When Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died suddenly in prison,
Navalny's wife and many others blamed Vladimir Putin. But Navalny
wasn't the only enemy of Putin's to die under mysterious circumstances.
Alexei Navalny was not only one of the most vocal of Vladimir Putin's critics,
but he was largely viewed as the biggest internal threat to his regime. He was
at the head of his own political entity, and his organized protests,
human rights work, and exposés into Russia's elite galvanized the public.
Navalny was targeted by several attacks that made it clear that his life was at risk, and led to him
recovering outside of Russia. When he returned in 2021, he was immediately arrested. The 47-year-old
Navalny was looking at the next three decades in jail, when it was announced that he had died after
returning from a walk and collapsing. In spite of the February 2024 reports, Navalny's family
has said they're not sure what to believe. His wife, Yulia, also issued a statement that said:
"Putin and his government ... lie incessantly. But if this is true,
I want Putin, his entire entourage, Putin's friends, his government to know that they
will bear responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family, to my husband."
Others have also made it clear that they had no questions about
responsibility. Navalny's chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, said:
"If this is true, then it's not 'Navalny died,' but 'Putin killed Navalny.'"
"Make no mistake, Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny's death."
In June of 2023, the Wagner paramilitary group staged an uprising against Putin.
The action was over almost as quickly as it got started, and although there
was a lot of news officially unverified, it was confirmed that the head of the uprising
was Yevgeny Prigozhin. While many expected Putin's camp to retaliate quickly and with
finality, something surprising happened: Nothing much at all.
Prigozhin's mutiny was reportedly being looked at as an ill-informed choice made in error. Unlikely?
Perhaps, but it wasn't the end of the story. In August of the same year, Prigozhin was killed in
a plane crash, along with nine others. The plane went down about half an hour outside of Moscow,
and the official word from within Russia was that he had been killed by "traitors to Russia."
Russia's official media didn't report on his death at all, and other media
outlets — including the Associated Press — pointed to the Kremlin's silence over
his death and the investigation into the cause of the plane crash as looking incredibly suspicious.
Yevgeny Khamaganov was a Buryat journalist who was known for his articles criticizing the federal
government. Writing for InformPolis around 2004 to 2005, Khamaganov was previously detained by
the Organized Crime Division and questioned about his trip to Irkutsk and the Ust-Ordynsky district.
Khamaganov worked out of Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buryatia. He briefly returned
to his home village after attackers broke his neck in July 2015, but on February 27,
2017, Khamaganov returned to Ulan-Ude.
At the time of his death, Khamaganov was the editor-in-chief of The Site of the
Buryat People and Asia-Russia Daily. Although it's unclear exactly what happened, Khamaganov
was hospitalized on March 10. Some reports claim it was after being beaten by unknown attackers,
while other reports claim that it was because of complications from diabetes. On March 16,
Khamaganov passed away in the hospital. A precise cause of death has never been determined.
Sergei Yushenkov was one of the leaders of the Liberal Russia party. He was described
as an outspoken advocate of human rights who was openly critical of Putin's administration,
the FSB, and their actions in the Chechen Republic. But on April 17,
2003, just hours after registering the Liberal Russia party for the parliamentary elections,
Yushenkov was shot and murdered outside of his home in Moscow.
Mikhail Kodanev was convicted of contracting the assassination of
Yushenkov for $60,000 in order to take control of the Liberal Russia party's funding. However,
Boris Berezovsky, who was an associate of Kodanev,
maintained that Russian authorities were responsible for the assassination.
"What we need to is understand Vladimir Putin for what he is: A murderer and a thug."
Nikolai Andrushchenko made a name for himself as a journalist at Novy Peterburg,
a newspaper he co-founded in the 1990s. As a journalist,
Andrushchenko focused on local corruption, criminal activities,
and police brutality. He was also an early critic of President Putin and his administration.
On March 9, 2017, on the way to a meeting, Andrushchenko was reportedly ambushed and
beaten by unknown attackers. He wasn't found for several hours, until a passerby
noticed him lying unconscious in the street with a head wound. Taken to the hospital,
Andrushchenko underwent brain surgery and was put into a medically induced coma. However,
he'd never wake up again and died on April 19.
