This is not Russia's first search notices concerning foreign personalities, but one of the latest is worth a look. Moscow targeted several Baltic political leaders on Tuesday, January 13, including Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas – the first foreign head of government ever sought by Russian police.

The authorities have issued search cards against "people responsible for decisions which are an insult to History [and] who carry out hostile actions against the historical memory" of Russia, the presidential spokesperson explained on Tuesday. , Dmitry Peskov.

A Russian security source also told the state news agency TASS that Kaja Kallas – as well as the Estonian Secretary of State, Taimar Peterkop – is being prosecuted for "destruction and damage to monuments [of homage] to the Soviet soldiers" of World War II. The Lithuanian Minister of Culture, Simonas Kairys, is wanted for “destruction of monuments”.

"These wanted posters are a way for Russia to say: 'You come under Russian law and we consider you to still be more or less part of the Russian Empire.' It’s just provocation and an insult to an independent and autonomous country,” explains historian Cécile Vaissié, professor of Russian and Soviet studies at Rennes-II University and researcher at CERCLE at Nancy II University. 

Moscow has already issued such search notices in the past, notably against the exiled writer Boris Akunin. The man who condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine is notably accused of "terrorism" and has been placed on the list of "foreign agents" maintained by the Kremlin. The list is far from stopping at these few cases.

Meta spokesperson and Ukrainian farmer on Russian list

More than 96,000 people – including more than 31,000 Russians and nearly 4,000 Ukrainians – are the subject of a search file, according to the Russian media in exile Mediazona, which published on Monday January 12 a compilation of different databases. data from the Russian Interior Ministry.

And the spectrum of people targeted is wide. In particular, we find in this list Andy Stone, the spokesperson for Meta (parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram), accused of “supporting terrorism”. The Polish president of the International Criminal Court, Piotr Hofmanski, is also one of the figures being prosecuted. His name was added to the list after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin in March 2023, due to the Russian president's role in the deportation of Ukrainian children.

Unsurprisingly, given the ongoing conflict, the majority of foreigners targeted by Russian police services are Ukrainians. Mediazona has identified at least 176 people "pursued in absentia" for various reasons: participation in the war, links with the Ukrainian authorities, or even for their public statements. It is for this reason that we find in the list the former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Valery Zalouzhny, as well as... a Ukrainian farmer who supported Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on social networks by holding unkind remarks against Vladimir Putin.

Some 59 Latvian MPs – or two thirds of Parliament – ​​are also the subject of a wanted notice after voting, in May 2022, to leave an agreement with Russia relating to the preservation of commemorative monuments. This decision, taken a few months after the start of the war in Ukraine, notably led to the demolition of a monument dating from the Soviet era in the capital, Riga.

“All these wanted notices give the impression of a big catch-all, of a big package of personalities supposedly hostile to Russia and against whom it is acting,” notes Marie Dumoulin, program director at the Council’s Think Tank. European for international relations.

“Only one possible historical discourse”

The specialist "does not doubt that Russian justice certainly has an argument for each of these personalities", but she expresses reservations about the fate reserved for Kaja Kallas: "The argument for the Estonian Prime Minister seems to me legally a little shaky: searching for foreign public figures on the basis of their speeches on history is still quite daring."

The main person concerned, who has supported the debunking of Soviet monuments in recent years, does not seem destabilized by her new status in Russia. In a press release, she castigated on Tuesday an action "which is not surprising" on the part of Moscow, described as a "usual tactic of intimidation".

Russia's move is nothing surprising.



This is yet more proof that I am doing the right thing – the #EU's strong support to #Ukraine is a success and it hurts Russia. 1/

— Kaja Kallas (@kajakallas) February 13, 2024

The Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also received Russia's representative in his country on Wednesday to "inform him that these measures [...] will not prevent us from doing the right thing and that Estonia will not change its resolute support for Ukraine."

The Lithuanian Minister of Culture, Simonas Kairys, declared on Wednesday February 14 in an interview with RFI that these wanted notices are "nonsense", while adding: "It is also a message to remind us that we need to have our eyes wide open and understand the methods that Russia sometimes uses."

According to specialists contacted by France 24, these pursuits are above all "symbolic", in the sense that they have little chance of leading to a real arrest. They are above all a symbol of the memorial battle waged by Moscow with the former Soviet countries of Eastern Europe.

"This aims above all to reaffirm the existence of a Russian world [concept born after the fall of the Soviet Union and aimed at encompassing the entire Russian-speaking diaspora outside Russia, Editor's note] and of a Russia at the center of an empire and managing the lives of citizens", explains Cécile Vaissié. “Since the 1990s, the Kremlin has maintained confusion between Russian speakers, Russians, Russian citizens, former citizens of the USSR or even former citizens of the Empire.”

Marie Dumoulin notes a "strong stiffening of Moscow with the Baltic countries on the question of memory which has lasted for a long time". The specialist notes, however, that the tension rose another notch during the constitutional reform of 2020.

"The historical memory of the Russian State was then enshrined in the Constitution, and from that moment on we had a stiffening from within, notably with the dissolution of the NGO Memorial [which was notably the guardian of the memory of the gulag in Russia, Editor's note]", continues the specialist, before concluding: "It is an approach in which there is only one possible historical discourse. It is not good to be a historian in Russia today 'today.'

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