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LANGUISHING in a bone-chilling gulag in the Arctic Circle, opposition leader Alexei Navalny bore no possible threat to tyrant Vladimir Putin.
Yet — riddled with dictators’ paranoia many believe the Kremlin butcher ordered the democracy fighter’s death.
Ruthless Vladimir Putin has blood on his hands as critics dieReuters
Alexander Litvinenko, 2006, poisonedGetty
GettyAnd, like a spate of other state-sanctioned murders, Putin doesn’t give a damn who knows it.
From plane crashes to poisonings and a series of mystery falls from windows, the reach of his intelligence services is long and bloodthirsty.
With presidential elections next month, many think Putin ordered Navalny’s death as a perverted show of strength to enemies inside – and outside – Russia.
US President Joe Biden said there was “no doubt” Vladimir Putin was to blame for his death.
While his widow Yulia Navalnaya said her husband was poisoned because Putin “couldn’t break him”.
Whether Navalny was actually murdered last week or had succumbed to years of savage mistreatment, the figure of suspicion points to Putin.
The Russian president had already broken Navalny’s health after his spies smeared toxin novichok in his underpants in 2020.
Caged on trumped up charges, he’d spent much of the last three years in solitary confinement with bright lights left on at all times.
Opposition activist Sergei Biziukin said: “They killed him.
“Even if not on that very day, several years of torture is also a way of killing.”
Like some psychotic mafia don, Putin likes to serve his revenge cold.
When deranged warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin and his mercenaries launched a mutiny, Putin bided his time before meting out a despot’s justice.
Died in a fireball
A one time Putin stooge, Prigozhin’s irregulars seized Rostov-on-Don and were bearing down on Moscow before a deal was brokered by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.
Putin – who called the coup a “betrayal”, “treason” and “a stab in the back” – waited two months before exacting vengeance.
A private jet was ferrying Prigozhin and his lieutenants from Moscow to Saint Petersburg when it exploded at 28,000ft, killing all 10 people on board.
As the plane hit the ground in a fireball, Putin – his eyes narrow, with a thin-lipped smile – was handing out medals at a ceremony commemorating World War II.
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Yury Voronov 2022 ‘suicide’East2West
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Boris Berezovsky 2013 ‘suicide’Getty
AP:Associated PressDefence expert Professor Michale Clarke said Putin “was sending a stark warning to potential rebels and the country at large: ‘I’m the mafia godfather, and don’t forget it.’”
Putin sent a message of sympathy to Prigozhin’s family. British financier and activist Bill Browder said it was straight out of The Godfather – “kill your enemies then express condolences”.
The Kremlin wasn’t always so nakedly brazen in ridding itself of those it considered enemies, leaving at least some plausible deniability.
In 2006 investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down in a lift in her block of flats. It was October 7 – Putin’s 54th birthday.
An outspoken critic of Putin and of his regime’s human rights abuses in Chechnya, she had received death threats and was subject to an alleged poisoning before her murder.
In 2004 she had written that journalists in Russia were now forced to either publish independently on the internet or “it’s total servility to Putin”.
She added: “Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial – whatever our special services, Putin’s guard dogs, see fit.”
Five men were later convicted in what was a contract killing. As to who paid the £150,000 for the hit, it remained a “person unknown”.
Two years later, former KGB agent and defector Alexander Litvinenko became violently ill after drinking tea laced with polonium-210 at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair, London.
Alexander had no doubt who was behind his murder – two former KGB assassins sent by Putin.
In hospital, he called detectives from his deathbed, saying: “I need to report a murder . . . mine”.
Alexander, vomiting blood and pieces of his disintegrating stomach, died three weeks after drinking the polonium aged 37.
One associate, Andrei Nekrasov, revealed that just hours before he fell unconscious, Alexander told him: “The bastards got me but they won’t get everybody.”
The day after Alexander’s death Putin sneered: “Mr Litvinenko is, unfortunately, not Lazarus.”
A British inquiry found that Russian agents had killed Litvinenko, “probably” with Putin’s approval. The Kremlin denied any involvement.
In 2018, the deadly tentacles of Putin’s spy network reached Britain once more.
Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer, and daughter Yulia were found barely conscious on a park bench in Salisbury, Wiltshire.
Putin’s assassins had smeared deadly poisonous novichok on Skripal’s front door handle.
The pair survived but Dawn Sturgess died after she and partner Charlie Rowley found a fake perfume bottle containing novichok.
