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Ex-Russian supermodel and Putin critic reveals she’s on Kremlin’s hitlist


Ksenia Maximova has spoken out against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as part of a London-based opposition movement (Picture: Josh Layton/Metro.co.uk/Ksenia Maximova/@ksenia_maximova_)

A prominent Russian opposition activist living in the UK has told of her surprise after her name cropped up on a hitlist of Kremlin critics.

Ksenia Maximova said that she is among Vladimir Putin’s foreign-based opponents who are targeted for poisoning with a nerve agent.  

Ms Maximova is highly visible as the director of the vocal Russian Democratic Society (RDS), a London-based group opposed to Putin’s regime and his attack on Ukraine.  

Tensions between the UK and Moscow have ratched up further this week after Washington granted permission for Ukraine to fire Western-supplied long-range missiles into Russia. 

The former supermodel, who has dual British and Russian nationality, told Metro that she is working on the assumption that the list is a scare tactic aimed at putting a chilling effect on the Kremlin’s targets.

She has continued campaigning but nevertheless spoken to UK Counter-Terror Police and taken steps to safeguard her security, including explaining to her children what a nerve agent is.  

Ms Maximova said: ‘I have been told that I am on a hitlist created by Russia as a form of psychological warfare against critics of Putin’s living abroad.

‘The list is quite long and has key opposition figures as well as those like me who are lower down the food chain.

Ksenia Maximova shows her opposition to Vladimir Putin outside the Russian embassy in west London (Picture: Josh Layton/Metro.co.uk)

‘The targets are marked for poisoning with a nerve agent is all I can say.

‘I speak at rallies and I am quite recognisable but I am surprised that I am on there. 

‘I found out after a fellow activist was approached at a facility in another country by a person who referred to me by my patronym, which almost no one knows, so it suggests someone has seen my Russian documents.

‘When I tried to look into who this person was, their name was not connected to the country that they said they were attached to.’ 

Dmitry Gudkov, a Russian politician living in exile in an EU country, was pulled aside by plain-clothes UK police and told he was on the list when he arrived at Luton Airport last summer.  

The co-founder of the Anti-War Committee, which opposes Putin’s regime and his war in Ukraine, told the BBC that the officers intercepted him immediately after he stepped off the plane and asked him ‘where I’ll be staying and what phone I’ll be using.’ 

A chilling example of the Kremlin’s treatment of political opponents followed in February with the death of opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny at a harsh penal colony in the Arctic Circle.

The working assumption among pro-democracy activists is that list has been drawn up by Putin’s shadowy ‘special services’.  

Ksenia Maximova was a model who appeared in fashion shoots for leading brands (Picture: Ksenia Maximova/Instagram)

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Source:: Metro

      

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