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CHILLING documents declassified by US intelligence have revealed the names of Vladimir Putin’s political foes who became his “assassination targets”.
Many influential Russians have died in murky circumstances throughout Putin’s 25 years of “catastrophic” rule after opposing, criticising, or crossing the resentful despot.
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From plane crashes to poisonings and a series of mystery falls from windows, the curious deaths show the long and bloodthirsty reach of his intelligence services.
Many security officials have so far blamed the Kremlin for these mysterious killings, with security experts claiming these were ordered by Putin to pursue his political ambitions.
However, for the first time, a credible intelligence report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence established the Kremlin’s ties to many of these targeted killings.
The highly classified memo, which has now been released following a Mandatory Declassification Review, request from a Bloomberg journalist, reveals that Putin directly ordered several assassinations.
The intelligence assessment said: “We assess that Putin probably authorizes assassinations of high-profile figures abroad.
“The Russian Government will continue to use its intelligence services and other loyal entities to assassinate suspected terrorists as well as individuals abroad whom it deems as threats to […] Vladimir Putin’s regime.
“Our confidence level for this judgment is high, based on official Russian statements and the findings of foreign governments in
countries where assassinations have taken place.”
The report describes that the “first clear case” of Putin ordering an assassination abroad took place in 2004 in Qatar when Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, the former head of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, was assassinated.
Authorities found that the murder was carried out by officers from Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), Anatoly Belashkov and Vasily Bogachev, according to Pravada.
A Qatari court sentenced them to life imprisonment, but they were later extradited to Russia where they were expected to serve the rest of their senate.
However, Russian prison authorities later claimed that they never found them.
In 2006, former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko was killed in London.
The 44-year-old former Russian spy died an agonising death three weeks after radioactive polonium-210 was slipped into his cup of tea.
He had fled to Britain after criticising President Putin, and after his death, it was revealed MI6 had paid him.
His murder was suspected to have been personally signed off by Putin, something the Kremlin has always denied.
Two of his cronies, Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi, were accused of carrying out the hit.
The pair, who both face US sanctions, are wanted in the UK for Litvinenko’s murder.
The US intelligence report said about the assassination: “The official British inquiry into Litvinenko’s murder concluded that Putin ‘probably approved’ it, based upon a review of physical evidence and decisionmaking on matters related to the security services”
In 2012, Russian businessman Alexander Perepelichny Alexander Perepilichnyy, 44, collapsed in Weybridge, Surrey, after spending the night with his mistress in Paris.
The US intelligence document claims that he was poisoned, saying: “[Perepilichnyy] was reportedly assassinated with a biological toxin in the UK in 2012 shortly before he was scheduled to testify about a Kremlin tax fraud network.”
The intelligence also mentions that Alexander Bednov, a separatist leader who was a vocal critic of the Kremlin, was killed on orders of Vladimir Putin in 2015.
It read: “At least some key separatist figures in Ukraine’s Donbas Region who resisted Kremlin orders, such as Oleksandr Bednov, have probably been killed at Moscow’s behest, reflecting Russia’s priority on maintaining control over the region.”
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While the document reveals a handful of high-profile assassination cases that are understood to have ties with Moscow, dozens of other Russia critics have died under mysterious circumstances.
Putin’s most formidable opponent Alexei Navalny, 47, died in February in the strict-regime Polar Wolf jail in the Russian Arctic while serving a 19-year sentence on trumped-up “extremism” charges.
Navalny was believed to have been killed with one punch to the heart after being forced to spend hours in freezing temperatures.
Experts said the brutal method was once a “hallmark of the KGB”.
Endlessly vocal Putin critic and the head of the Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin, 62, died in August last year in a fireball private jet crash, according to Russia’s investigative committee.
He was a close confidant of Putin before he launched a rebellion in June last year, vowing to “punish” Russia for a deadly missile attack on one of his training camps in eastern Ukraine.
Putin blasted the uprising as a “mortal blow” to Russia and “a knife in the back of our people”.
Meanwhile, a Russian TV chef who fled to London after opposing Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine war was found dead in a Belgrade hotel.
Alexei Zimin, 52, died suddenly on a promotional tour to the Serbian capital where authorities said his cause of death remained “unclear”.
Zimin – Russia’s answer to Jamie Oliver – met the British celebrity chef and was also a pal of Hollywood star Jude Law.
He is the latest in a long line of Putin enemies to die suddenly since the start of the bloody conflict in February 2022.
In December 2023, Vladimir Egorov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, plunged to his death from a third-floor window in Moscow.
The 46-year-old Egorov was a wealthy and prominent politician in oil-rich Tobolsk in western Siberia.
Just weeks prior, the deputy editor of Putin’s favourite propaganda newspaper was found dead aged only 35.
The body of Anna Tsareva, 35, was discovered at her home in the capital’s Bolshoy Tishinsky Lane – nearly a year after the death of her boss Vladimir Sungorkin, 68.
In February of the same year, a top Russian defence official and a key figure in the funding of Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine Marina Yankina, 58, also fell 160ft to her death in St Petersburg.
She was head of the financial support department of the Ministry of Defence for the Western Military District, which is closely involved in the dictator’s invasion.
Earlier this year, the chief editor of the warmonger’s state-run TV empire was also discovered lifeless after a suspected poisoning.
Zoya Konovalova, 48, who ran a channel operating near the frontlines of Mad Vlad’s illegal war, was found alongside her ex-husband.
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