Russian authorities have added former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov to its official register of “extremists and terrorists”, alongside prominent economist Sergei Guriev.
The move, announced by State financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring yesterday, freezes the pair’s domestic assets and bars them from financial transactions within Russia. The move is seen as intensifying the Kremlin’s campaign against exiled critics of President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Kasyanov, who served as prime minister from 2000 to 2004 during Putin’s early years in power, has long been a thorn in the Moscow’s side.
Dismissed abruptly in February 2004 amid growing tensions with the President, he pivoted to opposition politics, co-founding the Liberal People’s Freedom Party (PARNAS) in 2010. That was alongside people such as Boris Nemtsov, a leading opposition figure who was assassinated in 2015.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kasyanov fled the country, becoming a vocal member of the Russian Antiwar Committee – an umbrella group of diaspora dissidents co-ordinating anti-Kremlin activism from abroad.
Last November, he was branded a “foreign agent” for disseminating what Moscow deemed “fake news” about the government’s policies.
The pair’s “extremists and terrorists” designation stems from a criminal probe launched by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on October 14. That resulted in accusations that Kasyanov, Guriev and 21 other Antiwar Committee members of “organising a terrorist community” and plotting a “violent seizure of power” under Articles 278 and 205.4 of Russia’s Criminal Code.
State media outlet RIA Novosti, citing FSB sources, framed the committee’s online advocacy, including calls for sanctions and an end to the war, as subversive threats to national security.
Those named face in absentia trials, with penalties of up to 20 years in prison.
Guriev is a former rector at Moscow’s New Economic School and ex-chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Now dean at London’s Business School, he has urged western allies to ramp up sanctions on Russia, arm Ukraine more aggressively and exploit Russia’s “brain drain” by luring away skilled professionals.
Like Kasyanov, he was previously accused of spreading “foreign agent” materials critical of the invasion.
Rosfinmonitoring’s list, which has ballooned during the Ukraine conflict to encompass 19,131 individuals and 823 organisations, serves as a blunt instrument for isolating perceived enemies.
Inclusion triggers immediate asset freezes, travel bans and restrictions on property dealings or inheritances, even for those later acquitted.
Analysts view this as part of a broader pattern: Last week alone saw political scientist Yekaterina Schulmann and philanthropist Boris Zimin added on November 15. Novaya Gazeta Europe editor Kirill Martynov and legal scholar Yelena Lukyanova joined Kasyanov and Guriev on the list yesterday.
Human rights groups decried the listings as politically motivated smears.
“This is textbook authoritarianism: equating dissent with terrorism to silence voices abroad,” said Amnesty International’s Europe director, Nils Muižnieks.
The move echoes prior cases, such as the eight-and-a-half-year sentence handed to businessman Leonid Gozman in absentia for war criticism and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov’s long-standing “extremist” status.
Neither Kasyanov nor Guriev responded immediately to requests for comment but Kasyanov has previously vowed on social media to persist in his advocacy “until Putin falls”.
