Nerve agents, poison and open windows have claimed many past enemies of the Kremlin
Assassination attempts against the foes of President Vladimir Putin have been common during his nearly quarter century in power.
Those close to the victims and the few survivors have blamed Russian authorities, but the Kremlin has routinely denied involvement — as it did on Friday by saying it was "a complete lie" it had anything to do with the jet crash.
There also have been reports of prominent Russian executives dying under mysterious circumstances, although whether they were deliberate killings or suicides is sometimes difficult to determine.
In August 2020, opposition leaderAlexei Navalnyfell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow.(e all know about Navalny so I'll skip).
Pyotr Verzilov, a founder of the protest group Pussy Riot, fell severely ill in 2018 and was also flown to Berlin where doctors said poisoning was "highly plausible".
He eventually recovered.
Prominent opposition figureVladimir Kara-Murzasurvived what he believes were attempts to poison him in 2015 and 2017.
He nearly died from kidney failure in the first instance and suspects poisoning, but no cause was determined.
He was hospitalised with a similar illness in 2017 and put into a medically induced coma.
His wife said doctors confirmed he was poisoned.
The highest profile killing of a political opponent in recent years was that ofBoris Nemtsov.Once deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, Mr Nemtsov was a popular politician and harsh critic of Putin.
He was gunned down by assailants on a bridge adjacent to the Kremlin as he walked with his girlfriend on a cold February night in 2015 — a death that shocked the country.
Russian defectorAlexander Litvinenko, a former agent for the KGB and its post-Soviet successor agency the FSB, fell violently ill in London in 2006 after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210.
He died three weeks later.
The former agent had been investigating the shooting death of Russian journalistAnna Politkovskayaas well as the Russian intelligence service's alleged links to organised crime.
Before dying, Mr Litvinenko told journalists the FSB was still operating a poisons laboratory dating from the Soviet era.
Another former Russian intelligence officer,Sergei Skripal, was poisoned in Britain in 2018.
He and his adult daughterYuliafell ill in the city of Salisbury and spent weeks in critical condition.
They survived, but the attack later claimed the life of a British woman and left a man and a police officer seriously ill.
Authorities said they both were poisoned with the military grade nerve agent Novichok.
Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta whose death Mr Litvinenko was investigating, was shot and killed in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006 — Mr Putin's birthday.
Yuri Shchekochikhin, another Novaya Gazeta reporter, died of a sudden and violent illness in 2003.
Now we can add priggy ...and of course to tie things up nicely ...also his Lieutenants .
Plenty more simple "disappearances " which were completely unexplained .
Not a healthy thing to be a putin critic in russia ...and for some ...even outside russia .
