A long-classified memorandum has just been released and it includes details of a number of assassinations believed to have been ordered by Russian president Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin’s assassination targets have been revealed after some top-secret documents were declassified for the first time by US intelligence.
The “kill list”, which has been kept hidden for years and has now been unveiled thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, contains the names of people on the Russian president’s “kill list” – and includes his critics, opponents, as well as other politicians. Over the past few years, there have been a series of instances during which prominent critics of the Kremlin, and Putin in particular, died in suspicious circumstances – from falling out of windows to being poisoned or taking their own lives in inexplicable ways.
Now, the long-classified memorandum by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been released, and it sheds lights on some of those mysterious deaths. The document declares: “Putin probably authorizes assassinations of high-profile figures abroad.
“The Russian Government will continue to use its intelligence services and other loyal entities to assassinate suspected terrorists as well as individuals abroad whom it deems as threats to […] Vladimir Putin’s regime. Our confidence level for this judgment is high, based on official Russian statements and the findings of foreign governments in countries where assassinations have taken place.”
The document was declassified following a request from Bloomberg, with the publication reporting that American politicians had tucked information inside a 2016 intelligence spending bill that tasked US intelligence with preparing a classified assessment for the committees – and it was about “the use of political assassinations as a form of statecraft by the Russian Federation since January 1, 2000.”
The memo mentions the “first clear case” of Putin ordering an assassination abroad took place in 2004, when Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev – who was the second president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria between 1996 and 1997 – was killed. He was assassinated when a bomb ripped through his SUV in Doha, Qatar.
Authorities found the killing was carried out by agents from Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), Anatoly Belashkov and Vasily Bogachev. The pair were sentenced to life imprisonment by a Qatari court before being extradited to Russia, where they were expected to serve their sentence. However, Russian prison authorities later claimed they never found Belashkov and Bogachev.
Another assassination mentioned in the memo is that of British-naturalised Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) who specialised in tackling organised crime, who was killed in London in 2006. The former Russian spy was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 which was slipped in a cup of tea in a London hotel and died three weeks later.
Litvinenko had fled to Britain after criticising Putin and after his death, it was revealed that MI6 had paid him. It is believed his murder was signed off by Putin – which the Kremlin has always denied. Two of his cronies, Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi, were accused of carrying out the hit.
In 2022, Kovtun died aged 56 in a Moscow hospital due to complications from Covid-19, while Lugovoi is still wanted in the UK for Litvinenko’s murder. The US intelligence report said about the assassination: “The official British inquiry into Litvinenko’s murder concluded that Putin ‘probably approved’ it, based upon a review of physical evidence and decision-making on matters related to the security services.”
The memo also mentions the death of Russian businessman Alexander Perepelichny in 2012. The 44-year-old collapsed in Surrey after pending the night with his mistress in Paris – and according to the document, he was “assassinated with a biological toxin in the UK in 2012 shortly before he was scheduled to testify about a Kremlin tax fraud network.”
Another suspected killing mentioned in the document is that of Alexander Bednov, a critic of the Kremlin, who died in 2015. The document says: “At least some key separatist figures in Ukraine’s Donbas Region who resisted Kremlin orders, such as Oleksandr Bednov, have probably been killed at Moscow’s behest, reflecting Russia’s priority on maintaining control over the region.”
While some of the cases mentioned in the document are from years ago, there are still fears that since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has continued pursuing Putin foes abroad. Some of the most high-profile deaths that have been linked to Putin include that of his opponent Alexei Navalny, 47, who died in February in a jail in the Russian Arctic while serving a 19-year sentence on “extremism” charges.
In August last year, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a vocal Putin critic and the head of the Wagner mercenary group, died in a fireball private jet crash. The death of Russian TV chef Alexei Zimin, who fled to London after opposing the Ukraine war, has also been linked to Putin. The 52-year-old was found dead in a Belgrade hotel while on a promotional tour to the Serbian capital.
