UN expert says Russia exports its “rule of fear”

Russia is intimidating and punishing critics abroad while exporting its “rule of fear” beyond its borders, UN expert Mariana Katzarova said Monday, according to LRT.

Presenting a new report, Katzarova, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Russia, said the country had become “one of the most active perpetrators of transnational repression.”

“Russia exports this rule of fear,” she told the UN Human Rights Council, which established her mandate in May 2023.

“Transnational repression is not a series of isolated incidents. It is a continuation beyond Russia’s borders of the same structural, state-backed system of repression that I have documented,” she said.

Russia did not respond to the criticism, and its seat was empty during the council session.

Katzarova, an independent expert who does not speak on behalf of the UN, said her report was based on nearly 400 documented cases, including killings, attacks and poisonings. She said Russia ranked third among 10 countries responsible for more than 70 percent of such documented incidents over the past decade.

She also pointed to a sharp increase in other forms of transnational repression as between 650,000 and 900,000 people left Russia after February 2022.

“As civil society in exile grows, so does its apparatus of persecution,” Katzarova said, noting that the number of trials in absentia had risen from four in 2022 to 157 in 2025.

She said the methods had also changed significantly, with repression now carried out through arrest warrants, databases, banks, digital systems and intermediaries.

Katzarova said Russia used accusations such as designating a target a “foreign agent” in efforts to secure the extradition of exiled dissidents. She urged other countries not to comply with such requests, warning that those targeted could face “forcible return to torture, and sometimes death.”

She also called on states to adopt a binding international convention against transnational repression.