This week, Russia’s government commission on legislative activity approved a bill allowing the use of the armed forces “to protect Russian citizens in the event of their arrest, criminal prosecution, or other legal proceedings by foreign courts,” according to the state-controlled newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
In practice, the legislation would open the door to deploying special forces to free Russian citizens arrested or detained abroad.
“It would legitimise armed attacks on Western legal facilities, including courts and detention centres,” said investigative journalists and Russia security-service experts Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan.
They argue the legislation is most likely intended to protect figures such as Vladimir Putin, Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, all of whom are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for alleged war crimes committed during the war in Ukraine.
In an article for the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), Soldatov and Borogan describe several examples of special operations carried out to free Russian citizens in Europe and the Middle East.
The new law anticipates more armed teams operating on foreign soil, effectively preparing the ground for “body-snatching” operations, the two argue.
“Moscow is preparing not for a single rescue, but for a system,” Soldatov and Borogan wrote.
This is insanity
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