Number 5
Boris Nemtsov
Boris Nemtsov was a politician who openly opposed the government of Russia that is under
Vladimir Putin's presidency.
He was the former deputy prime minister of Russia under Boris Yeltsin the president before
Vladimir Putin and the first president of the Russian Federation.
So it was obvious that he was a big critic of Putin.
He accused Putin for accepting bribes from Russia's many oligarchs.
On the 27th of February 2015, Boris Nemtsov was shot and killed while crossing the Bolshoy
Moskvoretsky bridge near Kremlin.
He was walking home from a restaurant with his girlfriend who was there during the shooting
but was unharmed.
Seven or eight shots were fired in their direction from a Makarov pistol and four of those shots
hit Boris Nemtsov in his vitals.
His head, heart, liver and stomach was hit and thus died almost instantly.
That was 4 hours after he appealed to the public to support a march against Russia's
war in Ukraine.
Putin took the investigation under his personal control, but the killer was never found.
Number 4
Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko was a former spy or officer for the Russian Federal Security Service or
the FSB for short.
He fled to London from a court prosecution in Russia on charges of ordering the assassination
of a Russian tycoon with some other officers against their authority.
He was then granted asylum in the UK.
There he worked as a journalist and a consultant for the British intelligence services.
He wrote two books criticising and exposing things that happened surrounding the issue
on how Vladimir Putin came to power.
It was on the 1st November 2006 that Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and got hospitalised.
He died 3 weeks later and was found to be poisened with Polonium 210, a very rare isotope,
which gave him radiation poisoning.
Alexander Litvinenko wrote a letter on his deathbed and blamed Vladimir Putin for the
poison.
But no hard evidence were found on who put the poison there or even how it got there.
Their tracks were covered completely.
Number 3
Boris Berezovsky
Boris Berezovsky was one of the wealthy Russian oligarchs and a government official.
He was directly open about his opposition to the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin.
In the late 2000, Berezovsky was supposed to come back to Russia for questioning by
the Russian Deputy Prosecutor General but he did not return.
He stayed abroad and moved to the UK where he was granted a political asylum in 2003.
He apparently had secret information that he was going to make public.
The secret was about the death of Alexander Litvinenko.
He had also threatened to bring down Putin by force.
During his stay in the UK, the British police has had to investigate several alleged assassination
attempts against him.
But in March 2013, he was then found dead in his house, in his own bathroom.
It was reported to be a suicide by hanging as there were no signs of struggle found.
But the coroner recorded his death as open verdict saying the death was very suspicious
and there were no evidence indicating that he intended to take his own life.
Number 2
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya was a Russian Journalist and a human rights activist.
Like most people listed here, she was also critical and open of her discontent of Vladimir
Putin.
She wrote several books about the Chechen wars and had a book called Putin's Russia
which talks about the life in Modern Russia.
It was about the corruption, the brutality, the routine kidnappings or murders or tortures
and etc.
She accused Vladimir Putin and the FSB for the degradation of the system.
Throughout her cry out and activities, she has had multiple threats and death threats.
She was put through a mock execution by the military in Chechnya around 2001.
In September 04, she fell violently ill and lost consciousness after drinking tea which
was reportedly poisoned.
But it was on the 7th October 2006 that she was found dead in an elevator near her home
in central Moscow.
She was shot twice in the chest, once in the shoulder and once in point blank range to
her head.
Five men were convicted of her murder but it was actually found that she was killed
due to a contract killing.
An assassination ordered by an unknown person as they never left their name.
Number 1
Sergei Yushenkov
Sergei Yushenkov was a Russian politician and liberal lawmaker.
He was openly critical of the Presidency of Vladimir Putin, just like everyone listed
earlier.
He was the head of a liberal political party.
The party was openly challenging the power of the FSB and the other Russian authorities.
He was also known to have received threats from a high ranking FSB general according
to a russian journalist and editor of a citizen's rights magazine.
The party also promised to investigate about the bombings of an apartment block that killed
nearly 300 people in September 1999.
The bombings were believed by those who opposed Putin and the FSB to be the work of Putin
and the FSB to boost the popularity of Putin and to bring the pro-war party together.
Anyways, it was on the 17th April 2003 that he was killed from being shot by an assailant
using a gun with a silencer according to the police.
It was believed to be a political assassination as this was the 10th death of a member of
parliament since 1994.
Also, 3 months later, another member of the commission, Yuri Shchekochikhin was also assassinated.