Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Monday, March 27, 2017

Murderous politics

Russian politics can be deadly.

Russian Agent Killed Lawmaker in Kiev, Ukraine Officials Say
The assassin who gunned down a prominent Russian opposition figure on a sidewalk in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev was identified by Ukrainian officials on Friday as a 28-year-old Russian agent…
Voronenkov's body removed
The gunman was himself grievously wounded by a bodyguard for the target, Denis N. Voronenkov, and subsequently died in the hospital. The allegation was immediately dismissed by Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, as “absurd.”

Mr. Voronenkov was a member of the Russian Parliament before defecting to Ukraine last year…

A former prosecutor before joining Parliament, Mr. Voronenkov had socialized with people in Mr. Putin’s circle…

Critics and opponents of Mr. Putin and his Kremlin cronies have been assassinated in a variety of ways over the years, often in spectacular fashion so as to send a message, Kremlin watchers say. The most celebrated was the poisoning of Alexander V. Litvinenko with a rare and deadly radioactive isotope, polonium 210, administered in a drink in the Millennium Hotel in London in 2006.

When the prominent opposition figure Boris Y. Nemtsov was murdered in 2015, his body fell on the sidewalk of a bridge with the Kremlin and the domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral as a backdrop.

Sometimes the killings are more prosaic. Numerous potential witnesses to the death of Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer who died of neglect in a Russian prison, have disappeared, been poisoned or suffered “heart attacks” that were later found to be the result of ingesting a rare Chinese herb.

See also:Here are 10 critics of Vladimir Putin who died violently or in suspicious ways

See also:Key Putin Opponent Arrested in Moscow During Anti-Corruption Protests



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