How Putin’s enemies have met their demise in suspicious circumstances

Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny was discovered useless on Friday, ostensibly having collapsed after going for a stroll across the brutal Arctic penal colony the place he had been imprisoned since December.

The particulars of what occurred will not be but totally identified; Navalny’s allies say they’ve had no official affirmation of his dying – and Russian authorities say they’re nonetheless establishing why he died.

But supporters, together with spouse Yulia Navalnaya, have been fast guilty Russian President Vladimir Putin, who they are saying was liable for Navalny’s poisoning with a lethal nerve agent in 2020.

Assassination makes an attempt in opposition to foes of Putin have been frequent throughout his almost quarter century in energy. Those near the victims and the few survivors have blamed Russian authorities, however the Kremlin has routinely denied involvement.

From polonium-laced tea to unexplained airplane crashes and dramatic falls from home windows, these are among the methods Putin’s opponents have met their demise in suspicious circumstances through the years. 

Alexei Navalny: Novichok Poisoning 

In August 2020, Navalny fell in poor health on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, coming back from filming an investigative piece on corruption in Siberia. In current days, he had printed a number of movies on his standard YouTube channel voicing assist for pro-democracy demonstrations in allied Belarus.

Footage from the airplane confirmed a sudden and violent change in his situation, Navalny crying out in ache. The airplane was compelled to land within the metropolis of Omsk, the place Navalny was hospitalised in a coma. Two days later, he was airlifted to Berlin, the place he made a surprising restoration. 

At first it was believed he had been poisoned by the Russian state including toxins to his tea, and his staff mentioned he had solely stopped in an airport café for a drink within the morning. Later, CNN reported a Russian agent despatched to tail Navalny had planted Novichok in his underwear.

Novichok chemical brokers have been developed at a state analysis institute within the Soviet Union between 1971 and 1993, claimed to be the deadliest ever made. They have been additionally used on British nationals Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess in Salisbury in 2018.

The agent was designed to be undetectable by NATO gear, probably inflicting seizures, lack of consciousness, wheezing, shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, excessive adopted by low blood strain and profuse sweating.

Russia denied poisoning Navalny, however the EU, US and Britain would ultimately sanction officers and a state establishment liable for destroying the Soviet period know-how.

An investigation by Bellingcat and The Insider, in cooperation with Der Spiegel and CNN, additionally discovered information ‘that implicates Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) within the poisoning of… Navalny’.

The investigation concluded that by means of 2017, in 2019 and in 2020, FSB operatives from a ‘clandestine unit specialised in working with toxic substances’ trailed Navalny throughout Russia, shadowing him on greater than 30 overlapping flights.

They say it’s potential there have been earlier makes an attempt to poison Navalny, together with one in Kaliningrad solely a month earlier than the alleged try in Siberia.

When Navalny returned to his dwelling nation in early 2021 he was promptly detained for leaving the nation (whereas comatose) and breaching his parole – associated to a earlier suspended sentence for alleged embezzlement.

His arrest resulting in mass protests and clashes with police across the nation. From jail, Navalny alleged torture and abuse earlier than being slapped with expenses of fraud and contempt of court docket, spending some three years in harsh Russian prisons earlier than being discovered useless on February 16, 2024.

Astonishingly, it isn’t the primary time Navalny’s supporters have alleged Russian state interference. Aside from Bellingcat’s conclusion Navalny might have been focused in Kaliningrad a month earlier than his Novichok poisoning, he was additionally thought to have been poisoned whereas in jail in 2019 and assaulted in 2017, when somebody threw a inexperienced liquid in his face, almost blinding him.

Pyotr Verzilov: Alleged Nerve Agent Poisoning

Feminist punk rock protest group Pussy Riot had been in Russia’s sights since February 2012, once they staged a efficiency inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Their actions have been condemned as sacrilegious by the Orthodox clergy and stopped – earlier than two of the group’s members have been arrested and charged with ‘hooliganism’ in March.

Later that yr, three have been charged with ‘hooliganism motivated by non secular hatred’ and sentenced to 2 years in jail. Still, this didn’t deter the group. After a number of extra clashes with the Russian authorities, founding member Pyotr Verzilov fell inexplicably in poor health in 2018.

He was additionally flown to Berlin the place in September medical doctors say it was ‘extremely believable’ he had been poisoned. Earlier that yr, Verzilov had embarrassed the Kremlin by working onto the sphere throughout soccer´s World Cup ultimate in Moscow with three different activists to protest police brutality. His allies mentioned he might have been focused due to his activism.

Vladimir Kara-Murza: Sudden Unexplained Illness

Russian-British journalist and opposition chief Vladimir Vladimirovich Kara-Murza fell all of the sudden in poor health in 2015 earlier than being urgently whisked off to a Moscow hospital the place he was revealed to be affected by pancreatitis and double pneumonia.

Kara-Murza, then 33, was a detailed affiliate of opposition chief Boris Nemtsov, who had been assassinated in February, and labored with a civic organisation based by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the previous oil tycoon and Kremlin opponent.