Although some sources claimed that Andrushchenko had hit his head during a drunken fall,
the journalist had publicly spoken about being attacked twice before March 9.
Yuri Shchekochikhin started working at Novaya Gazeta in 1996, reporting on corruption,
organized crime, and the Chechen conflict. Yuri campaigned against the war in Chechnya
under Boris Yeltsin, who served as Russia's president from 1991 to 1999,
and continued his opposition under Putin's regime as well.
After publishing an article for Novaya Gazeta on how the prosecutor-general's
office had taken a bribe of $2 million to stop an investigation into a smuggling and
corruption case involving a Moscow furniture store, Shchekochikhin started receiving death
threats. After the corruption case went nowhere, Shchekochikhin wrote a letter to President Putin,
asking him to look into the case in April 2002. After over a year, still nothing had come of the
corruption case. So Shchekochikhin published another article about it on June 2, 2003.
Then, on June 17, Shchekochikhin fell ill with flu-like symptoms. Within a few days,
he was hospitalized as his organs started failing one by one. He also lost his hair,
and his skin started peeling off his body. On July 3, 2003,
Shchekochikhin died in the hospital. Doctors diagnosed Shchekochikhin with Lyell's Syndrome,
but his clinical test results were classified as "medical secret."
Anna Politkovskaya got into journalism early, working as a reporter for Izvestia
right after college, and then becoming a journalist for Novaya Gazeta in 1999. At
Novaya Gazeta, Politkovskaya became nationally known for her reporting,
especially due to her writing about the Second Chechen War.
Traveling through Chechnya and Ingushetia, Politkovskaya reported on the human rights
abuses that were taking place on both sides of the conflict. She was also critical of Ramzan Kadyrov,
who was installed by Vladimir Putin as the prime minister of Chechnya. In her last interview with
the news website Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, Politkovskaya gave this description of Kadyrov:
"[Kadyrov is] a puppet [...] coward armed to the teeth and surrounded
by security guards. I don't think he will become president [of Chechnya]."
Less than one year after Politkovskaya's murder,
Putin named Kadyrov as acting president of Chechnya. Politkovskaya was also vocally
critical of Putin and wrote several books, such as Putin's Russia, that denounced the
corruption and human rights abuses enabled and promoted by Putin and his administration.
On October 7, 2006, Politkovskaya was found dead in the elevator of her Moscow apartment
building. She had been shot five times, with four of the shots fired at point-blank
range. Six men were sentenced to prison for the murder, and although her murder
was considered a contract killing, it's never been proven who paid for the assassination.
Alexander Litvinenko joined the KGB in 1988 and continued his work as the Russian spy organization
became the FSB in the 1990s. But in 1998, Litvinenko accused the FSB of illegal activities
and exposed a plot to murder Boris Berezovsky, who would later be assassinated in 2013.
Litvinenko was briefly arrested for, quote, "abusing his office." After being acquitted,
he fled to the United Kingdom in 2000, where he was granted asylum. There,
Litvinenko wrote two books, including Blowing Up Russia, in which he accused FSB agents of illegal
and terroristic activities such as perpetrating the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings. Litvinenko
was also outspoken in his criticism of Putin and his human rights violations in Chechnya.
On November 1, 2006, after meeting Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitriy Kovtun at the Millennium Hotel in
London, Litvinenko fell ill. On November 23, Litvinenko died from acute radiation injury,
the same day that doctors were finally able to attribute his illness to polonium-210. In
September 2021, the European Court of Human Rights found that it was beyond a reasonable
doubt that Litvinenko's assassination had been carried out by Lugovoy and Kovtun.
"Did you kill Alexander Litvinenko?"
"Of course not. I want to stress that officially I'm just a witness and not even a suspect."
A 2016 British inquiry also concluded that the killing was likely directed by the FSB. Although
the Russian administration has repeatedly denied involvement in Litvinenko's murder,
Russian authorities have also failed to carry out
an investigation or prove that the assassination was a rogue operation.
"I think it will alter the way that millions and
millions of people around the world view Mr. Putin."
Sergei Magnitsky worked as a tax adviser for the investment company Hermitage Capital,
which Russian authorities started investigating for tax avoidance in the late 2000s.