Two Russian agents who it was later claimed were behind the poisonings ludicrously said they had come to Salisbury to see its cathedral’s “famous for its 123-metre spire”.
Putin described Skripal as a “scum and a traitor to the motherland.”
Another Russian who had fled to the UK also died in circumstances that his friends trace back to Moscow..
In 2013 the body of oligarch Boris Berezovsky was found on the bathroom floor of his Ascot home.
A scarf was round his neck and a piece of the same material was tied to the shower rail above his body.
His friend Akhmed Zakayev said: “Nobody among those who knew Berezovsky thinks it was suicide.
“We all know the Russian secret service works on a world stage against Putin’s opponents and anyone who criticises his government. This death is part of a pattern.”
A coroner later recorded an open verdict.
‘Pure mafia’
More suspicious deaths were to follow. Nikolai Glushkov, former director of Russia’s national airline Aeroflot, was granted political asylum in the UK in 2017.
He was found strangled with a dog lead at his home in New Malden, southwest London a year later.
In 2021, a coroner ruled he was unlawfully killed, with evidence suggesting his death was made to look like a suicide.
A pathology report said Nikolai’s injuries “could be consistent with a neck-hold, applied from behind, and the assailant being behind the victim”.
The body count in Russia itself has continued throughout Putin’s reign.
Among the most high profile was whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky was detained in 2008 after reporting a £185m fraud by Russian tax officials.
The Russian tax adviser was then arrested himself and, despite repeated pleas for medical help, died in detention aged 37.
His cause of death was given as toxic shock and heart failure brought on by pancreatitis, which had been diagnosed by a prison doctor but not treated.
He was also injured by guards beating him with a rubber truncheon.
Sergei’s death led to an international outcry. The 2012 US Magnitsky Act allows America to freeze assets of Russia officials allegedly involved in human rights violations. A similar law – which allows visas to be denied – was also passed in the UK.
In 2015 opposition politician and arch Putin critic Boris Nemtsov was gunned down on a bridge outside the Kremlin.
The 55-year-old had spoken out about Putin’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Russian authorities convicted five Chechens of his murder but the mastermind was never found.
Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine at least 11 wealthy Russians have died since in circumstances some have questioned. Three were alleged to have killed their families before committing suicide.
Some have pointed to Russia’s high suicide rate, others suggest they may have been lent on to provide finance for the war.
British financier and activist Bill Browder said: “These people all sit in front of large cash flows or assets. This is pure mafia.”
The deaths included a number who mysteriously toppled from windows.
In December 2022, Russian tycoon Pavel Antov is believed to have “fallen from a hotel terrace” in Rayagada, India, on December 25 days after his 65th birthday.
The politician and millionaire had criticized Putin’s war with Ukraine on WhatsApp following a missile attack in Kyiv but quickly deleted the message and claimed that someone else had written it.
Ravil Maganov, 67, the head of Russia’s second-largest oil producer Lukoil, also fell from a window in 2022 after he called for “the soonest termination of the armed conflict.”
Businessman Dan Rapoport publicly condemned the Russia-Ukraine war on social media multiple times and emphasized his support for Ukraine,.
He was discovered dead in front of a high-rise apartment building in Washington, DC, in August 2022. US authorities said his manner of death was “undetermined”.
Activist Bill Browder said: “I think the circumstances of his death are extremely suspicious.
“Whenever someone who is in a negative view of the Putin regime dies suspiciously, one should rule out foul play, not rule it in.”
While shipping magnate Alexander Subbotin, 43, a former Lukoil chief, died in the same year following bizarre suggestions he was treated with toad venom to cure a hangover and suffered a heart attack.
And also in 2022 Yuri Voronov, 61, who had links to energy giant Gazprom was found dead, floating in his swimming pool with a gunshot wound to his head. A Grand Power pistol nearby and several spent cases at the bottom of the pool.
While Vladislav Avayev, 51, a former Gazprombank vice-president, and Sergey Protosenya, 55, a boss at the Russian gas giant Novotek, died in alleged murder-suicides in April 2022.
They were reported to have gunned down their wives and teenage daughters before turning their weapons on themselves.
In March 2022 Putin had venomously warned that he would spit out those he considers traitors “like gnats”.
A warped and cold-hearted killer, who by rights should face international justice.
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Sergei & Yulia Skripal, 2018, survived poisonRex Features
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