Putin Is A Known Killer

When in February 2024 American right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson was asked about Putin killing Alexey Navalny, he famously replied that killing people comes with the leader’s job. All political leaders have to kill someone at some point, Tucker said, including ours (American). I was irked by that callous remark as it showed how Tucker was trying to whitewash Putin's criminality with whataboutism.

It's one thing to order elimination of legitimate targets such as terrorists, as Tucker alluded to Obama. It's quite a different thing - to kill opposition leaders and dissidents, as well as those who possess damaging information ("compromat" in Russian, from "compromising material) about the leader. And it's yet a totally different level of criminality when a country leader starts a war and a genocide against its neighbor.

Putin has a long trail of people he perceived as a threat to his rule and had them killed. Below is a short list of killings that can be clearly connected to Putin himself and his oligarchs, from oldest to most recent. The first two events can be considered mass killings:

1. In September 1999, four high-rise apartment buildings -- one each in the cities of Buynaksk and Volgodonsk and two in Moscow -- were blown up, allegedly by the Chechen separatists. Over 300 people were killed, more than a thousand injured. It is common belief supported by Litvinenko & Felshtinsky's book "FSB Blows Up Russia" that those explosions were organized by FSB (Federal Security Service, former KGB, where Putin had served and rose to a colonel rank). Allegedly, FSB did it to raise fears in Russians about their security and to increase Putin's likeability, who at the time was the Russian Prime Minister. His public pledge to eliminate terrorism in Russia brought one of his most famous quotes - promising "to wipe out terrorists wherever they are found, even on a toilet" and increased his electability as he was running uncontested (and largely unknown) on the national security agenda to become the Russian President. He was easily elected in March 2000.

2. In August 2000, the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank at the Barents Sea as a result of two internal explosions, killing all of its 118 personnel. While it is not exactly Putin's killing, it is a prime example of how little value the Putin regime puts on a human life, especially of those who are supposed to serve it as part of the military force. The world will never forget that Russia stalled and delayed help from Britain and Norway in trying to save the submarine personnel, and the smug Putin's response to Larry King's question "What happened to your submarine?" - "It sank." Surely, it just sank on its own, what else is there to talk about?

A string of suspicious individual deaths that can be connected to Putin started immediately after he was elected President and continues to this day:

3. In March 2000, a plane crash killed Artyom Borovik, an influential investigative journalist and publisher of Sovershenno Sekretno (Top Secret), a successful newspaper covering crime. Before his death, Borovik was working on investigative stories on Putin’s childhood and the 1999 apartment buildings explosions.

4. In June 2003, Yuri Schekochikhin, a journalist covering corruption and KGB practices, was most probably poisoned with Polonium. The official cause of his death was a cardiac arrest he was hospitalized with, followed by "an allergic reaction to the drug treatment." At the time a member of the Duma (Russian parliament), Schekochikhin is widely recognized as a father of investigative journalism in Russia. He was poisoned after penning an open letter to Putin and publicly asking for help from FBI in corruption investigations.

5. Paul Khebnikov of Forbes Russia was shot to death in Moscow in 2004 for investigating crimes of Putin’s oligarchs.

6. Alexandr Litvinenko, an FSB defector (2002), and a co-author of the "FSB Blows Up Russia" book about the 1999 apartment buildings explosions, was poisoned in London in October 2006 with Polonium-spiked coffee by his former FSB peer Lugovoi, who later was rewarded by becoming a member of the Duma, Russian parliament.

7. Anna Politkovskaya, an opposition journalist famous for the coverage of the Chechen war, was shot in the elevator of her apartment building on October 7, 2006, Putin's birthday. This is often referred to as the first open and brazen political killing in Putin's Russia.

8. Mikhail Beketov, the journalist covering cutting Himki Forest for a new highway to be built by Putin's oligarchs, and the publisher of the Khimki Truth newspaper - was battered by unidentified thugs in November 2008. He died in 2013 of disability caused by the injuries from the beating.

9. Lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasiya Baburova, who respectively defended and covered the Nord-OST terrorist attack victims and families as well as antifa activists were shot to death in January 2009 after a press-conference. They were killed by two members of BORN (a paramilitary organization of Russian nationalists) curated by Goryachev connected to presidential administration.