On June 4, 2007, authorities raided Hermitage Capital's Moscow offices. After the raid,
Magnitsky alleged that officials from the Russian Interior Ministry were able to fraudulently take
over companies belonging to Hermitage Capital and get $230 million out of the Russian tax system.
However, after Magnitsky presented formal complaints to the authorities in 2008,
the subsequent investigative team ended up arresting Magnitsky. Magnitsky was held in
detention for 11 months, and on July 1, 2009, he was diagnosed with pancreatitis and gallstones.
An operation was scheduled, but on the day of the operation Magnitsky was transferred
to Butyrka prison, which lacked the medical equipment and facilities necessary to treat him.
"They would deny him food at various times, deny him water."
This was also the sixth time that Magnitsky was moved to another detention center. On November 16,
2009, Magnitsky was found dead in his cell after his condition had deteriorated without
treatment. The European Court of Human Rights determined that Magnitsky was imprisoned out of
revenge and that the state failed to protect the prisoner's life and health. However,
there was no mention of whether Magnitsky was murdered in the court's decision.
Starting off as a provincial governor in 1991, Boris Nemtsov was the youngest governor in
post-Soviet Russia. Nemtsov became Boris Yeltsin's deputy prime minister and many thought that he
would succeed Yeltsin as president. Instead, Putin became president of the Russian Federation
in 2000. Although Nemstov initially tried to work with Putin, he soon joined the opposition along
with his party, the Union of Right Forces, after his party was voted out of the parliament in 2003.
Nemtsov supported Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004
and was vocally critical of Russia's invasion and occupation of Ukraine,
as well as its annexation of Crimea in 2014. At the time of his death, Nemtsov was involved
in organizing a rally in Moscow against Russia's military involvement in Ukraine.
On February 27, 2015, Nemtsov was shot in the back four times while crossing a bridge near
the Kremlin in Moscow. In one of his last interviews, Nemtsov said that he was afraid
Putin was going to have him murdered. Almost immediately, the investigative committee into
his death claimed that Islamic extremism was being considered a possible motive.
The New Yorker reported that a former political adviser to Putin and critic of the Kremlin said
that the president was "stunned" by the murder. Five Chechen men were later arrested and found
guilty of assassinating Nemtsov after being contracted to do so. However, it's unknown who
was responsible for contracting the killing. Anastasia Baburova was a journalism student
at Moscow State University. At the time of her murder, she was working as a freelance journalist
for Novaya Gazeta. Her work primarily focused on race-motivated crimes and neo-Nazi groups,
and Novaya Gazeta was frequently critical of Putin's government.
On January 19, 2009, Baburova was covering a news conference at which Stanislav Markelov,
a human rights lawyer, disparaged the early release of Yuri Budanov, a Russian army officer
who had been convicted of abducting and murdering Elza Kungaeva, a young Chechen woman, in March
2000. After the news conference, as Baburova and Markelov walked and talked, a person wearing a ski
mask came up and shot Markelov in the back of the head. Frontline Defenders writes that as Baburova
tried to stop the murderer, she was also shot in the head. Baburova died several hours later.
According to Ali Askerov's book, Historical Dictionary of the Chechen Conflict, Baburova was
the fourth Novaya Gazeta journalist to be murdered since 2000. Nikita Tikhonov and Yevgeniya Khasis,
described as members of the ultranationalist group Russkiy Obraz, were convicted of the
murders. Ilya Goryachev was later sentenced to life in prison and determined to be the
mastermind of Baburova and Markelov's deaths. Stanislav Markelov was a prominent human rights
advocate and lawyer in the Russian Federation. Markelov's work often focused on defending
people who were victims of police brutality or attacks from neo-Nazis. Markelov was also
known for defending dissident journalists and antifascists. Before being assassinated
in the same incident as Anastasia Baburova, Markelov announced at the press conference
that he planned to appeal the early release of Yuri Budanov with the International Court.
