The fatal fate of Vladimir Putin’s enemies

Russian President Vladimir Putinhe had several enemies in power over the last 24 years who ended up being killed or died under strange circumstances:

– Rampant
The leader of the Russian opposition, Alexei Navalnyhe died on Friday at the age of 47 in the Arctic prison where he was transferred last December.

Russian prison services reported the sudden death, while the opponent’s family, fellow believers and Western foreign ministries accused Putin of ordering his murder.

Navalny, a lawyer by profession, made a name for himself as a blogger denouncing ill-gotten gains in public administration with videos like “Putin’s Palace” that have garnered more than 100 million views on YouTube.

Except, organized the largest anti-government protests in Russian history in 2011 by bringing more than one hundred thousand people to the streets after the official fraud in the parliamentary elections.

Navalny, who demonstrated his electoral strength by winning second place in the Moscow mayoral election, was poisoned in 2020 with the chemical agent Novichok in the hands of the Federal Security Service (FSB) on Putin’s behalf, according to the opponent.

Despite the threat of repression, he returned to Russia the following year, after which he was immediately arrested and sentenced to various sentences totaling almost 30 years in prison.

His last challenge was to launch a campaign against the re-election of Putin, who in his public appearances never says his first and last name when talking about the leader of the opposition.

– Prigogine
Businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin He died in August 2023 when the private plane in which he was traveling with his top associates crashed.

Prigozhin, a native of the former imperial capital like Putin, where he was the owner of a popular restaurant, got rich by signing a contract on the distribution of juicy food with the Ministry of Defense.

It would even be known as “Putin’s Chef”since he also carried out restoration activities for the presidential administration and created the famous troll factory in St. Petersburg, which was accused by the US of meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

At the head of the mercenary group, Wagner cooperated with several African governments and participated in the Russian military campaign in Ukraine, in which, after hiring tens of thousands of convicts, he even conquered the city of Bakhmut.

That’s when tensions begin with the Ministry of Defense, which accuses it of leaving Wagner’s troops to their fate by not supplying them with the necessary ammunition.

His death happened exactly two months after Prigozhin led an armed rebellion in the south of the countryin which he captured the city of Rostov-on-Don and marched towards Moscow.

Although he initially accused him of treason, Putin seemed to forgive him, as he received him in the Kremlin days later, after which Prigozhin reportedly agreed to focus on Wagner’s activities in Africa.

When many pointed to him as the main suspect in his death, Putin claimed that Prigozhin’s plane was not shot down, revealed that shell remains were found in the bodies of the passengers and suggested that they themselves were the cause of the tragedy. due to drug and alcohol consumption.

– German
Leader of the opposition Boris Nemtsov was killed in February 2015 when he was walking with his girlfriend on the bridge in front of the Kremlin walls.

Shortly after Putin arrived in Moscow from his job at St. Petersburg City Hall, Nemtsov became the dolphin of Russia’s first democratically elected president, Boris Yeltsin, who appointed him deputy prime minister.

Against all odds, Yeltsin chose Putin as his replacement when he left the presidency in 1999, sending Nemtsov into opposition.

After several years as a liberal deputy in the Duma, Nemtsov began to denounce the lack of democratic freedoms and corruption in the Kremlin, and called for unauthorized protests.

Arrested several times for disobeying the authorities and sentenced to administrative arrest, Nemtsov denounced the biggest case of corruption in Russian history during The Winter Olympics in Sochi (2014), whose budget was 50 billion dollarsfive times more than expected.

In addition, he accused the Kremlin of sending regular troops to eastern Ukraine to support a pro-Russian uprising against Kiev, which Putin has publicly denied.

His family accuses the Kremlin not of pulling the trigger, but of creating the conditions that led to an adversary firing on a group of Chechens.