From poisonings to shootings and falls from windows, and now to possible plane crashes, the Kremlin has been blamed for numerous deadly attacks, writes The Guardian in an analysis of the Russian regime.

The attacks have varied in form, from novcocc underwear and polonium tea to outright assassinations by bullet, but during Putin’s 23-year presidency, Kremlin critics, journalists and fugitive spies have been subjected to the same ruthless treatment because they opposed his rule.

The fatal crash of a private jet carrying Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, two months after he launched a rebellion against the Russian military leadership, well, those two months seem to have led to a new method of the Kremlin’s recipe for murder.

Although the Kremlin insisted on Friday that it was an absolute lie and had nothing to do with the plane crash, Prigozhin’s long-running feud with the military and the armed rebellion he launched in June could have given him a compelling reason for the Russian state to retaliate. .

His death, along with that of other members of the mercenary group who were also on board the plane, including Dmitry Utkin, who is believed to be the founder or co-founder, is an example of the actions of the Russian state against its critics, including journalists, human rights defenders and former associates, who “stepped on light bulb”.

Below we present some of the most famous cases of apparent murder or attempted murder.

poisoning

Russian special services have turned political poisoning into a kind of art. It is believed that Soviet scientists worked for decades on the production of poisons without color and odor. According to a 1954 interview with a KGB agent, the poison was tested on prisoners who were still alive.

Although poisoning now appears to be an outdated method of killing, observers say it has the advantage of being a discreet method of killing. This can be done without immediate detection, allowing the criminal to flee the scene and providing the Kremlin with plausible deniability.

The two most famous cases of poisoning linked to the Kremlin were registered in the United Kingdom.

Russia’s covert methods first drew international attention in the case of Oleksandr Litvinenko, a Putin opponent who died of polonium-219 poisoning in London in 2006. Shortly before his death, Lytvynenko told reporters that the FSB (the new Russian security service) still runs Soviet-era poison laboratories. A British investigation later concluded that Litvinenko was killed by Russian agents, probably with Putin’s permission.

More than a decade later, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence agent turned double agent in the UK, survived poisoning with a paralyzing agent called “novococcus” in Salisbury. Novociok means “newcomer” and refers to a group of paralyzing agents manufactured in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s to evade international restrictions on chemical weapons.

Shortly after the attempt to kill Skripal, which later ended in the death of the British woman Dawn Sturges, who unknowingly doused her wrists with novochok. Putin called the double agent a “traitor” and a “scoundrel.” Shortly afterwards, in another interview, Putin said he could forgive anything but “treason”.

Moscow also has a reputation for persecuting the opposition.

In August 2020, oppositionist Oleksii Navalny, who is currently in prison, became ill while flying from Siberia to Moscow. Later, Navalny was taken to Germany for treatment, where doctors determined that he had been poisoned by novococcus.

An investigation by the Bellingcat portal revealed at least eight FSB agents who were allegedly behind the poisoning of Navalny. One of the suspected agents admitted his involvement in the conspiracy during a telephone conversation with the opposition leader.

Russian intelligence services also reportedly poisoned other, lesser-known Russians, such as writer Dmytro Bykov and Petro Verzilov, the unofficial spokesman for the punk band Pussy Riot, who was later sent to Germany for treatment shortly after he fell ill.

An investigation by the independent news portal Insider recently claimed that three Russian journalists known for their anti-Kremlin stance may have been poisoned in other countries such as Germany and Georgia.

Shot dead

Although poison seems to have become the weapon of choice in Putin’s Russia, several of Putin’s opponents have been shot over time.

In 2006, Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovska, who exposed human rights violations, was shot right outside the house where she lived, when she was returning from the supermarket. Putin was 54, and Politkovskaya was 48. Five men and a former policeman were later found guilty of murder, but those close to Anna Politkovskaya said they were most likely paid by people on someone’s orders.

Perhaps even more surprising was the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, a prominent opposition leader, in central Moscow in 2015. Nemtsov was shot four times in the back by an unknown assailant right outside the Kremlin.

A joint investigation by Insider, the BBC and Bellingcat revealed that before Nemtsov was killed on the bridge, Nemtsov had been under surveillance by FSB agents for almost a year.

Unexplained deaths

There were also reports that a number of famous Russian officials died under mysterious circumstances – allegedly suicide or falling from a great height.

In 2013, Boris Berezovsky was found hanged in the bathroom of his home in Ascot. Berezovsky was a Kremlin confidant who later became critical of Putin’s government, and who went into exile in the United Kingdom in the early 2000s.

A mystery that will probably forever remain unsolved is the death of Kyryll Stremousov, the Russian-appointed governor of the Kherson region of Ukraine, who, according to Russian officials, died in a car accident on the same day that Ukrainian forces liberated Kherson in the fall of 2022.

Stremousov, one of the staunchest supporters of the Russian occupation and known for his aggressive statements on social media, suggested in one of his daily posts that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, a close ally of Putin, should be shot. His suspicious death was immediately written off as the fault of the Russian special services, which wanted to get rid of uncomfortable gossip that was already unhelpful to the authorities.

The material was created with the support of Rador