At the time he fled Russia in September 2022, Aleksandr Menyukov was a witness in a criminal investigation targeting a close friend: a poet whose street readings of anti-war verses were considered a crime.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians had fled after President Vladimir Putin that month ordered a military mobilization to shore up the sputtering invasion of Ukraine. But for Menyukov, who provided legal advice to Russians opposed to the war, the final straw was when he was badly beaten during a police search of his Moscow apartment.
In Kazakhstan, he scrambled to renew his passport before it expired, a predicament made worse by the surge of other Russians rushing their own paperwork. He ended up in Poland a few months later with a humanitarian visa.
Now life for Menyukov -- and potentially thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Russians living outside the country -- could become much more difficult.
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Across Russia, Putin's Mobilization Seeps Deeper Into An Anxious SocietyUnder a law signed by Putin on August 4, doing something as mundane as renewing a passport or notarizing a document like a marriage certificate will be prohibited for expatriate Russians who have been convicted of an administrative misdemeanor or criminal felony by Russian authorities.
That could include activists who have worked for foreign-funded organizations, average Russians who speak to so-called undesirable organizations, or people who merely question the astronomical losses suffered by the Russian military in Ukraine.
“Putin isn't just escalating the war against Ukraine, he's also escalating the war on his own citizens."
The measure has been dubbed "civil death" among lawyers, right activists, and Russian expatriates who fear it will plunge them into a legal and bureaucratic limbo with little chance of escape.
"If I had been in Poland when my [Russian] passport expired, and these restrictions applied to me at that time, I would be denied the right to apply for a new passport," Menyukov said in an interview from Warsaw. "That's how it works. And now, this will become a major problem for Russians."
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On Ukraine's Battlefield, Russia Has Lost Ground, Experts Say. But Don't Expect A Major Reversal For Kyiv."Russian citizens technically will not lose their citizenship," said Tanya Lokshina, a Russian researcher for Human Rights Watch, the US-based rights group. "They will remain Russian nationals, but without access legal services. It is de-facto statelessness."
The goal "is to send a message and impose a chilling effect on society, on both those who left and those who remain in the country," said Gleb Bogush, a Russian lawyer who now lives in Berlin.
Russian officials are blunt about their intentions.
"Those who have gone abroad and are harming the country are not the opposition; they are traitors, they are criminals," Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of the Kremlin-controlled parliament, said last week as lawmakers passed the bill.
'A Canceled Citizen'
Over more than two decades, Russian authorities have gradually expanded the legal toolbox used to punish dissent, censor independent media, shutter civil society groups, and silence opposition lawmakers.
The measures included things like the "foreign agent" law, which punishes individuals and groups that receive foreign funding, and the "undesirables" law, which bans foreign organizations deemed a threat to national security and criminalizes people who work for, associate with, or donate money to such organizations.
Since the start of full-scale invasion in 2022, Russian authorities have pushed even more draconian measures.
People who post casualty figures or alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine can be prosecuted for "discrediting the Russian armed forces." A Russian who refers to the Ukraine regions that Moscow claims to have annexed as Ukrainian can be charged with undermining Russia's territorial integrity.
Now, if you've been convicted of one of six different offenses and are living outside of Russia, you can be effectively stripped of what legal experts say a fundamental right under international law: a citizen's right to consular services.
"The strategy is not to deprive [Russian citizens], to strip them of their citizenship. It is to use it as a weapon," Bogush said. "It's yet another brick in building of a system of mini-apartheid: to segregate a certain group of people whom the system considers to be enemies, 'undesirable.'"
"A person who has left [the country] for political reasons and has been designated an 'evader' will receive the status of an internally 'canceled citizen,'" said First Department, a group of Russian legal advocates.
If you need a marriage certificate or a birth certificate from Russia, for example, that will be impossible. Same if you're in need of a background check to prove to a foreign authority that you haven't been convicted of a crime in Russia.
The measures also authorize officials to freeze bank accounts of people, as well as prevent people from selling real estate such as apartments or country dachas or even transferring them to relatives.
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It authorizes officials to open up bank accounts in the name of a designated person and then effectively manage the account: to receive funds from a state pension which the person is entitled to, for example, and to pay out funds for things like court-ordered fines.
"This is indeed a civil death law," said Lokshina, whose employer, Human Rights Watch, was designated an undesirable organization last year. "If you do not sit quiet but rather speak up, you get prosecuted sooner or later."
Adding further to the legal limbo Russian exiles face is the fact that in many countries, in the European Union or otherwise, authorities are making it more difficult for Russian citizens to obtain documents such as residence or work permits or apply for citizenship.
"For many, they also have no real support in the countries where they are. People who are persecuted by the Russian government are also subject to collective suspicion at best in the countries where they live," Bogush said.
Passage of the law comes as the Kremlin struggles to keep the war on Ukraine at full throttle while also downplaying the scale of casualties that Russian forces have suffered. The economy is also sputtering, fueling growing discontent.
Kremlin experts say authorities are also concerned about next month's parliamentary elections in which a less-than-overwhelming victory for ruling United Russia party candidates would undermine the narrative of national unity.
"Putin isn't just escalating the war against Ukraine, he's also escalating the war on his own citizens," Bogush said.