Vladimir Putin's Assassination Squad
"Nine high-profile Russians, including several high-profile diplomats, have died over the nine months since the US presidential election on November 8."
"Among the recent deaths were six Russian diplomats. Some of the deaths appeared natural and governments have ruled out foul play.""In some cases, though, questions remain. That's either because the facts have changed over time, details are hard to come by, or the deaths are still under investigation.""Self-proclaimed online sleuths and conspiracy theorists have filled the information void with speculation that the deaths were somehow related to Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. No evidence has surfaced to make such a connection."CNN --
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| This picture taken on December 19, 2016 shows Andrey Karlov, the Russian ambassador to Ankara, lying on the floor after being shot by a gunman during an attack during a public event in Ankara. CNN |
Well of course, it isn't only diplomats but also journalists who suddenly lose their lives under mysterious circumstances. Perhaps not so mysterious -- journalists who write investigative stories critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin -- gunned down as they emerge from their homes. A political adversary, Boris Nemtsov who challenged Mr. Putin, shot to death in a public square in Moscow. And radioactive poisoning slipped to Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service, living in exile in London.
They all one way or another run afoul of the good graces of Czar Putin and their lives are extinguished. That is one way of ridding oneself of inconvenient and irritating trouble-makers intent on disrupting the life of a powerful man whose reach is broad and deadly. A man who doesn't take kindly to criticism, much less challenges to his supreme authority. And who has the ways and the means to obliterate such criticism in the most final of ways, and with surprising diversity of methodology.
The latest death is a reprise of an assassination attempt that was foiled months earlier, but half-completed currently, with the death of Amina Okuyeva whose husband Adam Osmayev survived the attack that succeeded where the previous one in June did not. This was an ethnic Chechen couple who fought for Ukraine against Russian-Ukrainian separatists in eastern Ukraine. The original assassination attempt failed when Ms. Okuyeva shot and wounded the assassin, rescuing both her husband and herself from death.
On Monday things turned out differently when the pair's vehicle suffered a spray of bullets at a railway crossing outside Kyiv. "The heart of a patriot of Ukraine has just stopped", wrote Anton Gerashenko, an Ukrainian lawmaker. According to this man's account the gunman fired from behind roadside shrubbery. And though police have made a thorough search of the area no arrests were made.
"I was driving", Mr. Osmayev said, describing the attack that killed his wife. "When the shooting started, everything was flying about around me. It was an attack on both of us. Amina was hit in the head. I tried to keep driving, as much as I could, but the engine was hit", he explained from his hospital bed. Ukraine had been under pressure from Russian prosecutors demanding the extradition of the pair, ethnic Chechens facing charges in a 2012 plot to assassinate Putin with the use of explosives.
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| Amina Okuyeva was an uncompromising critic of Russia and the Kremlin-backed regime of Ramzan Kadyrov. Photograph: Ann Molchanova/AP |
This attack that killed Ms. Okuyeva is merely the latest in a number of such assassinations taking place in Ukraine identified by Kyiv officials as the handiwork of Russian special services. Several days earlier a bomb hidden in a motorcycle that had been sitting parked on a street in Kyiv exploded. Ihor Mosiychuk, a member of Parliament was wounded, his bodyguard and a bystander were killed. A former member of the Russian parliament who had defected to Ukraine was shot and killed in March by a gunman, himself shot and killed by the lawmaker's bodyguard.
A car bomb in Kyiv killed another ethnic Chechen in September, who had fought on the Ukrainian side. And in July of 2015 another car bomb killed journalist Pavel Sheremet while Ukrainian security service officials were killed by two other bombs in June and March.
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| A car bombing in Kyiv in September 2017 killed a Ukrainian volunteer soldier and severely injured a woman and 10-year-old child, according to the Kyiv Post. Screenshot/YouTube via Сергей Сидоренко |
The target of the September Kyiv bombing, Timur Mahauri, was a Chechen holding Georgian citizenship
who had informed Ukrainian authorities he was a member of an unofficial Chechen battalion, Sheikh Mansur, fighting Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas, according to the Kyiv Post.
Labels: Assassination, Political Realities, Russia, Vladimir Putin
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, November 01, 2017
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