Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in prison on Friday. The suspicious death signaled Vladimir Putin’s long reign as the country’s leader.
President Biden has already directly blamed Kremlin figures for Navalny’s sudden death, calling it “evidence of President Putin’s brutality.”
In fact, dozens of his enemies have died from suicides, mysterious illnesses, falls from windows, gunshot wounds, plane explosions, and other circumstances.
“President Putin doesn’t want to directly kill people,” says Russia expert John O’Neill, co-author of “The Dancer and the Devil: Stalin, Pavlova, and the Road to a Great Pandemic.”
“If he does that, it will be exposed for the whole world to see. He wants people to look like they’re trying to commit suicide or dying of some freak disease. Putin The president wants to kill people on deniable grounds.
“At the same time, everyone in Russia knows that these people are being killed. It sends a message to those associated with President Putin: ‘You better stay in line.’ ”
Here are just a few of Putin’s obvious victims.
Mercenary killed in plane explosion
Evgeny Prigozhin, Putin’s chef turned mercenary oligarch
Cause of death: Private jet explosion, August 23, 2023
Prigozhin started out as President Vladimir Putin’s chef and went on to run the Wagner Private Military Group, feared in the Kremlin in eastern Ukraine, Syria and Africa.
However, when he became the main force behind the stalemate invasion of Ukraine, he began to criticize the military. Then, in June 2023, he launched a rebellion of his own, launching tank assaults from Ukraine into Moscow, only to be stopped short of the capital. live.
Although he was said to have stayed away from the window, he boarded a private jet with several of Wagner’s top commanders in Moscow in August 2023. It exploded in mid-air, and Western intelligence suggested it was loaded with a bomb.
President Putin inevitably denied any involvement.
Polonium tea poisoning in London
Alexander Litvinenko, former KGB agent
Cause of death: radiation poisoning, November 23, 2006
The former KGB official clashed with President Putin when he criticized Russian strongmen.
He fell seriously ill after having tea with two Russian men at a five-star hotel in London. Lytichenko died a few days later after being incurably poisoned by radiation from the polonium in the tea.
The doses were so strong that his post-mortem examination has been described as “one of the most dangerous ever”.
‘Fabricated’ murder-suicide in Spain
Sergei Protsenya.Former Vice Chairman of Novatec
Cause of death: hanging from railing.His wife and daughter were found dead in bed with ax and stab wounds, April 19, 2022
Protsenya, who is said to be worth $400 million, is believed to have had information about how fraudulent loans to gas companies funneled personal wealth to President Putin. President Putin claims to be living on a meager government salary.
The death at his seaside home in Lloret de Mar, near Barcelona, Spain, was made to look like a murder-suicide, but Anders Aslant, author of “Russia’s Crony Capitalism,” told the Post, “This is not my fault.” “It looks like a Kremlin murder.”
Photographed next to the Kremlin
Boris Nemtsov, former Deputy Prime Minister of Russia
Cause of death: Shot in the back on February 27, 2015, while crossing a bridge near the Kremlin.
Mr. Nemtsov is an up-and-coming politician who was once seen as a possible successor to Boris Yeltsin, who instead handed over power to Mr. Putin, but Mr. Yeltsin never relinquished it.
But Nemtsov has become a prominent figure in the opposition party, criticizing Putin’s “crazy and aggressive” policies. His death, so close to the center of Russian power, was seen as a warning to others planning to oppose Putin.
plummeting from the 16th floor
Marina Yakina, defense official
The cause of death was a fall from a 16-story apartment building. February 15, 2023
As head of finance for the Western Military District, Yakina played a key role in financing the war in Ukraine, but this did not go along with Putin’s plans and led to a series of official purges.
The Russian military has long been mired in corruption, which Western observers say is one of the reasons for its dismal performance at the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
It is unclear whether she lived in the apartment where she fell.In a report on a local Telegram channel, Yakina claimed called her husband And before I jumped, I told him I was going to jump. But such claims could also help cover up murders.
Falling from a 9-story building
Dan Rapoport, businessman
Cause of death: Fall from an apartment window in Washington, DC, August 14, 2022
Mr. Rapport was a Russian nightclub magnate and businessman who defected to the United States after speaking out against President Vladimir Putin.
At the time of his death, he was in a dispute with a Russian venture capital firm, claiming that the venture capital firm was trying to defraud him. His wife insisted the death could not have been self-inflicted, and $2,600 in cash, a cell phone and a Florida driver’s license were found in her pockets.