After almost dying from kidney failure, he was in a position to make a gentle restoration however was hospitalised with an analogous sickness in 2017 and put right into a medically-induced coma. His spouse mentioned medical doctors had confirmed he had been poisoned.

Kara-Murza survived, and his lawyer says police have refused to research. Last yr, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to 25 years in jail. In January he was moved to a jail in Siberia and positioned in solitary confinement over an alleged minor infraction.

Boris Nemtsov: Gunned Down on a Moscow Bridge

The 2015 assassination of Boris Nemtsov, a liberal politician and outspoken critic of Putin, was essentially the most high-profile killing alleged to have been orchestrated by the Russian state.

On a chilly evening in February, round 23:30, Nemtsov was struck 4 occasions with bullets from a Makarov pistol as he walked together with his girlfriend over the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge.

His Ukrainian accomplice, Anna Duritskaya, was the only real witness to the assault.

Only hours earlier than the assassination, Nemtsov had spoken publicly in opposition to Russia’s battle in Ukraine, then a yr since Russia’s annexation of the Donbas and Crimea.

Five males from the Russian area of Chechnya have been convicted for his killing, with the gunman receiving as much as 20 years. But Nemtsov’s allies mentioned that was an try and shift blame from the federal government. 

Alexander Litvinenko: Ex-KGB Died After Tea Poisoning

In 2006, Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, a former agent for the KGB and its post-Soviet successor company, the FSB, grew to become violently in poor health in London after ingesting tea laced with radioactive polonium-210. He died three weeks later.

Litvinenko had been investigating the taking pictures dying of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in addition to the Russian intelligence service´s alleged hyperlinks to organized crime.

Before dying, Litvinenko informed journalists the FSB was nonetheless working a poisons laboratory relationship from the Soviet period.

A British inquiry discovered that Russian brokers had killed Litvinenko, most likely with Putin’s approval, however the Kremlin denied any involvement.

Sergei Skripal: Intelligence Officer Poisoned in Britain

Another former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, was poisoned in Britain in 2018. 

He and his grownup daughter Yulia fell in poor health within the metropolis of Salisbury and spent weeks in crucial situation. They survived, however the assault later claimed the lifetime of a British lady and left a person and a police officer significantly in poor health.

Authorities mentioned they each have been poisoned with the navy grade nerve agent Novichok. 

Britain blamed Russian intelligence, however Moscow denied any position. Putin referred to as Skripal, a double agent for Britain throughout his espionage profession, a ‘scumbag’ of no curiosity to the Kremlin as a result of he was tried in Russia and exchanged in a spy swap in 2010.

British intelligence later urged Major General Andrey Averyanov, believed liable for the assault, might have performed a job in deposing ally-turned-critic Yevgeny Prigozhin of Russia’s fierce Wagner Group mercenary outfit.

Yevgeny Prigozhin: Merc Chief’s Shock Plane Crash

A airplane crash final August which killed Yevgeny Prigozhin and high lieutenants of his Wagner personal navy firm got here two months to the day after he launched an armed riot that Putin labeled ‘a stab within the again’ and ‘treason.’ While not crucial of Putin, Prigozhin slammed the Russian navy management and questioned the motives for going to battle in Ukraine.

A U.S. intelligence evaluation discovered that the crash that killed all 10 folks aboard was deliberately brought on by an explosion, in keeping with U.S. and Western officers. The officers spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t approved to remark. One mentioned the explosion fell in keeping with Putin´s ‘lengthy historical past of attempting to silence his critics.’

Putin´s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, rejected allegations the Kremlin was behind the crash. ‘Of course, within the West these speculations are put out beneath a sure angle, and all of it’s a full lie,’ he informed reporters.

In his first public feedback after the crash, Putin appeared to trace there was no unhealthy blood between him and Prigozhin. But former Kremlin speechwriter turned political analyst Abbas Gallyamov mentioned: ‘Putin has demonstrated that in case you fail to obey him with out query, he’ll get rid of you with out mercy, like an enemy, even if you’re formally a patriot.’

Anna Politkovskaya: Shot Dead During Investigation 

Numerous journalists crucial of authorities in Russia have been killed or suffered mysterious deaths, which their colleagues in some circumstances blamed on somebody within the political hierarchy. In different circumstances, the reported reluctance by authorities to research raised suspicions.

Politkovskaya, the journalist for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta whose dying Litvinenko was investigating, was shot and killed within the elevator of her Moscow residence constructing on October 7, 2006 – Putin’s birthday. She had gained worldwide popularity of her reporting on human rights abuses in Chechnya. 

The gunman, from Chechnya, was convicted of the killing and sentenced to twenty years in jail. Four different Chechens got shorter jail phrases for his or her involvement within the homicide.

Yuri Shchekochikhin: Death After Violent Illness 

Yuri Shchekochikhin, one other Novaya Gazeta reporter, died of a sudden and violent sickness in 2003. 

Shchekochikhin was investigating corrupt enterprise offers and the potential position of Russian safety companies within the 1999 residence home bombings blamed on Chechen insurgents. 

His colleagues insisted that he was poisoned and accused the authorities of intentionally hindering the investigation.