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The most high profile political execution in Russia was that of Boris Nemtsov, the once deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, Putin\u2019s predecessor.<\/p>\n
On a cold February night in 2015, while out walking with his girlfriend, the harsh Putin critic was gunned down by assailants. He died on a bridge next to the Kremlin.<\/p>\n
Five men from the Russian region of Chechnya were convicted, with the gunman receiving up to 20 years, but Nemtsov’s allies said their involvement was an attempt to shift blame from the government.<\/p>\n
In 2017, Denis Voronenkov, a former member of the communist faction in the lower house of Russian parliament, was shot and killed in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Ukraine’s then president Petro Poroshenko described his killing as an \u201cact of state terrorism\u201d by Russia, which was quickly rejected by the Kremlin.<\/p>\n
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In Britain\u2019s \u201cLondongrad\u201d, a longtime home for many Russian oligarchs, critics of Putin have faced surreptitious poisoning attempts, while others have died in suspicious suicide attempts.<\/p>\n
In 2006, Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, a former agent for the KGB and its post-Soviet successor agency, the FSB, felt violently ill in the capital after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210. He died three weeks later.<\/p>\n
A British inquiry found that Russian agents had killed Litvinenko, probably with Putin\u2019s approval, but the Kremlin denied any involvement.<\/p>\n
Litvinenko was also a known confidante of Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who claimed to have handpicked Putin for the presidency before being turned upon by the autocrat and effectively exiled. Berezovsky in turn was found dead in the bathroom of his Berkshire mansion in March 2013 in an apparent suicide. An inquest into his death recorded an open verdict.<\/p>\n
Don’t miss… <\/strong> Another former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, was poisoned in Britain in 2018. While out with his daughter Yulia in the city of Salisbury, the pair were exposed to military grade nerve agent Novichok.<\/p>\n They survived, but the attack later claimed the life of a British woman and left a man and a police officer seriously ill.<\/p>\n Journalists have also faced brutal repercussions for daring to speak against Putin. Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta whose death Litvinenko was investigating, was shot and killed in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006, which was also Putin’s birthday.<\/p>\n Two years earlier, Paul Klebnikov, the American journalist, then Forbes Russia editor, was killed outside his office in a drive-by shooting in Moscow. He had worked to expose corruption and human rights abuses in Russia, and had published a list of Russia’s richest people.<\/p>\n
Twisted Putin sends ‘condolences’ to family of Wagner chief Prigozhin[INSIGHT ] <\/strong>
Wagner boss Prigozhin finally confirmed dead[REVEAL] <\/strong>
Wagner chief Prigozhin confirmed dead as ‘DNA found at crash site'[REPORT] <\/strong><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/cdn.images.express.co.uk\/img\/dynamic\/78\/590x\/secondary\/Anna-Politkovskaya-was-shot-and-killed-in-the-elevator-of-her-Moscow-apartment-building-4932080.jpg?r=1693305977901\")
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