Kathrine Frich
Moving across borders quietly takes skill.
Usually, spies handle the shadowy work of tracking down targets on foreign soil.
But when governments kick out the trained professionals, new players enter the game for the right price.
Shifting the players
Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, a dangerous wave of assassination attempts has spread across Europe. The targets are mostly vocal dissidents and foreign activists.
A completely different approach is in play. According to ABC News cited by United24Media, Russian security services are actively changing their methods. Western intelligence officials say Moscow now hires street-level criminals to do the dirty work.
This major shift comes after Western nations kicked out thousands of official diplomats and intelligence officers. The purge started after a former spy named Sergei Skripal was poisoned in Britain back in 2018.
The new strategy is highly coordinated. “This campaign is not by accident or chance,” a senior European intelligence official stated. “There is political authorization.”
Foiling the plots
Local police forces are working overtime to catch these hired guns. Law enforcement agencies recently disrupted several brutal plots linked directly to Moscow.
ABC News reports that French authorities detained four men from the Dagestan region in April 2025. They were staking out a house in Biarritz belonging to human rights activist Vladimir Osechkin.
Similar dark operations popped up in Lithuania earlier that same year. Police found a tracking device on the car of independence activist Ruslan Gabbasov before busting a gunman waiting near his home.
The following month, Lithuanian officials stopped a bombing attempt aimed at Valdas Bartkevičius, a vocal supporter of Ukraine. Meanwhile, German officers intercepted two separate plans to murder a weapons manufacturer and a Ukrainian military official.
A massive criminal web
These recent busts follow a string of violent incidents from 2024. Those included a Polish plot to kill Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the fatal shooting of a defected Russian pilot in Spain.
Lithuanian prosecutors recently charged 13 different individuals from seven countries. They claim Russian military intelligence ordered the hits through established organized crime networks.
The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine confirmed these operational details. Working with international partners, they dismantled a network that began recruiting criminals from Georgia, Belarus, and other nations back in August 2024.
Despite the severe danger, the hunted activists refuse to back down. They decline police offers to change their identities, arguing that hiding away would only give the Kremlin exactly what it wants.
Sources: ABC News, Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, United24Media
