminal group to carry out acts of transnational repression against exiled dissidents, investigative journalists reported recently. Meanwhile, US officials said the Iranian and Indian governments had used similar tactics to advance assassination plots in the United States. These reports reflect a worrying trend: more and more often, criminal groups are acting as middlemen for transnational repression.

Criminal connection: On April 19, Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda announced that two Polish nationals and a Belarusian national had been detained in Poland in connection with the assault on Russian opposition activist and Alexey Navalny aide Leonid Volkov, outside of his Vilnius residence in March. Polish and Lithuanian law enforcement agencies identified the two Polish assailants thanks to the independent outlet the Insider’s investigation of a September 2023 attack on Aleksandra Petrachkova, the wife of exiled Russian dissident Maxim Mironov, in Buenos Aires. The alleged culprit in that attack, Grzegorz Daszkowski, is a Polish national with a criminal history. Polish police found that Daszkowski’s boss had also been in contact with the two Polish citizens accused of attacking Volkov.

As the Insider’s analysis reveals, the Kremlin is using criminal associates as proxies to perpetrate transnational repression against its exiled opponents. In both incidents, Russian intelligence officials extensively surveilled their targets before sending Polish assailants to carry out the missions on short notice.

Threats closer to home: The use of organized criminal groups for transnational repression is not unique to the Kremlin. US law enforcement officers and investigators have identified this tactic in other governments’ plots to harm exiled individuals living in the United States.

In January 2023, the US Department of Justice revealed that it had indicted three members of an eastern European criminal group on murder-for-hire charges for allegedly attempting to assassinate Iranian American journalist Masih Alinejad on behalf of the Iranian government. Similarly, the Justice Department announced in a November 2023 indictment that an Indian national had sought to hire a hit man to murder New York–based Sikh activist Gurpantwant Singh Pannun. The individual they hired was an undercover US Drug Enforcement Administration agent, who gathered additional intelligence to help foil the murder plot.

Perpetrators’ proxies: Perpetrator governments have engaged proxies such as criminal organizations, private investigators, and students to assist their transnational repression efforts for a few reasons. First, perpetrator states that do not enjoy relations with a host state may find it more difficult to deploy their own agents there. Second, once a practitioner of transnational repression appears on the radar of a host government, the foreign government exposes itself to retaliatory measures from the host state—such as charges against the in-country agent, or harsh sanctions against the perpetrator government. Additionally, proxies offer a degree of plausible deniability to the origin country. In fact, upon the release of the Pannun indictment, a spokesperson for the Indian government sidestepped the allegations by highlighting the issue of transnational organized crime and trafficking as an issue to be considered in the investigation of this case. Host governments seeking to address transnational repression should examine linkages between organized crime networks and perpetrators, and foster information-sharing between different agencies working on security threats to stop potential plots before they get underway.