{"id":1458114,"date":"2022-04-29T12:30:01","date_gmt":"2022-04-29T16:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1458114"},"modified":"2022-04-29T12:30:04","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T16:30:04","slug":"moscow-murders-the-danger-of-standing-up-to-the-russian-regime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/moscow-murders-the-danger-of-standing-up-to-the-russian-regime\/","title":{"rendered":"Moscow Murders: The Danger Of Standing Up To The Russian Regime"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fmoscow-murders-the-danger-of-standing-up-to-the-russian-regime%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1458114&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2022\/04\/RP-Putin-scaled.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.3.0\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p><span>Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been labeled as an enemy of the world, an evil and ruthless aggressor, and even \u2014 as President Joe Biden put it \u2014 a war criminal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>However, the assault on Ukraine is far from the first time since Putin rose to power that the Russian regime has been accused of leveraging violence to protect and expand its axis of influence and control.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Alexei Navalny<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span>On August 20, 2020, the leading political opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Alexei Navalny, suddenly fell seriously and mysteriously ill while on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow. After an emergency landing, Navalny was rushed to a hospital and put into a coma. Two days later, he was evacuated to a hospital in Germany.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>There, five certified labs from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed that a nerve agent had been used to poison Navalny.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cThe presence of this poison was discovered without any doubt,\u201d Germany\u2019s Angela Merkel <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/C3Ou_JY2yV0\"><span>announced<\/span><\/a><span> at the time. \u201cTherefore, it is now certain that Alexei Navalny is the victim of a crime. The attempt was to silence him, and I condemn this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Unfortunately for so many, Navalny is far from the only person to fall victim after standing up in some way or another to the Russian regime. In many ways, Putin\u2019s leading political opponent is lucky, since he lived to tell his story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Who is Vladimir Putin?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span>Born in 1952, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was raised during a period of change in the Soviet Union known as de-Stalinization. As a young adult, he <\/span><span>joined the Soviet intelligence agency, the KGB, and quickly rose through the ranks. He served in various roles, which may have included monitoring foreign government officials in Leningrad, spying in New Zealand, and later working as an undercover agent in East Germany.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>As the Soviet Union collapsed, Putin returned to Russia, and resigned from the KGB on the second day of a coup against then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, with Putin saying that he immediately decided which side he was on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It just so happened that Putin chose the side that was going to win\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Putin then pivoted to a career in politics, quickly rising to the position of deputy chief of the Presidential Staff under President Boris Yeltsin in just seven years. This meteoric rise continued, and he was eventually\u00a0<\/span><span>appointed as one of several deputy prime ministers. <\/span><span>Yeltsin soon appointed Putin as acting prime minister of the Russian Federation, and stated that he wanted Putin to be his successor. Just a few months later, Yeltsin suddenly and unexpectedly resigned, and Putin became Acting President of the Russian Federation \u2014 before <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/59AhatpMwRY\"><span>winning<\/span><\/a><span> the election the following March.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Putin has been in control of Russia ever since, as president from 2000 to 2008, as prime minister from 2008 to 2012, and as president again from 2012 until the present day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>And how has Putin exerted unwavering control over Russia for more than twenty years? Some believe that part of the answer to that question is a decades-long trail of violence that begins and ends in the Kremlin.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Journalists and their allies<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span>In a similar fashion to the Soviet Union, under the Putin regime, dozens of journalists or political dissidents have been found dead. In fact, so many journalists have died in Russia \u2014 either in the field or from other causes \u2014 that an official day of remembrance \u2014 the Remembrance Day of Journalists Killed in the Line of Duty \u2014 is observed on December 15 every year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>One of these journalists is a woman called Anna Politkovskaya. She wrote a book called \u201cPutin\u2019s Russia,\u201d in which she criticized the Putin regime, and Putin personally, for turning Russia into a police state. In what was found to be a contract killing for $150,000, she was shot at point-blank range outside her apartment. Five men were convicted of her murder, but it was never revealed who paid for the hit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Putin spoke at her funeral, where he condemned Politkovskaya\u2019s killing \u2014 as well as her reporting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Another journalist in this growing list is Natalia Estemirova. She sometimes worked alongside Politkovskaya, and was found in the woods near her home. She had been abducted and shot in the head. No one was ever convicted in her death.