Poisoned by a cup of tea laced with deadly polonium-210
[...]
A British inquiry found that Litvinenko was poisoned by FSB agents Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, who were acting on orders that had "probably approved by Mr Patrushev and also by President Putin."
Anna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist who was critical of Putin. In her book"Putin's Russia," she accused Putin of turning his country into a police state. She was murdered by contract killers who shot her at point blank range in the lift outside her flat.
Judge Pavel Melyokhin agreed to the prosecutors' request to order life imprisonment for Rustam Makhmudov, found guilty of pulling the trigger, and his uncle Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, who organised the logistics. The other three received 12, 14 and 20 years.
Politkovskaya was one of nearly two dozen journalists murdered in Russia since 2000, but her case attracted special attention because of the brutality of the contract-style killing and the failure of the authorities - even now, after nearly eight years and several trials - to identify who ordered the assassination.
Kremlin critics and rights campaigners say the murder symbolises the weakness of the rule of law in Russia.
“Vladimir Putin is a thug and a murderer and a killer and a KGB agent,” McCain said on CBS’s “Face of the Nation” on Dec. 11. Speaking two days later about Rex Tillerson, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, who received the Russian “Order of Friendship” in 2013, McCain said in a radio interview: “Frankly, I would never accept an award from Vladimir Putin because then you kind of give some credence and credibility to this butcher, this KGB agent, which is what he is.”
Putin, who has ruled Russia since 2000, has created a regime under which his opponents are murdered; political prisoners are sent to Siberia for decades behind bars; minority rights are suppressed; opposition is quashed; foreign territory is forcefully annexed; and Syria’s bloodthirsty president, Bashar Assad, enjoys direct military support for his massacres.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of examples of Putin’s abusive rule in Russia.
•Murdering enemies [...]
•Imprisoning dissenters [...]
•Occupying foreign territory [...]
•Quashing opposition
Putin has run the country for 17 years as prime minister and president. In 2008, Russia extended presidential terms from four to six years; the next election is in 2018.
Russia has suppressed political opposition using an arsenal of techniques. These range from laws limiting free assembly and other civil rights[3], to jailing protestors for vague offenses such as “hooliganism,” to using the notoriously corrupt courts to convict opponents of embezzlement or tax fraud, to straightforward police intimidation, as well as murder. Prominent opponents have been forced into silence or exile.
•Abetting some of the world’s worst bloodshed [...]
Continuing the remembrance of the List of Putin critics, who ended up paying the ultimate price… once again from Business Insider:
•Stanislav Markelov (Human-rights lawyer)
•Anastasia Baburova (Journalist)
•Boris Nemtsov (Deputy prime minister of Russia under Boris Yeltsin)
•Boris Berezovsky (Russian oligarch who fled to Britain after he fell out with Putin)
•Paul Klebnikov (the chief editor of the Russian edition of Forbes)
•Sergei Yushenkov (Russian politician, who had just formed the Liberal Russia organization)
