UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : HRC 63 - Human Rights in the Russian Federation

Excellencies, distinguished participants, kindly take your seats.

We'll start now.

Excellencies, distinguished participants, we shall now begin the interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Russian Federation.

It is my pleasure to welcome the mandate holder, Miss Mariana Khatzarova.

The list of speakers will close in 15 minutes and I now give the floor to the Special Rapporteur to present a report.

Thank you, Mr Vice President, Ambassador Dhaka.

I must say it has been very stressful with you guys changing the schedule every half an hour.

But we're all here now.

If I'm sweating a little bit for the picture, please excuse me.

Mr Vice President, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, it is my honour to present my report on transnational repression by the Russian Federation.

Nowhere is safe exporting the Rule of Fear Beyond Borders, the first ever country specific report on transnational repression at the United Nations.

In the past three years before this Council, I have described the rule of fear inside Russia.

Today I report on how Russia is exporting that rule of fear.

In preparing this report, I spoke with individuals followed and threatened abroad, with families used to coerce them from inside Russia, and with survivors of suspected poisonings.

One of them is human rights defender Natalia Arnaud.

She has said we should not lose vigilance even after leaving Russia.

He does not forget about us honoured guests.

Transnational repression is not a series of isolated incidents, but the continuation beyond Russia's borders of the same structural, state sponsored system of repression I have documented at home.

Deliberate, institutionalised and adaptive repression at home and aggression abroad are one policy.

Transnational repression is where the two meet.

Since the full scale invasion of Ukraine, between 650,000 and 900,000 people have left Russia.

As civil society in exile grows, so does the machinery to pursue it.

For direct physical attacks, the Russian Federation ranks third among ten states, responsible for over 70% of documented incidents worldwide over the past decade.

Sentences in absentia rose from 4 in 2022 to 157 in 2025.

My report draws on close to 400 documented cases of Russian transnational repression.

The Russian Federation acts in three capacities as perpetrator abroad, as the state whose listings and prosecutions others enforce, and as a whole state enabling other governments.

At least nine departments of the Federal Security Service are involved with documented incidents worldwide, alongside military and foreign intelligence prosecutors and ministries.

Mr Vice President, Excellencies, the gravest form is targeted violence and threats to life.

The Russian Federation has a long history of political assassinations, including the killing of Alexander Litvinenko with the radioactive isotope polonium 210 in London.

In 206 former Chechen fighter, a national of Georgia, Zelimkan Kangashvili, was shot dead in Berlin in 2019 by a Russian operative whom German courts found to be acting on Russian government orders.

Journalists and human rights defenders in exile have reported suspected poisonings too.

Since the full scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Federation has become one of the most prolific perpetrators of transnational repression.

Accountability is non existent.

Russian authorities deny involvement, at times promoting or honouring alleged perpetrators.

For example, the first deputy head of the state Juma Committee on Security and Anti Corruption, Andrei Lugovoi, was identified by UK authorities as the prime suspect in the 2006 polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London.

But Russia refused to extradite him to stand trial.

He was instead elected a member of Parliament.

The defining change since 2022 is not only scale but method.

The repression now travels through arrest warrants, databases, banks, digital systems and proxies.

Cheaper, scalable and built to evade attribution, forcible return is the most dangerous because it delivers the target into hands of the authorities from whom protection was sought.

Torture survivor Mansurma Vlaev, a critic of the Chechen leadership who fled Chechnya, twice attempted suicide, the second time on 15 September after nearly 18 months in detention in Kazakhstan over a Russian extradition request.

After repeated rejections of mobilise asylum claim, he remains, if returned, at risk of torture or or death.

Yet host states like Kazakhstan continue to honour legal assistance agreements with Russia, leaving victims in imminent danger.

Others are not reached in time.

Giorgi Pirogov, a Russian national who had lived abroad since 2022, disappeared in Uzbekistan in 2024, resurfaced in a Moscow detention cell and his and this July was sentenced to 23 years imprisonment on treason charges.

Russian authorities have used such charges as foreign agent and undesirable designations, war censorship law charges, and fabricated non political charges to seek extradition of exiled dissidents to the Russian Federation and to place foreign nationals, including the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and eight judges of that court, on international wanted lists.

[Other language spoken]

The Russian Federation is the most prolific user of Interpol Red Notices.

Roughly half of the Russia related cases reviewed by Interpol's oversight body in 2024 were found non compliant with its constitution, the Commonwealth of Independent States Wanted List.

He has no equivalent screening or vetting procedure for politically motivated cases.

[Other language spoken]

Excellencies Repression now also travels through the international financial system.

