Russian Dissidents Keep Dying
Putin Critics Keep Dying
A String of Violent Deaths Follow Putin and Associates
By D.S. Mitchell
Complete Control
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s opponents continue to disappear in a pattern of bizarre and sudden deaths. Many of those that have opposed Vladimir Putin during his near 25 years in power have met violent deaths. Alexei Navalny, a striden critic of Putin is his most recent presumed victim. Navalny supporters and many foreign leaders categorically state Navalny’s death was murder. There is no doubt that Navalny was a prisoner under the complete control of the Kremlin. We all know he was banished to a prison camp in the Arctic Circle, where it is known he was regularly thrown in isolation, exposed to the winter elements, beaten, and starved.
Shootings, Exotic Poisonings, and Plane Crashes
The number of Russian dissidents dying is growing. All are suspected victims of Putin and his Kremlin killers. The means of execution has varied; shootings, exotic poisonings, and quite theatrically a plane brought crashing to earth. Many of these deaths are still listed as accidents and suicides. The real question is, how many of his enemies has Putin actually killed; the answer to that question, will probably never be known.
Alexander Litvinenko
In 2006, Litvinenko died of polonium-210 poisoning in a London hospital. His killers, were accused of spiking his tea with the deadly radioactive isotope. Before his death, Andrey Litvinenko told reporters that the FSB security service was still operating poison laboratories dating from the Soviet era. The accused killers, Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun had links to the intelligence services. Despite strong evidence against Lugovoy and Kovtun; Russia refused to extradite them for trial.
Justice Delayed
In September 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Russia was responsible for the assassination of Litvinenko and ordered Russia to pay Litvinenko’s wife €100,000 in damages plus €22,500 in costs. The ECHR found beyond reasonable doubt that Lugovoy and Kovtun killed Litvinenko and that Putin probably ordered the assassination.
Natalya (Natasha) Estemirova
Natalya (Natasha) Estemirova, was a human rights defender in Chechnya, documenting kidnapping, murder, rape and other atrocities. On July 15, 2000 she and a close friend were abducted and murdered. Putin has long been associated with her and her friend’s death.
Yuri Shchekochikhin
Schekochikhin was Deputy Editor of the free newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Schekochikhim was also a writer, a State Duma deputy and a member of the Commission against Corruption. On 3 July 2003, Yuri Shchekochikhin died 12 days after being hospitalized in a Moscow clinic, at the age of 53, of what doctors said was an “acute allergic reaction.”
Sergei Skripal
In 2018, at least a dozen people in the small town of Salisbury, England, were sickened and one died when inadvertently exposed to the nerve agent, Novichok. Authorities believe it was caused when two agents from the Russian GRU military intelligence agency carelessly handled the toxin causing it to be left on surfaces in their hotel room, a taxi cab, a pub booth, and on an air plane seat. The apparent target of the assassination attempt was, Sergei Skripal.
Doorknob Tampering
Skripal had been convicted in Russia of treason. Skripal was a double agent who worked with UK intelligence for multiple years and whose release to the west came in a prisoner exchange. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were nearly killed when they came in contact with the neurotoxin Novichok which had been smeared on the doorknob of their home in Salisbury. The two Skripals spent many weeks recovering in hospital, but survived. Relations between the Kremlin and the UK were severely damaged by the Skripal attack and murders of several high profile Russians living in exile.
Yevgeny Prigozhin
Known as “Putin’s Chef,” Yevgeny Prigozhin caught the attention of the world in June 2023 when his Wagner paramilitary group, in what appeared to be open mutiny, left the front lines of the battle in Ukraine and headed in military procession toward Moscow. Prigozhin was outraged at Kremlin officials, whom he believed were endangering his troops with errant missile attacks. On the way to Moscow Prigozhin’s mercenaries seized the city of Rosrov at which point the march to Moscow was halted and negotiations for a truce started.
A Deadly Truce
Prigozhin appeared to have negotiated a truce with the Kremlin, agreeing to evacuate his Wagner troops to Belarus and to focus the group’s activities outside Ukraine. In August 2023 he was in Moscow to finalize the details of the agreement. After leaving the meeting, somewhere north of Moscow, he and several of his top aides were killed when an explosion aboard his Embraer Legacy 600 business jet sent the plane spiraling to the ground, killing all on board. Soon after, Putin signed a decree forcing Prigozhin’s Wagner troops to swear an oath to him and Russia’s national flag.
Boris Nemtsov
Boris Nemtsov, a major domestic rival of Putin, died in 2015 right before an opposition rally. Nemtsov was shot in the back of the head four times within blocks of the Kremlin on his way to the rally. Nemtsov was a vocal opposition leader who had served as Deputy Prime Minister under Boris Yeltsin and was seen as a potential successor. A joint investigation by the BBC and the Insider uncovered that Nemtsov had been followed by FBS agents for over a year prior to his murder. The investigation revealed that the agents shadowing Nemtsov were suspected of poisoning several Kremlin critics. Five men of Chechen origin were arrested over the attack, but those close to Nemtsov believed that Putin had given the order.
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya was one of Russia’s most prominent journalists before her death. The Novaya Gazeta (now Novaya Gazeta Europe) reporter was loudly critical of Putin and Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov. The journalist and human rights activist, was gunned down in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building in 2006. She regularly criticized the Kremlin, particularly regarding policies related to Chechnya. A probe into her death failed to determine who killed her. Her brazen murder had a chilling effect on Russia’s media, causing many free newspapers, including the Gazeta, to flee Russia and publish from outside the country. Putin called for her killer(s) to be arrested, but slammed Politkovskaya herself as contributing “very little” to Russian life.
Boris Berezovsky and Friends
Even rich oligarchs haven’t been safe from Putin’s wrath. It seems multiple Russian executives have died under mysterious circumstances, including suspicious suicides and unexplained falls from tall buildings. Boris Berezovsky was a Kremlin insider turned strident Putin critic who had gone into self-imposed exile in the UK in the early 2000s. In 2013, Berezovsky was found hanged in the bathroom of his Ascot residence. The case remains officially a suicide. An associate of Berezovsky, Nikolai Glushkov another Putin critic was found suffocated in his London home. Georgian billionaire and political opponent of Putin, Badri Patarkatsishvili, was found dead under suspicious circumstances in his Surry, Uk home where he too was living in exile. Further, on Jan 11, 2007 — A founding father of the one-time Yukos oil empire, Yury Golubev, was found dead in his London apartment.
Opposition to Ukraine Invasion
