Russia has succeeded, however, in obtaining arrests through less formal “diffusions,” which allow member countries to feed requests into Interpol’s computer system without real vetting. In some cases, Russia has timed diffusions for the precise moment when a target enters a certain country.

Mr. Browder reflected in a 2016 interview that the Russian authorities were undeterred by failure. “The Russians try stuff a hundred times, and sometimes it works,” he said. “They can fail 99 times, but the 100th time it could work. For them, that makes it all worthwhile.”

Mr. Browder, who was once the largest foreign investor in the Russian stock market, ran afoul of Mr. Putin in 2005 and was kicked out of Russia. He was convicted of tax fraud by a Russian court in absentia and sentenced to nine years in prison. He documented Russia’s efforts to arrest him in a 2015 book, “Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice.”