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Yet another victim of a contract killing was Paul Klebnikov, who was the chief editor of the Russian edition of Forbes. He investigated corruption in Russia \u2014 especially among the wealthy elite. He was killed in a drive-by shooting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Political dissidents and Putin rivals<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span>Boris Nemtsov \u2014 another former deputy prime minister of Russia under Yeltsin \u2014 was an outspoken critic of Putin, accusing Putin of, among many things, being in the pocket of wealthy Russian oligarchs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>He was <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/TUGYJXx0izo\"><span>shot<\/span><\/a><span> four times in the back in the shadows of the Kremlin. Putin took personal control of the investigation, with one theory being that this was the result of Islamic extremism. The killer \u2014 or killers \u2014 were never found.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Another politician, Sergey Yushenkov, was assassinated just hours after registering his political party, Liberal Russia, to run for office in the parliamentary elections in late 2003.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Four people were convicted, one of them being a former co-chairman of the Liberal Russia party, who denied his involvement and later attempted suicide in prison.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Meanwhile, other deaths are as violent as they are mysterious.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>First, there\u2019s Boris Berezovsky, a Russian oligarch, nicknamed \u201cRasputin,\u201d who assisted Putin in his rise to power. He fled to the United Kingdom after his relationship with Putin deteriorated. He later threatened to bring down Putin and his regime by force \u2014 or at least by a bloodless revolution \u2014 and openly accused Putin of having his opponents murdered.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>He previously survived multiple assassination attempts, including a bombing that decapitated his chauffeur. He was found <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/WE8DcFDvajg\"><span>dead<\/span><\/a><span> in his home in England in what appeared to be a suicide.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The coroner who investigated returned an open verdict, following two days of \u201ccontradictory\u201d evidence. He said that he couldn\u2019t prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Berezovsky killed himself, or was killed by someone else.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>According to one expert who specializes in hanging and asphyxiation cases, the marks on Berezovsky\u2019s neck could not come from hanging, and they were \u201cfar away from the typical inverse \u2018V\u2019 shape\u201d we usually see. He believed that Berezovsky was instead strangled, and then hung from the shower rail to mimic suicide.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Next, there\u2019s Yuri Shchekochikhin, yet another journalist who investigated corruption and organized crime in the Soviet Union and Russia. He died suddenly from a mysterious illness just days before he was due to travel to the United States to meet with the FBI. His medical records were apparently either lost or destroyed, but his symptoms appeared to match other cases of radioactive poisoning, similar to Roman Tsepov, an earlier confidant to Putin, who died after he had a cup of tea at a local FSB office.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Soon after, Tsepov was hospitalized after experiencing vomiting, diarrhea, and a drop in white blood cell count. He died 13 days later in Saint Petersburg.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>And then there\u2019s perhaps the most famous case of suspected radioactive poisoning of all: the 2006 case involving Alexander Litvinenko.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Alexander Litvinenko<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span>It was also a cup of tea that caused the death of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Three weeks after drinking tea laced with the deadly radioactive compound, polonium-210, at a London hotel, Litvinenko died. An <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/bSl7pdsTa-E\"><span>investigation<\/span><\/a><span> by British authorities found that Litvinenko was poisoned by several FSB agents, with orders likely coming straight from the Kremlin.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The European Court of Human Rights found the Kremlin responsible for Litvinenko\u2019s death, while two of the accused FSB agents suggested that Litvinenko might have poisoned himself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>And on his deathbed, Litvinenko accused Putin of ordering his assassination.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The Chechnya link?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span>While each one of these deaths, and many others, are disturbing enough, things get even more shocking when we scratch beneath the surface and discover that there are a few common threads that tie them all together, often involving the now-Russian republic of Chechnya.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>When Litvinenko left the Federal Security Service, for example, he went on to become a vocal critic of the agency. He later blamed the service for carrying out a series of bombings in 1999 that killed hundreds of civilians in Russia, writing a book titled, \u201cBlowing up Russia: Terror from Within.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Meanwhile, Russian authorities blamed these attacks on Chechen warlords, and the bombings increased public support for the invasion of Chechnya that followed, all of which contributed to the rise of Putin, who took a hard-line against Chechnya and vowed not to negotiate with terrorists.