Although right-wing extremists were convicted for Markelov's murder, some have questioned whether or
not security services were also involved. These suspicions come out of the fact that the weapon
used to assassinate Markelov and Baburova was a gun model that was only made available to Russian
military and security service personnel. Boris Berezovsky was a former engineer who
sold cars after the fall of the Soviet Union. By 1994, he'd survived one assassination attempt
that resulted in the death of his driver. In 1994, Berezovsky also acquired ORT,
a television channel, and used it to help Boris Yeltsin win the presidential election
in 1996. Berezovsky wielded a great deal of power in Yeltsin's administration, and when
Putin succeeded Yeltsin as president, Berezovsky had this to say about the new Russian leader:
"I think that Putin will continue the way that President Yeltsin established Russia."
But before long, the two were at odds with one another to such a point where Putin seized ORT
from Berezovsky, causing Berezovsky to flee to London. Berezovsky was granted political
asylum in the U.K. in 2003, and in 2007, a Russian court convicted him of fraud and tax
evasion in absentia. Meanwhile, Berezovsky accused Putin of poisoning Litvinenko.
On March 23, 2013, Berezovsky was found dead with a scarf around his neck at his home in Ascot,
England. Reuters reports that coroner Peter Bedford recorded an open verdict at the inquest,
saying that it was impossible to be absolutely certain whether or not Berezovsky killed himself
or was murdered. Others have suggested that since Berezovsky was often used as
a scapegoat for the Russian government, it's possible that the authorities would have been
more interested in keeping him alive. Natalya Estemirova started working with
Memorial Human Rights Centre, a Russian human-rights organization in Grozny,
Chechnya, in September 1999 — and she knew from the start what risks she was facing. The Guardian
described her death as both "appalling and predictable," especially since she
was a close friend and collaborator of both Politkovskaya and Markelov. After
Politkovskaya's murder in 2006, Estemirova started actively publishing in Novaya Gazeta.
Estemirova was described by Human Rights Watch as one of Chechnya's most prominent rights defenders.
She was especially instrumental in revealing the "mopping-up operation" in Novy Aldy on February 5,
2000. In the days after the massacre and destruction, Estemirova gathered video
footage and compiled them with video recordings made by villagers in the film Aldy. On July 15,
2009, Estemirova was kidnapped near her home in Grozny and murdered later
that day in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia. The Guardian reports that
Estemirova's friends believe her death was a "state-sponsored execution," meant
to scare residents and activists from seeking aid or working in Chechnya.
On September 13, 2021, the European Court of Human
Rights ruled that although Russia had failed to properly investigate Estemirova's murder,
it didn't find the Russian authorities to be directly responsible for kidnapping or
the murder. No one has ever been charged or prosecuted for Estemirova's murder.
Despite being a member of the Communist Party from 2011 to 2016, Denis Voronenkov and his
party were considered unofficial Kremlin allies for years. But after fleeing to Ukraine with
his wife in October 2016, Voronenkov became a vocal critic of Putin. Voronenkov also claimed
that he only supported the annexation of Crimea due to political pressure.
Voronenkov was going to testify against Ukraine's former president Victor Yanukovych. On the day of
his murder, Voronenkov also had plans to meet with Ilya Ponomarev, another former
Duma member who fled Russia because he voted against the annexation of Crimea. On March 23,
2017, Voronenkov was shot and killed in Kyiv in broad daylight. The attacker, identified as
Pavlo Parshov, was also shot by Voronenkov's bodyguard and later died in the hospital.
Although Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko claimed that Voronenkov's murder
was a contract killing, it's never been proven who was behind Voronenkov's murder.
Nikolay Glushkov was close with Boris Berezovsky and would end up being found
dead five years after his friend's untimely demise. A businessman who was at one point
deputy director of Aeroflot airline, Glushkov fled Russia after he was accused of fraud and
sought asylum in the United Kingdom. Glushov was granted political asylum in 2010, and in 2017,
a Russian court found him guilty in absentia of stealing over $118 million from Aeroflot.
After Berezovsky's death in 2013, Glushkov was adamant that foul play was involved,
and in an interview with The Guardian, he noted that the list of Russians who opposed Putin was
shrinking. Five years later, on March 12, 2018, Glushkov was found strangled in his
home. In April 2021, coroners ruled that Glushkov was murdered. Glushkov's murder remains unsolved.