Putin's Enemies Die Young

Its been known for quite a while that Russia's intelligence agencies have been practising assassinations of Putin's critics when they are in exile abroad. One example was Sergei Skripal who was poisoned in Salisbury UK with his daughter, but both survived. 

Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov (aliases) Putin's Killers

However not many will have been aware of the murder of another of Putin's Russian critics in the UK, just a week earlier.

This was Nikolai Gluhkov, a former director of Aeroflot who was found 'Hanged' in an apparent 'suicide' in his home in New Malden, Surrey. However at his inquest, the coroner concluded that he had in fact been murdered by someone using a "garrotted sleeper hold".  He joined a long list of Putins enemies who have died strange, or violent deaths.

• Alexei Navalny: Politician, Initiallyn  poisoned he survived the attack by going to Germany for treatment but later returned to Russia, was arrested, and died after collapsing and losing consciousness, according to the Russian prison service.
• Yevgeny Prigozhin: Head of the Wagner mercenary group formerly with close ties to Putin, died in a plane crash with top associates.
• Sergei Yushenkov: Leader of the anti-Kremlin party Liberal Russia, was shot in front of his Moscow home.
• Anna Politkovskaya: A journalists and a persistent chronicler of human rights abuses in Chechnya, was shot dead in her apartment building, in an execution-style killing.
• Aleksandr Litvinenko: A former Russian security agent dies in London after being poisoned with radioactive polonium-210.
• Natalya Estemirova: A human rights activist, found murdered in Ingushetia, shortly after her abduction near her home in the capital of Chechnya, Grozny.
• Sergei Magnitsky: A lawyer who had implicated Russian officials in an alleged $230 million tax fraud died one year after being falsely jailed on similar charges. He had been badly beaten before he died but was still posthumously tried and found guilty of tax evasion.
• Boris Nemtsov: Politician and critic of Putin, shot dead in a gangland-style killing on a bridge near the Kremlin.

In fact USA Today concluded that "38 Russian businessmen and oligarchs close to the Kremlin died in mysterious or suspicious circumstances between 2014 and 2017." The phenomenon has been called "sudden Russian death syndrome," and often via defenestration.  This trend may have continued with more Oligarchs and businessmen  reported as dying strange deaths in 2022. However, as suicide rates in Russia are the third highest in the world, its possible that many are genuine suicides.

Maybe we should have paid more attention to these murderous activities, and reacted more firmly to them, and perhaps we wouldn't be seeing a war in the Ukraine now.