Transcript of 650,000 Russians have fled country since Ukraine war began, study estimates | BBC News

Welcome back to the program. When Kremlin officials released the news earlier this year that the opposition leader, Alexis Novelny, had died as a result of natural causes, there were many who found that difficult to believe. His widow was quick to claim the 47-year-old had been put to death in an Arctic penal colony. Today, the investigative website, The Insider, claimed that it has obtained official Kremlin documents that show, in fact, his death may have been the result of poisoning, with one report indicating that on the day he died, Mr. Mr. Navalny fell sick with sharp abdominal pains, was vomiting, convulsing, and then fell unconscious. A doctor who'd previously treated him said only poisoning could explain such symptoms. The insider said the document was later revised to exclude those details. The Kremlin has previously denied having Mr. Navalny killed. But how much of a threat is the Kremlin to other lesser known figures? It is estimated 650 people have left Russia since the outbreak of the war with Ukraine, and among them are many outspoken opponents who live in perpetual fear they will be next. Lillia Yaparova is a Russian journalist. She's living in exile in Latvia.

She works for the independent news outlet, Medusa, which last year was outlawed in Russia, designated an illegal, undesirable organization. She joins me from Riga. Thank you very much for being with us. Do you live in that perpetual fear that maybe one day you'll be poisoned?

Not really. I try just not to think about that because I don't really believe one person can oppose the whole Kremlin/FSB/Russian Intelligence Services Apparatus. If they want to find a person, any person, I think they're going to do that anyway. Sometimes I do receive advice from my editors and my managers to stop ordering takeaway or be careful with what I eat outside of the newsroom in my own home. I used to not think very much about those advice, but then my former colleague, Helena Kostychenka, A great journalist found out that she was possibly, supposedly, poisoned by the Russian state. Then I thought that it might be a real risk.

We invited you on tonight because I read your brilliant piece for the New York Times at the weekend in which you explain that there are thousands of Russian exiles who live with this threat and yet have nowhere really to go because there isn't much sympathy for the Russian diaspora outside Russia. There's no one looking after them. How many people do you think face what you face out there?

We can't really be sure. I wrote the piece exactly to demonstrate that, for example, if a journalist, a politician, a political activist living in exile in any part of the world, feeling that she's under threat, they usually know people. They are good at networking. They know people. They know journalists, media, NGOs, someone to turn to. But there are also in those numbers you've mentioned, more than 600,000 people. There are also regular Russians, like a school teacher or a nurse for the elderly, or an industrial climber, or a music musicians, actors, all kinds of people who doesn't really have those connections. And when they're faced with a threat, they don't really know how to protect themselves at all. And that's how they are captured. For example, an anarchist and an activist, Lev Skariaking, tried to hide in Kyrgyzstan, in Bishkak, in the capital of the country. But on Russia's request, Kyrgyzstan authorities found his location through facial recognition cameras, came to his apartment, and not even deported him from the country. There was no legal procedure. They just put him on a plane, which flew him to Moscow. And he spent some time in detention center.

And there this nurse who's been detained in Montenegro on Russia's request, processed through the interval. And then there is a cool teacher who told her students about Russian war crimes committed by the Russian army in Bucha, and she had to flee the country because there was a criminal case offered against her, and she ended up flying to Yerevan, where Romanian border guards, border patrol, accosted her and detained her. So I'm just... Sometimes the host countries, both in Central Asia, as in the example such as provided, or in Europe, they don't even realize what's really going on and how stronger these countries are infiltrated with the Russian operatives. For example, Sergey Patsychnik, a journalist investigating Iran-Russia military cooperation. He He noticed that he was being followed in Duisbrook, Germany, and it took him two visits to local police station to just force them to open the investigation. And the police officer in Duisbrook, I'll try to tell him that it's Duisbrook, it's not Berlin. We don't have that spy stuff here. So sometimes local authorities just don't- It reminds me in some respects of the Mafia in Italy, in the sense that The warning signs, sometimes they're not entirely recognizable, the signs.

I mean, yes, there are people who fall out of windows and there are people who are stabbed or killed and who are Russian dissidents, known Russian dissidents. But what you're describing is the routine intimidation that Russian exiles face on a daily basis and don't quite know whether it's the Russian state that's perpetrating that. Is that largely what you're talking about, the the level stuff that plays on your mind?

Yeah. Recent investigations by many media outlets, many newsrooms across the world, show that Russian security services in the past couple of years started to use local bandits, criminals, just drug dealers, people People who are willing to intimidate people they don't really know for a small price. Sometimes not that small, but still. So Russia is... Not Russia, I love my country, but the Kremlin and the people in power are using every means possible to just intimidate, harass, persecute, surveil people they're just paranoid about. So The Kremlin in general, it might be coming from just the Soviet times, the times of the KGB, is instinctively and deeply paranoid about any descent.

It must have occurred to you when you do interviews like this and when you write articles for the New York Times, you are effectively putting your head above the parapet. You're becoming a public target. Why do you take that risk?

I think there are a lot of people, most of the people in Russia right now, taking much greater risk. They're being sent to jails, they're being sent to war, they're being incarcerated just for posting an anti-war comment on the Internet, on social media. And if we're talking about exiled Russians, there are many great activists and journalists and investigators and NGO workers who are doing much better than me. So I really don't consider myself a target. I receive some signals from Russia, some threats or well-wishing advice. But my job as a journalist is just to mainly to give voice to the people like industrial climber or. We don't really have that voice.

You've certainly done that tonight, Lillia. We do appreciate you coming on the program and speaking so openly. Thank you for your time. We'll be right back up to this. Right back after this.