10. Natalia Estemirova, a historian and human rights activist associated with the Memorial (organization documenting historical repressions and extrajudicial killings) was kidnapped and killed in July 2009 for criticizing the new bandit government of Chechnya headed by Ramzan Kadyrov.

11. Lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, auditor of Hermitage investment Fund who investigated FSB-sponsored tax corruption scheme, was arrested in November 2008 and died in November 2009 in prison after months of torture and denial of medical treatment. His boss Bill Browder, falsely accused of Magnitsky murder, tirelessly pushed for the successful implementation of the Magnitsky Act in both the United States and Europe. Russia retaliated with its Dima Yakovlev Law banning adoption of Russian children by westerners.

12. Marina Salye, a former St. Petersburgh city government official who knew and had proof of Putin's corruption and embezzlement schemes while he was working for Mayor Sobchak, suspiciously died of a heart attack in March 2012.

13. Timur Kuashev, an independent journalist in Kabardin Balkaria, was killed with a poison in 2014 for investigation of a 2005 FSB-sponsored terrorist attack in Nalchik.

14. Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was the most serious threat to Putin's regime, was killed on February 27, 2015, on the bridge in front of the Kremlin, before the March 1 protest he was organizing against the illegal Crimea annexation and the war in Donbass (Eastern Ukraine's rogue regions).

15. Ruslan Magomedragimov, an activist of the movement "Sadval" (Unity), advocating for the autonomy or independence of the Lezgin people, was killed in Kaspiysk in March 2015. The official investigation concluded he'd died from natural causes. The Sadval movement leader Nazim Hajiyev issued a public statement that Magomedragimov had been killed due to his activism. Hajiyev himself was murdered a year later.

16. Putin's former chef and mercenary "Wagner" troops leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin ordered killings of three journalists -- Orkhan Jamal, Alexandr Rastorguev and Kirill Radchenkov -- in 2018 for the coverage of the Wagner group activities in Central African Republican.

17. Nikita Isayev, former leader of the New Russia movement, journalist and politician, was poisoned on a train ride in November 2019 for environmental investigations.

18. Yevgeniy Prigozhin himself was killed in August 2023 in a plane crash after a botched coup against Defense Minister Shoigu.

19. Probably the most internationally resonant killing on par with the 2015 Boris Nemtzov's murder -- opposition leader Alexey Navalny poisoned in the Polar Wolf prison on February 16, 2024.

After Putin started his war of aggression against Ukraine on February 22, 2022, a whole new string of suspicious deaths began that involved former business and political leaders who defected or were considered to be traitors to Putin's regime. The most common method of death in this cases is defenestration. There are so many of them that it's easier to present them in the form of a table:

I am sure this list will continue as Putin is vengeful and his assassins can find people everywhere, even outside of Russia.

As a president of a sovereign country with nuclear weapons, Putin is immune from the exercise of justice. It is highly unlikely that he will ever pay for his crimes, even though the ICC issued warrant against him in March 2023 for the kidnapping at the time of more than 10,000 Ukrainian children from the occupied territories. It did limit his travel now to the countries he can trust will not arrest him on the warrant: China, North Korea, possibly Hungary, and now US/Alaska.

As a paranoid war criminal who is afraid that either the justice system or an assassin will some day catch up with him, Putin now limits his travel even within Russia. He spends most of his time at the bunker-equipped Valdai residence and in the Kremlin, sending out one of his 5-6 stunt doubles to meet with the citizens outside his safe and protected places.

And of course Putin's war in Ukraine escalated the number of combat deaths and losses that he should be made accountable for as well. Even though these are only the estimates, Russia has lost about 1.5 million troops to death and injuries and caused hundreds of thousands in casualties on the Ukrainian side, excluding millions of Ukrainians who ended up as war refugees or are currently under Russian occupation. Here's the recent reporting on war losses from several sources:

Britannica is also trying to keep up with the events and provides quite a comprehensive and searchable background and history of the war:

P.S. This was incredibly draining and soul-sucking for me and took almost a year to write but I'm glad I've finally finished it.