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A few of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foes, amongst them journalists and opposition politicians, have died or fallen in poor health in suspect circumstances after opposing the Russian chief.
On Wednesday, Yevgeniy Prigozhin — the top of the guns-for-hire Wagner Group and Putin’s longtime ally turned foe — was presumably killed, together with everybody else on board, when a non-public jet flying north of Moscow crashed. On Thursday Putin appeared to eulogize Prigozhin however stopped wanting confirming his demise.
Why the aircraft crashed stays unclear. However the Kremlin has not moved swiftly to dispel suspicions among the many nation’s elite that the president was behind the crash. In June, Prigozhin led a march on Moscow in an abortive rebel in opposition to the Russian chief. Hypothesis then swirled over what would turn out to be of the mercenary chief.
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“It’s no accident that the world instantly appears on the Kremlin when a disgraced former confidant of Putin abruptly, actually falls from the sky two months after he tried a mutiny,” German Overseas Minister Annalena Baerbock mentioned on Thursday.
Listed below are some Putin foes who suffered suspicious fates:
Opposition chief Alexei Navalny was one of many Kremlin’s most outspoken critics. Three years in the past, he boarded a aircraft at an airport in Siberia and fell in poor health.
Germany later mentioned it had “unequivocal” proof that he was poisoned with a nerve agent just like Novichok — a category of chemical weapons developed by the previous Soviet Union and Russia.
Russian opposition chief Navalny poisoned with nerve agent just like Novichok, Germany says
Navalny was rushed to Berlin for therapy and spent 24 days in intensive care earlier than being discharged from inpatient care a couple of week later.
He was instantly arrested upon his return to Russia. Earlier this month, he was sentenced to an extra 19 years in jail — with no household visits or letters for a decade — on high of an 11-year sentence he was already serving.
In 2018, a Russian former double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his grownup daughter Yulia had been discovered slumped on a park bench in a city within the south of England.
They recovered, however months later, 44-year-old Daybreak Sturgess died and her boyfriend fell in poor health after spraying a discarded fragrance bottle that turned out to have been used to spray a poison.
British investigators recognized the weapon as Novichok, whereas investigative web site Bellingcat first recognized the alleged perpetrators as two members of Russian army intelligence unit GRU: Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga.
Skripal was a high-profile spy who was jailed in Russia in 2006 after being convicted of passing the names of undercover Russian intelligence officers to Britain’s overseas intelligence service, MI6. He was launched in a prisoner swap in 2010 and has lived in Britain since.
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In April, Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced to 25 years in jail on fees of treason — the harshest penalty but for an opponent of Russia’s warfare in Ukraine.
Kara-Murza is a longtime opposition politician, historian and activist. He has written opinion items for The Put up, some from jail, about life in Russia. He was one of many Kremlin’s few critics nonetheless dwelling Russia when Moscow invaded Ukraine final yr.
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His spouse, who now lives in the US, says the Kremlin poisoned her husband for the primary time in 2015 and once more in 2017. Each occasions Kara-Murza was hospitalized and in a coma. The Kremlin denied any involvement.
Alexander Litvinenko was within the bar of an upmarket London lodge when he was poisoned in late 2006.
As he lay dying, he accused Putin of his homicide.
In 2016, a decade after his demise, a British inquiry discovered that he was probably proper — main then-Prime Minister David Cameron to explain the conclusion of “state-sponsored” homicide as “completely appalling.”
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Investigative journalist Politkovskaya was shot useless on the doorstep of her house in 2006.
Six years earlier, she angered the Kremlin along with her protection of abuses by Russian and pro-Moscow Chechen forces preventing in opposition to Chechnyan separatists. In 2004, she fell in poor health after ingesting a cup of tea. Politkovskaya mentioned Putin poisoned her to forestall her from reporting.
Politkovskaya continued to critically cowl the Russian chief and his allies regardless of repeated threats.
In 2014, 5 males had been convicted of her homicide, although nobody has been charged with ordering her alleged assassination.
Politician and Putin critic Boris Nemtsov was the highest-profile opposition chief slain in Russia when he was gunned down in 2015 whereas strolling throughout a central Moscow bridge.
The Kremlin denied involvement.
Nemtsov was a towering determine in post-Soviet Russian politics and an architect the nation’s pivot to capitalism. On the time of his demise, he was engaged on report that, he mentioned, challenged the Kremlin line and confirmed Russian troopers preventing alongside pro-Russian rebels in japanese Ukraine.
William Sales space and Robyn Dixon contributed to this report.
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