How the Kremlin’s enemies die

The demise of Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny and accusations that Vladimir Putin was behind it have as soon as once more raised the spectre of Kremlin assassinations.

World leaders and commentators immediately pointed the finger on the Russian president when the information of Navalny’s demise broke on Friday, with questions round the reason for demise fuelled by officers delaying the discharge of the physique.

Some have urged the 47-year-old dissident was poisoned – as he was in 2020 in a earlier assassination try – whereas one supply contained in the jail colony the place Navalny died has claimed he was probably killed by a single punch to the center.

Vladimir Osechkin, a Russian exile and human rights campaigner, stated bruising discovered on the opposition chief’s physique was in step with the ‘one-punch’ execution methodology well-liked amongst brokers of the Soviet Union’s KGB safety service.

‘It is an previous methodology of the KGB’s particular forces divisions,’ Osechkin advised The Times.

‘They educated their operatives to kill a person with one punch within the coronary heart, within the centre of the physique. It was an indicator of the KGB.’ 

It would not take a eager Kremlin watcher to see Navalny’s demise as the newest in a protracted listing of makes an attempt to eradicate opponents of Putin through the years.

Kremlin political critics, turncoat spies and investigative journalists have been killed or assaulted by quite a lot of strategies straight off Moscow‘s assassination menu.

The assaults vary from the unique – poisoned by consuming polonium-laced tea or touching a lethal nerve agent – to the much less refined, corresponding to getting shot at shut vary or being blown up in a personal jet.

Some take a deadly plunge from an open window, and there being a number of experiences of Russian executives dying beneath mysterious circumstances, though whether or not they have been deliberate killings or suicides is typically tough to find out.

Such killings haven’t been contained to Russia’s borders both.

Suspected Kremlin hit squads have carried out assaults in opposition to Putin’s enemies throughout Europe – with questions even being raised this week over the suspected killing of a Russian defector in Spain.

Here, MailOnline seems to be on the most outstanding instances of documented killings or tried killings, and the strategies utilized by suspected Kremlin assassins.

Poisonings

Although Russian authorities introduced Putin’s key political challenger had died in an Arctic jail colony on Friday, the main points of what precisely occurred are unknown.

Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service stated Navalny felt unwell after a stroll and misplaced consciousness. An ambulance arrived, however he couldn’t be revived.

Prison officers say they’re nonetheless establishing why he died, with it being introduced that the examination of Navalny’s physique would take 14 days.

His spouse Yulia, his mom and different allies have stated this can be a ploy from Moscow to permit any poisonous substance in his physique to dissipate.

There is sweet purpose to suspect Navalny was poisoned: His allies beforehand accused Russian officers of making an attempt to poison him with a nerve agent in August 2020.

Navalny was flying to Moscow from the Siberian metropolis of Tomsk when he collapsed within the aisle. The aircraft made an emergency touchdown in Omsk the place he spent two days in a hospital earlier than he was transferred to Germany.

Once there, docs decided he had been poisoned with a pressure of Novichok – a nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union and Russia between 1971 and 1993.

Specialists discovered traces of the nerve agent on Navalny’s underwear and garments, together with his belt, whereas German particular providers urged he may have been poisoned by Novichok within the type of an influence dissolved right into a liquid, almost certainly the tea he drank on the airport.

German specialists later concluded that solely Russian particular providers may have used such a ‘lethal and sophisticated poison’ within the try on his life.

Russia beforehand claimed that it had destroyed its stockpile of the poison – which its scientists declare is the deadliest nerve agent ever made.

However, the nerve agent reared its ugly head in an unlikely place in 2018: the small cathedral metropolis of Salisbury within the United Kingdom.

There, former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia have been poisoned by the nerve agent and spent weeks in important situation.

They survived, however the assault later claimed the lifetime of a British lady Dawn Sturgess and left a person, Charlie Rowley, and police officer Nick Bailey critically in poor health. 

Authorities stated they each have been poisoned with the navy grade nerve agent Novichok, carried in a small fragrance or aftershave bottle which Sturgess and Rowley present in a park.

Britain blamed Russian intelligence, however Moscow denied any function.

