AS/Jur (2023) 17 campaigns in the Republic of Moldova in 2014, the failed coup in Montenegro in 2016, World Anti-Doping Agency-linked operations in Switzerland in 2016-2017, and the illegal Catalonia referendum in 2017.32 28. The existence of such a military intelligence unit, along with the law permitting the pursuit, by any means, of those whom the Kremlin accuses of "extremism"33, proved the systemic character of transnational repression used by the Russian authorities; not only in the United Kingdom but also in other member States of the Council of Europe. 29. Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, an ethnic Chechen Georgian, former platoon commander during the Second Chechen War, and a Georgian military officer during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, turned into a valuable source of information for Georgian intelligence by identifying Russian spies. He was wanted in Russia as a terrorist by the Russian security service. He was assassinated in Berlin, on 23 August 2019, by Vadim Krasikov, a Russian FSB operative labelled as “Tiergarten murderer”. German courts found Mr Krasikov guilty and determined that the Russian government ordered the murder as a "state-contracted killing".34 This death was also claimed to be part of an official Russian assassination programme.35 30. Similar suspicions hovered around the murder of a former member of the Russian Duma, Denis Voronenkov, shot dead in 2017 in Kyiv after he had turned to criticise Mr Putin and Russian foreign policy for the illegal annexation of Crimea. Ukrainian authorities reported about a consistent Russian state-ordered policy in relation to other three suspicious high-profile killings of Kremlin critics: Arkady Babchenko, a prominent Russian war reporter; Amina Okuyeva, wife of Chechen volunteer soldier Adam Osmayev, himself a survivor of two failed assassination attempts36; Pavel Sheremet, a critic of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, an ex-journalist for Russian state TV and a tough critic of the annexation of Crimea. 31. In the list of Russian acts of transnational repression, the Chechen trail occupies a special place. Two assassinations in early 2009 of Sulim Yamadayev (former Chechen military commander) in Dubai and Mr Israilov in Austria (see above) marked the beginning of the Chechen pattern. In 2020, Imran Aliyev, a prominent Kadyrov critic, was stabbed to death in France. Tumso Abdurahmonov, another critic, was attacked in his apartment in Sweden by a Chechen national but managed to overwhelm his assailant. In July 2020, Mamikhan Umarov, a Kadyrov critic, was killed in a Vienna suburb. Abdulvakhid Edelgireyev, declared a key Chechen Islamist fighter affiliated with al-Qaida, was shot dead in Türkiye.37 32. Suspicious or confirmed assassinations are not the only tools of transnational repression used by Russia. Assassination attempts or failed operations should also be taken into account. For example, the KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky claimed that he was poisoned at the Kremlin’s order38. In 2007, an investigator39, relying on sources from the Russian security service, declared that three secret agents had made a trip to Boston to prepare the assassination of Yuri Felshtinsky, who co-authored with Mr Litvinenko the book “Blowing Up Russia”. 33. Abusing Interpol Red Notices is another tool of transnational repression for authoritarian governments to pursue their exiled nationals abroad.40 Russia was declared the leader of such abuse (“Russia is responsible for … 38 percent of all public Red Notices in the world, while the United States … 4.3 percent and China 0.5 percent”41), with the two notorious cases of Alexey Kharis and of Gregory Duralev42, asylum seekers in the US who spent over a year in immigration detention based on Russian Interpol Red Notices. Igor Borbot, a business partner of Mr Kharis, Mr Khodorkovsky, the CEO of Yukos, Pavel Ivlev, a Russian lawyer who advised Yukos and Mr Khodorkovsky, Sergey Leontiev and Alexander Zheleznyak, Probusinessbank’s co-owners, all fled Russia and were then targeted by Russian issued Interpol Red Notices. Bill Browder, a client of the late Sergei 32 The Dreadful Eight: GRU's Unit 29155 and the 2015 Poisoning of Emilian Gebrev - bellingcat BBC NEWS | Europe | Russia law on killing 'extremists' abroad 34 „Tiergartenmord“: Lebenslange Haft – Auftrag kam laut Gericht aus Russland - WELT 35 Heidi Blake on Suspicious Deaths Connected to the Kremlin | WETA 36 Facts about Kremlin critics murdered in Ukraine - France 24, 30 May 2018 37 Murder in Istanbul: Kremlin's hand suspected in shooting of Chechen | Turkey | The Guardian 38 Ex-Russian spy claims he was poisoned - USATODAY.com, 09 March 2020 39 Беседа с Михаилом Трепашкиным (svoboda.org), 01 December 2007 40 How Strongmen Turned Interpol Into Their Personal Weapon - The New York Times (nytimes.com), 19 March 2019 41 Freedom House, Linzer and Schenkkan, 2021, op.cit. 42 He fought corruption in Russia. ICE wants to deport him. - POLITICO , 09 March 2020 33 12