Vladimir Putin is certainly not a man you want to mess with, but he does possess a certain degree of subtlety that other leaders could learn from.
We’re talking about you, Kim Jong-Un, because a fondness for executing dissidents with anti-aircraft weapons (or poisoning them at busy airports) doesn’t go by unnoticed (HERE).
Putin seems to do things a little differently, and given what happened last Thursday it’s worth looking back at how some of his critics have met their demise.
First up is that incident from last week, asylum seeking Russian Denis Voronenkov murdered in Ukraine in broad daylight – OK, this one wasn’t so subtle.
Voronenkov fled Russia last year, criticising Putin whilst stating that he wouldn’t live in fear whilst seeking asylum in Ukraine.
Here’s how that panned out:
With the help of the Washington Post let’s look at a few of those suspicious deaths:
Boris Nemtsov, 2015
In Feb. 2015, just hours after urging the public to join a march against Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine, Nemtsov was shot four times in the back by an unknown assailant within view of the Kremlin. Putin took “personal control” of the investigation into Nemtsov’s murder, but the killer remains at large.
Boris Berezovsky, 2013
His falling out with Putin led to his self-exile in the United Kingdom, where he vowed to bring down the president…Berezovsky was found dead inside a locked bathroom at his home in the United Kingdom, a noose around his neck, in what was at first deemed a suicide.
However, the coroner’s office could not determine the cause of death.
Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova, 2009
Markelov was a human rights lawyer known for representing Chechen civilians in human rights cases again the Russian military…Markelov was shot by a masked gunman near the Kremlin. Baburova, also a journalist from Novaya Gazeta, was fatally shot as she tried to help him. Russian authorities said a neo-Nazi group was behind the killings, and two members were convicted of the deaths.
Natalia Estemirova, 2009
Natalya Estemirova was a journalist who investigated abductions and murders that had become commonplace in Chechnya… Estemirova was kidnapped outside her home, shot several times — including a point-blank shot in the head — and dumped in the nearby woods. Nobody has been convicted of her murder.
Anna Politkovskaya, 2006
Anna Politkovskaya was a Russian reporter for Novaya Gazeta whose book, “Putin’s Russia,” accused the Kremlin leader of turning the country into a police state…She was shot at point-blank range in an elevator in her building. Five men were convicted of her murder, but the judge found that it was a contract killing, with $150,000 of the fee paid by a person whose identity was never discovered. Putin denied any Kremlin involvement in Politkovskaya’s killing…
Alexander Litvinenko, 2006
“Alexander Litvinenko was a former KGB agent who died three weeks after drinking a cup of tea” laced with deadly polonium-210 at a London hotel, as Business Insider wrote a year ago. “A British inquiry found that Litvinenko was poisoned by Russian agents Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, who were acting on orders that had ‘probably been approved'” by Putin. Russia refused to extradite them, and in 2015 the Russian president granted Lugovoi a medal for “services to the motherland.”
At least here at home we enjoy the freedom to call our politician all kinds of foul names, reasons for which are never very scarce.
If you want to read the rest of that Washington Post article you can head over HERE.
[source:washpost]
