Boris Nemtsov’s murder was called the shot in the back of the Russian opposition. But in Russia, the people who could damage Vladimir Putin’s career suffered a sudden death or were murdered before. Murders on request, secret suicides and sudden deaths have accompanied Putin since he came to power.
1998. Prelude?
They began even earlier. And but for one of them, Colonel Putin would not have been the president of today’s Russia. Galina Starovoitova was trying to resist it. Twice, in 1992 and in 1997, the member of the Supreme Council lobbied the adoption of the law on lustration, prohibiting among others, KGB officers from getting high-profile positions. She was shot on November 20, 1998, at her house in Saint-Petersburg. Vladimir Putin was then first deputy head of the presidential administration. A little more than a year later, Boris Yeltsin introduced him as his successor.
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2000. Two deaths within a month
And the person who had been laughed at and just a few years ago carried Saint-Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak’s brief-case became the president of Russia. Besides, there were rumors about the secret business that Putin took care of while working in the City Hall of the northern capital. But his former boss, who put the young KGB officer into politics, never confirmed it. He suddenly died in the second month of Putin’s presidency. Immediately, there were rumors that he knew a lot about the activities of Putin. There were also rumors that the 63-year-old Sobchak had a Viagra and alcohol overdose. The investigation did not find any traces of poisoning or drugs. The official cause of death is heart attack.
– There are three ways to influence people: blackmail, vodka, and death threats – Artem Borovik quoted Vladimir Putin in one of his last publications. The reputed journalist, president of the Sovershenno Sekretno (Top Secret) media holding, collected information on financial fraud of Putin and the Yeltsin “family”. He died in a plane crash three weeks after the death of Anatoly Sobchak.
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2002. The last flight of the ‘Governor General’
General Alexander Lebed – military man, who in addition to carrying out orders could say a lot of what he thought, also died in the plane crash. When sent to Transnistria, supported by Russia, he exposed the corruption of local separatist authorities. When sent to Chechnya as a representative of Boris Yeltsin, he signed a peace treaty with Aslan Maskhadov. Then he had a conflict with the ministers of defense and interior, which led to his resignation. He became enormously popular as governor of the Krasnodar region, where he was called the “Governor General” and was seen as the successor to Yeltsin. Was he going to use it to resist Putin after his first presidential term? The Mi-8 helicopter with General crashed on April 28, 2002.
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2004. Broken elevator
Putin was elected to the second term in March 2004. And in July, Paul Khlebnikov, editor of the Russian edition of Forbes, was assassinated. It happened before the very entrance to the office. The journalist, shot four times, was taken to hospital but did not make it to the operation room … the elevator broke down and the doctors helplessly saw the wounded man die. Paul Khlebnikov, an American of the Russia descent, was the author of the book ‘Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia’, in which he accused the oligarchs of usurping the national wealth. Apparently, Boris Berezovsky had to take revenge on him, for he was the protagonist of the article “Godfather of the Kremlin”, the work that the author spoke about for a few hours before the murder. There were also suggestions that there could be another reason for the murder, the article still planned – about the business activities conducted by the Russian authorities and generals during the war with Chechnya.
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2006. The ‘Chechen trace’
It is then that for the first time the ‘Chechen trace’ is clearly visible – both in terms of killers and the topics that could cost the people covering them in Russia their lives. It is what happened to Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist of Novaya Gazeta, the author of nonfiction books about the war in Chechnya, which reveal the actions of the Kremlin and Ramzan Kadyrov who was ruling Grozny under full protection of Kremlin. The journalist was shot dead in the elevator of her home on October 7, 2006 – on the birthday of Vladimir Putin. The murderers were Chechens, then the tangible chain of the customers finally broke. Back in 2004, there was an attempt to poison the journalist on board the aircraft, which she flew to become a mediator in negotiations with the terrorists who had occupied the local school. What the ‘unknown toxins’ in the tea failed to do then, was done two years later by a hitman.
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Alexander Litvinenko was left no chance. Lieutenant Colonel betrayed his company: he blamed the blown up apartment buildings in Moscow, Volgodonsk and Buynaksk in 1999 on FSB rather than Chechen terrorists. Following this provocation, Yeltsin decided to appoint as his successor a ‘strong silovik’, who could deal with terrorism in Russia. In addition, Litvinenko accused his former leaders of instructing him to kill Boris Berezovsky. Litvinenko died of radiation sickness, he was slowly killed by polonium put in his tea. It came from Russia, as the British investigation team discovered.
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2009 “The Year of lawyers”
As with Politkovskaya, Chechnya was also point of interest of the lawyer Stanislav Markelov. In particular, he was investigating the cases of the Russian war crimes committed towards the civilian population and were related to the terrorist attacks on the Dubrovka theater. As a result of a special operation in the theater, not only all the terrorists but also 130 hostages died. Markelov was shot in the back of his head. Together with him, the killer shot Anastasia Baburova, left activist and employee of Novaya Gazeta. Her last, posthumous, publication was an interview with Markelov on the topic of high-profile ‘Budanov case’. Budanov was an officer of the Russian army accused of kidnapping, molesting and murdering a 18-year-old Chechen girl. The same year, lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, working in the Russian section of the American company Hermitage Capital Management, gets on the trail of giant financial fraud in the Russian tax authorities. He reports on them, and as a result, he gets arrested. After 11 months under arrest, he died in a prison hospital. The death certificate contained records of acute pancreatitis and traumatic brain injuries (references to which later disappeared).
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2013. Death of the symbolic figure
Boris Berezovsky, the alleged victim of the murdered Alexander Litvinenko, survived him by seven years. The grey figure and banker of Boris Yeltsin, one of the most influential oligarchs in those days, he spent the last years of his life in London. Tortured by the processes that had been launched in Russia, he helplessly watched his once huge fortune sink. He met Putin in the early 90s, when the KGB agent worked with the Mayor Sobchak in Saint-Petersburg. Putin liked Berezovsky and brought him up whenever the suite of the seriously ill Yeltsin was looking for a successor. The all-powerful oligarch probably expected that the head of the FSB, as the new president, will put under control the power structures, but would not interfere in the business (especially his business). It soon became clear that Putin had his own idea of ruling Russian, and the word ‘gratitude’ was absolutely foreign to him. Very soon they had their first open conflict, Putin took ORT from Berezovsky and the tycoon fled to Britain. He unsuccessfully tried to organize a political opposition force in exile and anti-Putin media. On March 23, the world learned the news of his suicide.
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Cezary Goliński, belsat.eu/en/
