Russian opposition politician Lyubov Sobol, upon noticing she was being followed in Berlin, shared her experience on Twitter. She humorously remarked, “Don't even think of trying to kill me before I finish my bretzel!” while emphasizing her stalkers were “sloppy.”
In 2019, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Wagner PMC, arranged the surveillance of Sobol, which cost him over 11 million rubles. Multiple stringers were involved in the surveillance, tasked with round-the-clock “photo and video recording as part of their specific mission.”
Igor Mangushev, who gained notoriety in the spring of 2022 for advocating the genocide of Ukrainians and displaying a human skull purportedly belonging to a defender of the Mariupol Azovstal plant during a speech at a club, supervised the operation. Mangushev was killed in 2023 by a gunshot to the back of his head in the Russian-occupied Luhansk Region.