British authorities recognized two Russian nationals, utilizing the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, because the suspects behind the assault and alleged that they have been energetic officers in Russian navy intelligence.

Investigative journalism outlet Bellingcat went on to determine Boshirov as Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, a extremely embellished GRU officer, and Petrov as Dr. Alexander Yevgeniyevich Mishkin, a educated navy physician – additionally employed by the GRU.

Both had beforehand obtained the Hero of the Russian Federation Award – Russia’s highest state award, and each had been energetic in Ukraine in 2014.

By the time they have been charged by the UK, the pair have been again in Russia. 

The pair went on Russian tv to say that they had been visiting Salisbury as vacationers, particularly to have a look at the town’s cathedral spire and 14th-century clock.

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.

Skripal was not the one ex-Russian agent to be focused within the UK.

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

Litvinenko had been investigating the capturing demise of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the Russian intelligence service’s alleged hyperlinks to organised crime.

Before dying, Litvinenko advised journalists the FSB was nonetheless working a poisons laboratory courting 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.

There have been different suspected instances of poisoning, too.

In 2018, Pyotr Verzilov, a founding father of the protest group Pussy Riot, fell severely in poor health and in addition was flown to Berlin, the place docs stated poisoning was ‘extremely believable.’

He ultimately recovered. Earlier that yr, Verzilov embarrassed the Kremlin by working onto the sector in the course of the World Cup last in Moscow with three different activists to protest police brutality.

His allies stated he may have been focused due to his activism.

Prominent opposition determine Vladimir Kara-Murza survived what he believes have been makes an attempt to poison him in 2015 and 2017.

He almost died from kidney failure within the first occasion and suspects poisoning however no trigger was decided. He was hospitalised with an analogous sickness in 2017 and put right into a medically induced coma. His spouse stated docs confirmed he was poisoned.

Kara-Murza survived, and his lawyer says police have refused to analyze. 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.

Numerous journalists important of authorities in Russia have been killed or suffered mysterious deaths – together with suspected poisonings.

Their colleagues, in some instances, blamed somebody within the political hierarchy. In different instances, the reported reluctance by authorities to analyze raised suspicions.

Yuri Shchekochikhin, a reporter on the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, died of a sudden and violent sickness in 2003. 

Shchekochikhin was investigating corrupt enterprise offers and the attainable function of Russian safety providers 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. 

Shootings

The highest profile killing of a political opponent lately was that of Boris Nemtsov. Once deputy prime minister beneath Boris Yeltsin – Putin’s predecessor – Nemtsov was a preferred politician and harsh critic of Putin.

On a chilly February evening in 2015, he was gunned down by assailants on a bridge adjoining to the Kremlin as he walked together with his girlfriend.

His demise shocked the nation.

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 stated that was an try to shift blame from the federal government, and an investigation by journalists from Insider, Bellingcat and the BBC discovered he had been shadowed by FSB brokers for nearly a yr earlier than he was killed.

Politkovskaya, one other journalist at Novaya Gazeta – whose demise 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 approval for 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.

Like poisonings, shootings haven’t been contained to Russia’s borders, both.

In the summer time of 2019, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili – a Georgian citizen who fought in opposition to Russia in the course of the Chechen battle within the early 2000s – was shot twice within the head at shut vary in a park in central Berlin.

Alleged FSB agent Vadim Krasikov was jailed for all times by a German decide, for what the decide referred to as a ‘painstakingly deliberate’ hit job.

They stated Russian safety providers had supplied Krasikov with a false identification, a faux passport and the means to hold out the assassination.

Krasikov is the one suspected FSB agent to have been caught and convicted overseas for homicide, and Moscow has tried to incorporate him in a prisoner trade with the West on quite a few events. 

Other notable capturing assassinations throughout Putin’s reign as President embody Movladi Baisarov, a Chechen warlord and former FSB special-task unit commander, who was shot lifeless on the road in central Moscow in 2006.

Umar Israilov – the previous bodyguard of Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov – was shot lifeless with two bullets to the top in Vienna in 2009.

That similar yr,  Sulim Yamadayev – Lieutenant Colonel of Special Battalion Vostok and a Chechen insurgent commander from the First Chechen War – was shot within the neck and killed whereas in Dubai.

