London
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foes and critics have often met with violent deaths at the very peak of their conflicts with the Kremlin leader during his nearly quarter-century in power, source report said.
Alexei Navalny’s death, which many foreign leaders and supporters say is murder, came after he was banished to an Arctic Circle prison, where he was regularly thrown in a punishment cell, exposed to the elements and significantly malnourished.
Putin’s other foes have been targeted in diverse ways: shootings, poisonings and even a plane crash. Many of the deaths are never solved and remain listed as accidents and suicides, leaving open the question of just how many of his enemies Putin has dispatched with over the years, source reported.
A number of former members of the Russian intelligence services who defected to the west have been targeted in poisonings since 2000.
Putin’s dark methods first came to international attention during the case of Alexander Litvinenko, a former member of the FSB security services who had become an opponent of Putin and died of polonium-210 poisoning in London in 2006. His killers, who both had links to the intelligence services, were accused of lacing his tea with a radioactive element, source reported. The former head of the Wagner paramilitary group Yevgeny Prigozhin was on poor terms with Putin when he arrived in Moscow in August last year. He was there for talks with Putin after an aborted mutiny that saw his mercenaries seize the city of Rostov and march toward Moscow.