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The Liberal Russia leader, Yushenkov, believed that Russia orchestrated these attacks, and claimed to be gathering evidence of such a conspiracy when he was killed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Berezovsky, the man who died in a supposed suicide, was allied with former Chechen warlord, Ahmed Zakayev, as well as Litvinenko, whom Berezovsky helped with the spread of these claims.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Litvinenko also accused the Kremlin of ordering the murder of Anna Politkovskaya. He\u2019d worked with the doomed journalist on what they saw as another conspiracy \u2014 that the FSB were allegedly involved in the Moscow theater hostage crisis, when 50 Chechen terrorists stormed a theater and took 800 people captive. After a 57-hour standoff, Russian special forces raided the theater, during which most of the terrorists and 120 hostages were killed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Politkovskaya \u2014 who investigated this story\u00a0\u2014 also had links to others who have been killed. She was colleagues with <\/span><span>Shchekochikhin, who died following a sudden and mysterious illness. <\/span><span>Estemirova, who was abducted and shot in the head, also worked with <\/span><span>Politkovskaya, and investigated human-rights abuses by Russian forces in Chechnya.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Then there\u2019s Klevinov, who was murdered in a drive-by shooting. According to a Moscow Prosecutor-General, the killing of Politkovskaya may have been linked to the death of Klevinov, with a group led by an ethnic Chechen organized crime boss blamed for the murders.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Has Putin responded?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span>For his part, Putin has either denied any involvement in these deaths or argued that the same happens elsewhere. For example, during one press conference in 2021, Putin responded to these accusations by referring to the U.S. response to January 6.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cAlright, about my opponents being jailed or imprisoned,\u201d Putin said when <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/pEBYU1aGXMA%5C\"><span>pressed<\/span><\/a><span> by an American journalist. \u201cPeople went into US Congress with political demands. 400 people are now facing criminal charges. They are facing prison terms of up to 20, maybe 25 years. They are called home-grown terrorists.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>He even went on to reference the shooting of Ashli Babbitt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cOne of the participants, a woman, was shot dead on the spot. She was not threatening with arms or anything,\u201d Putin added. \u201cWhy am I bringing this up? Many people are facing the same thing as we do, and I am stressing this \u2014 we are sympathizing with the United States, but we do not want the same thing repeating here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>While experts are hesitant to blame Putin directly for these \u2014 and other \u2014 deaths, some argue that Putin has instead \u201ccreated the climate\u201d which allows these murders to happen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>More dead oligarchs as Russia invades Ukraine<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span>With Russia invading Ukraine, the trail of violence involving Russian dissidents, critics, or other prominent figures has <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/every-russian-oligarch-who-has-died-since-putin-invaded-ukraine-full-list-1700022\"><span>continued<\/span><\/a><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Sergey Protosenya, a former high-level manager of Russia\u2019s Novatek energy corporation, was found hanged in Spain earlier in April, while his wife and daughter were found stabbed to death. This came one day after the body of Vladislav Avaev, former vice president of the Russian bank Gazprombank was found, also with the bodies of his wife and daughter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Vasily Melnikov, a Russian billionaire, was found dead alongside his wife and two sons in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. They had all been stabbed to death in late March.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Mikhail Watford, a Ukrainian-born Russian oligarch, was found dead in his United Kingdom home in February, hanged in his garage. That same month, Alexander Tyulyakov, Deputy General Director of the Unified Settlement Center (UCC) for Corporate Security for Gazprom, was also found hanged in a garage near Saint Petersburg.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>***<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In reality, we\u2019ll likely never know who was behind these deaths and so many more. One thing is for sure, though: speaking out against the Russian regime is a dangerous business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>To find out more, listen to a <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/murder-in-moscow\/id1576594336?i=1000558500613\">special episode<\/a> of Morning Wire, \u201cMurder in Moscow.\u201d <\/em><i><span>Ian Haworth is a writer for The Daily Wire and contributor to Morning Wire. Follow him on <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ighaworth\"><i><span>Twitter<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span>, <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ighaworth\"><i><span>Facebook<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span>, and <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/IanGHaworth\"><i><span>YouTube<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been labeled as an enemy of the world, an evil and ruthless aggressor, and even \u2014 as President Joe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":1481000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1458114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1458114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1458114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1481000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1458114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1458114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1458114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}