Secret documents declassified by US intelligence have revealed a list of Vladimir Putin‘s assassination targets for the first time.
Several influential Russians who have spoken out against the tyrant president throughout his 25-years of ruling were thought to have died under suspicious circumstances, however, a new report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence established the Kremlin has ties to many of these targeted killings.
The bombshell memo, released following a Mandatory Declassification Review request from Bloomberg, has revealed that Putin directly ordered several assassinations.
The intelligence assessment said: ‘We assess that Putin probably authorizes assassinations of high-profile figures abroad.
‘The Russian Government will continue to use its intelligence services and other loyal entities to assassinate suspected terrorists as well as individuals abroad whom it deems as threats to […] Vladimir Putin’s regime.
‘Our confidence level for this judgment is high, based on official Russian statements and the findings of foreign governments in countries where assassinations have taken place.’
The highly classified memo explained the ‘first clear case’ of the president ordering an assassination overseas took place in 2004 in Doha, Qatar, when Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was killed.
The former head of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria was assassinated when a bomb ripped through his SUV in the Qatari capital.
Authorities found that the murder was carried out by agents from Russia‘s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), Anatoly Belashkov and Vasily Bogachev, according to a report by Pravada.
The two Russian military intelligence officers were convicted of the killing, and a Qatari court sentenced them to life imprisonment.
They were later extradited to Russia where they were expected to serve the rest of their sentence, but Russian prison authorities later claimed they never found them.
In 2006, a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Alexander Litvinenko, was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 in London.
The 44-year-old prominent critic of the Kremlin, died after drinking green tea laced with the drug at the plush Millennium Hotel in Mayfair.
He had fled to Britain after criticising Putin, and after his death, it was revealed MI6 had paid him.
Litvinenko’s death was suspected to have been personally signed off by the Russian President – but the Kremlin have always denied ties to the death.
But a lengthy British inquiry concluded in 2016 that Putin probably had approved a Russian intelligence operation to murder Litvinenko.
It also found that former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoy and another Russian, Dmitry Kovtun, carried out the killing as part of an operation likely directed by the FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB.
The pair, who both face US sanctions, are wanted in the UK for Litvinenko’s murder.
The US intelligence report said about the assassination: ‘The official British inquiry into Litvinenko’s murder concluded that Putin ‘probably approved’ it, based upon a review of physical evidence and decision making on matters related to the security services’.
In 2012, Russian businessman Alexander Perepelichny died in Weybridge, Surrey, after spending the night with his mistress in Paris.
According to the memo, Perepelichny was ‘reportedly assassinated with a biological toxin in the UK in 2012 shortly before he was scheduled to testify about a Kremlin tax fraud network’.
The document also goes on to mention that Oleksandr Bednov, a Kremlin critic who headed a militia unit called Batman, was killed on orders of Putin in 2015.
It explained: ‘At least some key separatist figures in Ukraine’s Donbas Region who resisted Kremlin orders, such as Oleksandr Bednov, have probably been killed at Moscow‘s behest, reflecting Russia’s priority on maintaining control over the region’.
Bednov was killed when an armoured bus he was travelling in was attacked by armed men.
The US intelligence document suggests that along with Bednov, several other prominent leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk pro-Russian separatists were killed on the orders of the Kremlin to strengthen Russian control in the region.
And while the historic document reveals just a handful of high-profile assassination cases that are understood to have ties with Moscow, several other Russia critics have died under suspicious circumstances.
Putin’s fiercest foe, Alexei Navalny, 47, died in February while holed up in the special-regime Polar Wolf jail in the Russian Arctic as he served a 19-year sentence on ‘extremism’ charges.
He was thought to have died after a single punch to the heart – a ‘trademark technique used by the KGB’.
Bruising found on the opposition leader’s body was consistent with the ‘one-punch’ execution method, Russian exile and human rights campaigner Vladimir Osechkin said in February.
‘It is an old method of the KGB’s special forces divisions,’ he told The Times.
‘They trained their operatives to kill a man with one punch in the heart, in the centre of the body. It was a hallmark of the KGB.’
Putin critic, and former head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, also died in August last year after he was involved in a private jet blaze.
He was a close confidant of Putin before he launched a rebellion in June 2023, where he vowed to ‘punish’ Russia for a deadly missile attack on one of his training camps in eastern Ukraine.
Putin blasted the uprising as a ‘mortal blow’ to Russia and ‘a knife in the back of our people’.
Most recently, a Russian TV chef and friend of Hollywood star Jude Law, who fled to London after criticising Putin’s war on Ukraine was found dead in a Belgrade hotel.
Alexei Zimin, 52, died suddenly on a promotional tour to the Serbian capital where authorities said his cause of death remained ‘unclear’.
Lukoil tycoon Ravil Maganov, 67, fell from a window of Moscow’s elite Central Clinical Hospital, also known as the Kremlin Clinic, in September 2022.
Russian state media quickly said his death was a suicide but law enforcement sources said there was no suicide note and there were no CCTV cameras on the section of the building where Maganov fell.
He was then replaced by Vladimir Nekrasov – in October 2023, who died aged 66 of ‘acute heart failure’ in October 2023.
The following month, Russian senator and war backer, Vladimir Lebedev, with close Lukoil links, died suddenly in an unexplained ‘terrible tragedy’ aged 60.
The Russian tycoon was found hanged in his office toilet by his boss.
In March, Lukoil vice-president Vitaly Robertus, 53, became the latest victim of a death curse to haunt Lukoil, a prominent company propping up Putin’s regime.
Then a prominent female judge was found dead after falling from a Moscow high-rise building.
Natalia Larina, 50, was notorious for handling high-profile political and criminal cases, punishing traitors of the Kremlin.
She had been a criminal judge for more than 15 years – and had a reputation for ruling verdicts on cases against opposition political activists.
In December 2023, Vladimir Egorov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, plunged to his death from a third-floor window in Moscow.
The 46-year-old Egorov was a wealthy and prominent politician in oil-rich Tobolsk in western Siberia.
His corpse was found in the yard of his house, according to reports.
Just weeks prior, the deputy editor of Putin’s favourite propaganda newspaper was found dead aged only 35.
The body of Anna Tsareva, 35, was discovered at her home in the capital’s Bolshoy Tishinsky Lane – nearly a year after the death of her boss Vladimir Sungorkin, 68.
In February of the same year, a top Russian defence official and a key figure in the funding of Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine Marina Yankina, 58, also fell 160ft to her death in St Petersburg.
She was head of the financial support department of the Ministry of Defence for the Western Military District, which is closely involved in the dictator’s invasion.
Earlier this year, the chief editor of the warmonger’s state-run TV empire was also discovered lifeless after a suspected poisoning.
Zoya Konovalova, 48, who ran a channel operating near the frontlines of Mad Vlad’s illegal war, was found alongside her ex-husband.