Jump from the 6th floor window of the hospital
Mr. Rabil Maganov, Chairman of Lukoil
Cause of death: Fall from 6th floor window, September 1, 2022
Mr. Maganov ran Russia’s largest oil company (an important source of income for the country), but he dared to criticize President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. The Lukoil board called the invasion “tragic.”
Russian state media declared Maganov’s death a suicide, claiming he jumped from a hospital window while being treated for depression and heart disease. Two people who knew him laughed at the claims to Reuters.
Journalist shot in the head
Natalia Estemirova, historian and human rights defender
Cause of death: On July 15, 2009, he was abducted, shot in the head, and left on the side of the road.
Estemirova taught history at a local high school, worked as a newspaper correspondent and became an outspoken critic of Russia’s human rights abuses in Chechnya. It is where Putin first honed his strongman tactics and military use against civilians.
She screamed at witnesses that she was being kidnapped from her home in the Chechen capital Grozny and was found shot to death hours later. Authorities claimed she was killed in a convenient airstrike by rebels.
Journalists were targeted twice
Anna Politkovskaya, investigative journalist
Cause of Death: Shot on October 7, 2006.
Politkovskaya was born in New York and grew up in Moscow. As a reporter, she wrote articles critical of Russia and its military, particularly the human rights situation in Chechnya, for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, but she antagonized Putin with her highly critical biography of the president.
First, she was poisoned while flying through Russia on a mission, but she survived. She was then shot at close range in the chest, shoulder and head outside her Moscow apartment.
Western intelligence files released by leaker Edward Snowden blame Putin’s FSB for the murder.
Washington dies before Justice Department quiz
Mikhail Leshin, founder of the Russian English-language television network RT
Cause of death: Blunt trauma to the head and acute intoxication, November 5, 2015
Lesin, who once served as an advisor to President Vladimir Putin, rose to become Russia’s media mogul.
But he died in a Washington, D.C., hotel room the day before he was interviewed by the Justice Department for a Kremlin-funded TV channel.
U.S. intelligence agencies believe that his death was the result of a plot to assassinate President Putin.
Liberal dies before FBI meeting
Yuri Shchechechikhin, journalist and opposition lawmaker
Cause of death: mysterious illness.Lost or Destroyed Medical Documents, July 3, 2003
Shchechechikhin, a liberal member of the Russian parliament and a journalist, campaigned against the influence of organized crime. He also blew the whistle on how the Kursk submarine rescue in 2000 went awry, dooming the crew to certain death.
However, just before a trip to the United States where he was scheduled to meet with FBI agents, he became mysteriously ill. Before Alexander Litvinenko himself suffered from radiation poisoning, he suggested that it was caused by the FSB.
Shot fired when liberal candidate ran for election
Sergei Yushenkov, co-chairman of the Free Russia Party
Cause of death: Shot near his home in Moscow on April 17, 2003.
Mr. Yushenkov, a former Russian military officer, promoted liberal causes and was critical of Putin’s signature policy early in his presidency, the war in Chechnya.
Yushenkov was shot hours after registering with the party as a candidate for parliamentary elections.
Oligarch turncoat hanged
Boris Berezovsky goes from Kremlin insider to outspoken critic President Putin’s
Cause of Death: Hanging, March 23, 2013
Berezovsky, a brilliant mathematician and possibly a KGB official, gained control of Russia’s main television channels in the 1990s, used it to help Putin get elected, and founded Putin’s first political party. Established.
His business acumen helped found some of Russia’s biggest companies and meant he knew the oligarch’s deepest financial secrets.
But in 2000, he suddenly rebelled against Putin, sought asylum in London with billions of dollars, and became a vocal critic of the increasingly authoritarian Kremlin leadership.
Thirteen years later, he was found hanged in a locked bathroom at his mansion in Surrey, outside London, with no signs of violence.
Putin’s spokesman claimed that Berezovsky had sent him a letter of apology shortly before his death. His friends rejected the idea.
Death of a four-star general
Alexei Mazlov, Russian general
Cause of death: Sudden death in military hospital, cause unknown, December 25, 2022
Maslow served as Russia’s chief military representative to NATO and supreme commander of Russia’s ground forces until his retirement in 2011, when he achieved the rank of army general, the equivalent of a four-star general in the United States.
As such, he became part of a military leadership that presided over years of corruption and misbehavior and left large parts of the military ill-equipped and unprepared.
His death comes as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine enters its second year without any notable victories and a series of top commanders have been removed from their roles by the Kremlin.