Ross Finn Monitoring's register of terrorists and Extremists contains 21,541 individuals.

At least 5063, nearly one in four, were prosecuted on politically motivated charges.

Those designations are disseminated automatically and unvetted through global compliance databases enacted on banks without verification.

Private companies far from Russia effectuate Russian repression, often without knowing it.

In June 2026, over the info whose monitoring underpins international reporting was itself placed on that register, that is, reprisal against the evidence itself.

By criminalising its sources, the Russian Federation makes its own conduct harder to verify.

Designations have also blocked independent Russian organisations from United Nations processes.

The Russian government designated the Botani International Foundation as undesirable organisation in relation for its engagement with United Nations indigenous rights mechanisms.

Reprisals of this kind reach into the work of this Council.

On 4th August 26, Federal law #284F Z authorised 14 categories of restrictions on listed persons abroad, assets, freezes, passports, consular services, banking, property.

They retain the duties of citizenship and lose most of its substance.

My report calls this civic death de facto statelessness for people who remain on paper citizens.

Digital repression has become central.

In early 26, a campaign against secure messaging accounts, compromise defenders, journalists and more than 300 European politicians, Zarema Musaiva was taken from Nizhny Novgorod to Chechnya and imprisoned.

The European Court of Human Rights found that her detention was retaliation for her son's activities.

Weeks before she was seized, at least 37 of that family's relatives had been detained in Chechnya.

When they cannot reach you, they target your mother.

A designation made in Russia is not lifted by Leaving Russia.

The 2023 Supreme Court ruling on the international LGBT movement as an extremist organisation follows people into exile, as do terrorism charges against indigenous peoples, advocates and women fleeing forced marriage and domestic violence in Chechnya.

Selima Khadisouva, who fled domestic violence, was detained on arrival in Bosnia and Herzegovina on a Russian read notice for terrorism.

Bosnia and Herzegovina refused and granted her asylum.

I must report again that the Russian authorities have not replied to my regular request for information or my repeated request to visit, and continue not to recognise this mandate.

That refusal does not diminish their obligations.

Mr Vice President, Excellencies, transnational repression engages the obligations of both the originating state and the state on whose territory takes place.

Moreover, there is nothing inevitable about transnational repression where host States meet their obligations.

[Other language spoken]

Nevertheless.

No binding international instruments specifically addresses transnational repression, and few states define the concept in domestic law.

A dangerous protection gap thus exists in the absence of harmonised definitions, host state duties and frameworks for Interstate cooperation, leaving victims exposed particularly to the bureaucratic, digital and low visibility forms of transnational repression that now prevail.

Mr Vice President, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, the UN Member States should elaborate A dedicated international human rights instrument, a binding United Nations Convention on Transnational with a monitoring and review mechanism, establishing a definition, provisions for prevention, accountability and the responsibility of Member States to close the protection gap.

I call on this Council to support the development of such a binding international instrument.

I empathetically urge Member States 3 transnational repression as a human rights issue, not solely as espionage or foreign interference.

Complies strictly with non reform law and scrutinise Russian Interpol notices and wanted list entries.

Required banks, compliance database providers, and their regulators to verify Russian designations and provide remedy, protect and sustain funding for Russian independent media, human rights defenders, and civil society in exile, and protect exiled communities rather than securitize them.

A response framed exclusively as national security and counterintelligence response turns victims of repression into suspects and leaves them unprotected.

To the Russian Federation I say seize all acts of transnational repression, repeal Federal Law 284, the foreign agent, undesirable organisation and war censorship laws and sentencing and abstention, abuse of national security and public safety legislation such as treason, espionage, counterterrorism and extremism related charges to silence dissent and anti war expression and placing victims of repression on terrorist and extremist registers.

Cooperate with this mandate Excellencies and honoured guests.

The individuals in this report do not ask for privileged treatment.

They ask for protection from forcible return to torture and sometimes death, the ability to speak, keep a bank account, hold a valid passport and continue their human rights work in exile, and to telephone their mother without putting her in danger.

Russian transnational repression is at once a violation of international human rights law and a challenge to host state sovereignty and the international legal order.

It must be stopped.

Mr Vice President, Excellency, distinguished delegates, I look forward to our interactive dialogue and to your questions.

Thank you for your attention.

[Other language spoken]

According to our practise, we shall start by hearing the delegation of the country concerned.

I understand that the delegation of the Russian Federation is not in the room.

I now invite interested delegations to ask questions to the Special Rapporteur and to make comments on her report.

HRC 63 - Human Rights in the Russian Federation - 21 September 2026