“American intelligence has partially declassified a report that talks about targeted killings of political opponents of Russian ruler Vladimir Putin. Source: Bloomberg Details: According to a US National Intelligence Service report, a number of assassinations were directly authorized by Putin.”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
American intelligence has partially declassified a report that talks about targeted killings of political opponents of Russian ruler Vladimir Putin.
Source: Bloomberg
Details: According to a US National Intelligence Service report, a number of assassinations were directly authorized by Putin. The document was partially declassified at the request of a Bloomberg journalist.
Literally: “First, Russian politician and staunch Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov was shot and killed in Moscow. Then in Washington, former Putin media king Mykhailo Lesin died. Police later said he died of blunt force trauma after falling repeatedly in his hotel room.”
Details: The report mentions several high-profile cases:
- In 2004, the former head of the Chechen Republic, Ichkeri Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, was killed in Qatar. The perpetrators of the murder, Russian GRU employees Anatoly Bilashkov and Vasyl Bogachev, were sentenced to life imprisonment by the Qatari court, but they were soon extradited to the Russian Federation. In Russia, they were supposed to spend the remainder of their term in prison, but as early as 2005, the Federal Penitentiary Service stated that it did not know where they were.
- In 2006, a former FSB employee, Oleksandr Litvinenko, was poisoned with radioactive polonium in London. The British investigation named Andrii Lugovoi, an officer of the Main Directorate of Security of Russia, who later became a member of the State Duma, as the direct executor of the murder.
- In 2012, Russian businessman Oleksandr Perepelichny died in Britain. He was considered one of the key informants in the case of possible money laundering in Europe by Russian officials and died shortly before he was to testify about it in court. An American intelligence document claims that he was poisoned.
- In 2015, Luhansk militant Oleksandr Bednov was killed. The armored bus in which Bednov was traveling was shot by armed men.
A US intelligence document suggests that Bednov and several other prominent leaders of Donetsk and Luhansk separatists were killed on orders from the Kremlin to consolidate Russian control in the region.
The document also notes that Moscow systematically uses special services to eliminate those it considers a threat to its regime.
“Such killings are highly likely to continue,” the US intelligence report said.