Even for the reason that demise of Alexei Navalny, a capturing overseas has raised eyebrows.

A Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine with a navy helicopter is reported to have been discovered lifeless in Spain final week.

Maxim Kuzminov flew his Mi-8 helicopter into Ukraine in August in a brazen operation, saying he opposed Russia’s navy offensive. 

The full particulars of the capturing solely got here to gentle this week, with a spokesman for Russia’s GRU intelligence company confirming to AFP information company on Tuesday that Kuzminov had died with out offering particulars. 

So far, Spanish authorities have refused to say if a bullet-riddled physique discovered was his, however Spanish media – citing sources near the investigation – have since Monday reported {that a} physique of a person discovered riddled with bullets within the southeastern coastal city of Villajoyosa close to Alicante final Tuesday was that of the defector.

A judicial supply advised AFP that the physique discovered on the entrance to a residential complicated had identification papers which corresponded to a 33-year-old Ukrainian. 

Spanish police had initially been investigating the crime as a case of ‘score-settling’ within the space, which has a big Russian neighborhood, the supply added.

Authorities later positioned the person’s burnt-out automobile in a close-by city, which his killers are suspected of getting used to flee the scene, in keeping with Spanish media experiences.

Kuzminov, who served within the 319th separate helicopter regiment primarily based in Russia’s far jap Primorsky area, stated in August he had secretly organized his defection for months with the Ukrainian intelligence providers and referred to as on different Russian servicemen to do the identical.

Two fellow servicemen on the helicopter weren’t conscious of his plans and have been killed once they tried to flee after it landed in Ukraine, in keeping with the GRU.

While the experiences haven’t been confirmed by Spanish authorities, Moscow celebrated the information that Kuzminov had died.

‘This traitor and prison turned an ethical corpse on the very second when he deliberate his soiled and horrible crime,’ Russian state information companies quoted Sergei Naryshkin, the top of Russia’s SVR international intelligence service, as saying.

He didn’t affirm or deny any Russian involvement within the former pilot’s demise.

In October, Russian state TV reported that Russia’s GRU intelligence company had ‘been given the order’ to remove Kuzminov.

‘It’s only a matter of time,’ a journalist for Russia’s Perviy Kanal stated in a TV report after speaking to Russian particular forces, who claimed to be on the hunt for the ‘traitor.’

Unexplained deaths

There have additionally been a number of experiences of outstanding Russian executives dying beneath mysterious circumstances, together with falls from an important top.

In 2013, Boris Berezovsky was discovered lifeless at his house in Ascot, UK – apparently hanged in his lavatory.

Berezovsky was a former Kremlin insider who turned a vocal critic of Putin’s authorities, and who entered self-imposed exile within the UK within the early 2000s.

Investigations and public inquiries have been carried out into his demise, however they didn’t set up something past suicide being the reason for demise.

However, a German forensic scientist – employed by members of Berezovsky’s household – stated his examination of post-mortem images had led him to conclude that the Russian had not killed himself.

A variety of Berezovsky’s associates have additionally died beneath suspicious circumstances within the United Kingdom.

Georgian oligarch and Berezovsky’s enterprise accomplice Badri Patarkatsishvili died mysteriously in 2008 – in Leatherhead, Surrey. He had shut ties to Roman Abramovich, Alexander Litvinenko, Mikheil Saakashvili and Putin himself.

In 2018, Nikolai Glushkov was discovered lifeless in New Malden, London – only one week after the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.

He too was a critic of the Kremlin, with a coroner in 2021 ruling that Glushkov was unlawfully killed, and that his demise was made to appear like a suicide.

Yukos oil founder Yuri Golubev additionally died in London, in 2007. 

There have additionally been a number of unexplained deaths in Russia.

Just final yr, in February 2023, defence official Marina Yankina, 58, was discovered lifeless after plunging 160ft from a tower block window.

She is believed to have fallen from the sixteenth flooring to her demise. 

Ms Yankina was a key determine within the funding of Vladimir Putin’s unlawful battle in Ukraine as head of the monetary help division of the Ministry of Defence for the Western Military District, which is carefully concerned within the dictator’s invasion.

