Long list of Putin critics targeted by the Kremlin

September 2022 – Ravel Maganov’s fatal fall from a hospital window

Ravel Maganov, head of Russian oil giant Lukoil, died when he fell from a sixth floor window in a Moscow hospital. Police suspect he committed suicide, saying he was diagnosed with depression as well as heart problems. Lukoil was the first major Russian company to demand an end to the war in Ukraine.

August 2020 – Alexei Navalny’s underwear contaminated with poison

one of Putin The fiercest critics Alexei Navalny He collapsed on a domestic flight from Tomsk to Moscow and fell into a coma. After the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, Siberia, Navalny received immediate medical treatment. He was then transferred to the Charité Hospital in the German capital, Berlin, where his injury was found poisoned with Novichok, A chemical nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union. After his recovery, Navalny released a recording of a phone conversation in which a suspected FSB agent participated. He admitted the attack. In the recording, which was uploaded to YouTube, the man said the poison was applied to Navalny’s underwear. Russia dismissed the recorded conversation as fake.

August 2019 – Selimkhan Khangoshvili is shot dead in central Berlin

Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a citizen of Georgia and of Chechen origin who once fought against Russia in the Second Chechen War, was shot dead in broad daylight with three bullets to the head and back in Berlin’s Tiergarten. The killer, KGB agent Vadim Krasikov, was arrested at the scene and sentenced to life in prison two years later.

September 2018 – Pyotr Verzilov showed symptoms of poisoning

Pussy Riot artist and activist Pyotr Verzilov reported vision and speech problems and was unable to walk after his court appearance in Moscow. He ran onto the soccer field during the 2018 World Cup Final in Moscow to draw attention to police brutality. Verzilov was also taken to the Charité hospital in Berlin for treatment. Doctors assumed he was poisoned.

March 2018: Poisoned door handle of Sergei Skripal

Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a park bench in the British city of Salisbury, victims of the Novichok attack. While both survived, British citizen Dawn Sturgess, who was also in contact with the nerve agent, died. British police believe that the poison was spread on the doorknob of Sergei Skripal.

February 2015 – Boris Nemtsov is shot dead near the Kremlin

Former and prominent Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Putin critic Boris Nemtsov He was killed while crossing the bridge over the Moskva River near the Kremlin. He was walking home with his girlfriend when a car pulled up behind him. Four bullets were fired in his back and head. And just three hours earlier, Nemtsov criticized Putin during a radio broadcast. In 2017, three Chechens were sentenced to long prison terms for his murder. To this day, who ordered the assassination and the motive remains unknown.

July 2009 – Natalya Estemirova is found dead in a ditch

The body of Natalia Estemirova, a historian and board member of the Russian human rights organization Memorial, was found in a ditch in Ingushetia hours after she was kidnapped outside her home in the Chechen capital, Grozny. She was shot in the head and chest. Estemirova accused Russian security forces and the notorious death squads of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a Putin loyalist, of committing kidnappings and human rights abuses. The murder investigation proved inconclusive.

November 2006 – Alexander Litvinenko poisoned tea

Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent who defected and became a critic of Putin, has died an agonizing death in London after being poisoned with radioactive polonium-210. His book, “Blowing Up Russia,” accused the KGB of orchestrating bombings of apartment buildings in Russia in 1999 and other terrorist attacks in the country to justify the war in Chechnya and bring Vladimir Putin to power. Litvinenko’s tea is said to have been laced with polonium-210 in a London hotel bar. No one was ever held accountable for the murder.

October 2006 – Anna Politkovskaya is murdered in an elevator

Anna Politkovskaya is a dissident journalist and investigative journalist who worked for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta newspaper, shot dead Five bullets in her chest and head in the elevator of the building where she lives. The murder took place on Putin’s birthday. In 2004, Politkovskaya, who had reported on the war in Chechnya and exposed war crimes committed by Russian forces, escaped suspected poisoning on a domestic flight. Five people suspected of involvement in her murder have been given long prison terms, but those who pulled the strings remain at large.

July 2003 – the gruesome death of Yuri Shkochikhin

Novaya Gazeta Journalist Yuri Shekochikhin, who worked in the late 1990s as a Russian opposition deputy fighting corruption and organized crime, has died a grisly and prolonged death of suspected poisoning. His skin sloughed off his body, and his organs came out one by one. The Russian authorities refused to autopsy his body, and his medical records disappeared. A skin sample later analyzed in London found traces of thallium, a toxic heavy metal that was used by the KGB.

April 2003 – Sergei Yushenkov is shot outside his home in Moscow

Sergei Yushenkov, co-chairman of the Liberal Russia Party and deputy of the State Duma, was fatally shot several times in the chest outside his home in Moscow. The murder was never solved. Yushenkov was a member of the State Duma’s Intelligence Committee and a staunch critic of the Chechen war and the KGB’s successor organization, the Federal Security Service.

This article has been translated from German.