And in 2022, a string of deaths raised suspicions.

Ravil Ulfatovich Maganov, a Russian oligarch and chairman of nationwide oil firm Lukoil, allegedly ‘died after falling from a sixth-floor window on the Moscow Central Clinical Hospital’ on September 1 2022, experiences stated on the time.

He had reportedly been hospitalised for a coronary heart assault, with Lukoil saying he ‘handed away following a extreme sickness’. However, Russia’s TASS information company reported his demise as a suicide, and stated he had been taking antidepressants.

Russia information web site Baza urged Maganov – a Putin critic – could have fallen from a balcony, and claimed CCTV footage was not obtainable as a result of cameras had been ‘turned off for repairs’.

This solely added to suspicions round his demise, which got here months after Lukoil’s board of administrators issued a press release calling for a fast finish to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which started on February 24, 2022.

There have been a number of different unexplained deaths that yr.

Ivan Pechorin, 39, director of the Far East and Arctic Development Corporation ‘fell overboard’ from his yacht in September; Pavel Pchelnikov, 52, a PR supervisor for the Russian Railways was shot lifeless in his Moscow residence the identical month; and Alexander Tyulakov, 61, a senior Gazprom govt discovered hanged at his home.

And in one other case a cell phone multi-millionaire and his spouse have been discovered stabbed to demise, with the official model of occasions elevating questions.

Naked Yevgeny Palant, 47, and his spouse Olga, 50, each Ukrainian-born, have been discovered with a number of knife wounds by their daughter Polina, 20.

Immediate briefing to the media claimed the girl took her personal life in a jealous rage after Palant stated he was leaving her.

Yet this was strongly disputed by the couple’s finest pal.

Plane Crash

A aircraft crash final August which killed Yevgeny Prigozhin and prime lieutenants of his Wagner personal navy firm got here two months to the day after he launched an armed revolt that Putin labeled ‘a stab within the again’ and ‘treason.’ 

While not important of Putin, Prigozhin slammed the Russian navy management and questioned the motives for going to battle in Ukraine.

A US intelligence evaluation discovered that the crash that killed all 10 folks aboard was deliberately attributable to an explosion, in keeping with US and Western officers.

The officers spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t authorised to remark. One stated the explosion fell in step with Putin’s ‘lengthy historical past of making an attempt 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 advised reporters.

In his first public feedback after the crash, Putin appeared to trace there was no dangerous blood between him and Prigozhin. 

But former Kremlin speechwriter turned political analyst Abbas Gallyamov stated: ‘Putin has demonstrated that if you happen to fail to obey him with out query, he’ll eliminate you with out mercy, like an enemy, even in case you are formally a patriot.’

However, Osechkin – founding father of the Gulagu.internet group which gathers testimony from prisoners and employees in Russia‘s infamous jails, will not be satisfied that Navalny was killed by any of the above strategies.

He says that authorities would have been capable of kill Navalny in any means they desired, and wouldn’t have needed to ‘depart a hint in his physique and would lead straight again to Putin’.

He claims that Navalny had been pressured to spend between two and a half to 4 hours in an open-air solitary confinement area the place temperatures may dip to minus 27C the day earlier than his demise.

Prisoners are usually saved open air for not more than an hour and in far much less excessive circumstances.

‘I believe that they first destroyed his physique by protecting him out within the chilly for a very long time and slowing the blood circulation all the way down to a minimal,’ Osechkin defined.

‘And then it turns into very straightforward to kill somebody, inside seconds, if the operative has some expertise on this.’

The single punch, an assassination method apparently utilized by KGB particular forces to keep away from leaving any indication of reason for demise, is then stated to have been used.

Before turning into Russian chief, Putin famously served for some 15 years within the KGB as a international intelligence officer, retiring in 1990 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Mr Navalny’s household has been advised that they can’t have entry to his physique for an additional two weeks.

Osechkin stated that he believes the presence of FSB officers on the jail the place Navanly died to be proof that he was murdered by the Kremlin.

He added: ‘From what I do know from my sources, it was a particular operation that had been ready a number of days upfront.’

‘It was a command from Moscow as a result of with out Moscow it could not have been attainable to dismantle the cameras in the way in which that they did.’