Putin's Poisons: A history of Russian assassination attempts

Following the recent attempted assassination of a former Russian spy
named Sergei Skripal on UK soil, Prime Minister Theresa May has
called for the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats from the nation and
the freezing of Russian assets held on UK soil. Skripal and his
daughter appear to have been the victims of a particularly nasty
nerve agent designed by the Soviet Union and housed nowhere else
known on the planet (https://bit.ly/3zGXyp2).
That, combined with Russian President Vladimir Putin's statements
following Skripal's release, would seem to tie the Russian government
directly to the incident, a seemingly bold move from the Russian
state. With 22 others, including a police officer that first aided
Skripal and his daughter, forced to undergo treatment following
exposure to the Russian nerve agent known as Novichok, one would
think this type of international incident must have been
a miscalculation by Russian officials, or perhaps even a botched
operation … but when you begin to delve into the history of Russia's
use of high-profile assassinations as a means to "set an example,"
this month's lethal circus in Salisbury, England almost starts to
look like business as usual for the largest nation on earth.
In the past century, the ruling regime in Russia or the former Soviet
Union have been tied to at least 33 successful assassinations, with
nearly a full third of those taking place after Vladimir Putin rose
to power in 1999. Even these figures, however, are misleadingly low,
as they don't take into account assassinations that were never tied
directly to the Kremlin, nor does it include failed attempts, such
as it appears the recent incident in the UK will be.
Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko, who was perhaps the most high-profile of
the Putin-era assassinations, was also killed in the UK via an exotic
and telling form of poison: a highly radioactive isotope called
radioactive polonium-210.
Litvinenko was himself a member of Russia's FSB, the successor to
the nefarious KGB, but it was because of his public accusations that
his own government ordered the assassination of Russian tycoon and
oligarch Boris Berezovsky that ultimately saw him arrested multiple
times, forcing him to defect to the United Kingdom in 2000.
"The view inside our agency was that poison is just a weapon, like
a pistol," Litvinenko told the New York Times in 2004, two years
before his assassination. "It's not seen that way in the West, but it
was just viewed as an ordinary tool."
Once in the UK, Litvinenko wrote two books detailing Vladimir
Putin's involvement in what may have been a false flag terror attack
(blamed on Chechen separatists) that helped ensure Putin's accession
to the nation's highest office. He also had a slew of other things to
say, and he publicly accused Putin of ordering the assassination
of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.
That last act of defiance may have been the final straw, as less than
a month later Litvinenko fell critically ill. For 21 days, he
remained hospitalized as each of his major organs shut down one
after another - the culprit was acute radiation poisoning caused by
exposure to polonium-210, an extremely rare and highly radioactive
substance that was a critical component of early Soviet nuclear
bombs.
It seemed clear, then, that the polonium poisoning of Litvinenko was
intended as a clear message from Vladimir Putin: cross him, and the
repercussions will be dire.
Alexander Perepilichny
That count of assassinations linked to the Russian government also
does not include suspicious deaths with links to the Kremlin, like
that of Alexander Perepilichny, a 44-year-old Russian man that was
found dead inside the gated London community he lived in. London
police ruled out foul play despite raised concerns that his death may
have been caused by a difficult to detect poison substance from the
gelsemium plant. Perepilichny had fled to the UK after assisting with
an international investigation into Russian-based money laundering.
To date, the cause of his death in 2012 has not yet been officially
determined.
Vladimir Kara-Murza
In 2015 and again in 2017, Russian opposition activist Vladimir
Kara-Murza was hospitalized after exhibiting signs of poisoning.
"In the space of about 20 minutes, I went from feeling completely
normal to having a rapid heart rate, really high blood pressure, to
sweating and vomiting all over the place, and then I lost
consciousness," Murza told reporters in 2016.
Laboratory analysis of his blood work found elevated levels of
mercury, copper, manganese and zinc in him in both instances, and
again, Moscow denied involvement in the effort.
"I knew straightaway what it was because this was the second time
in two years that this happened, and it, and it began almost
identically in the same way," He told NBC after the second poisoning
attempt. He survived both incidents, keeping him off of the list
of Russian state-sponsored assassinations for the time being.
Viktor Yushchenko
Viktor Yushchenko was a Ukranian opposition candidate running
for president within his nation when he suddenly fell mysteriously
ill. His face was soon covered in lesions, crippling pain attacked
his back and abdomen, and the left side of his face became paralyzed.
When he re-emerged in the media, he was a distinctly changed man,
apparently as a result of dioxin poisoning.
Yushchenko, it's worth noting, was a pro-West candidate running
against the Pro-Russian Yulia Tymoshenko. He would ultimately
end up winning a messy election, before being removed from power
as a result of protests soon thereafter.
"If someone put a drop of pure dioxin in his food, he wouldn't taste
it, he wouldn't see it and a few days later he'd start to get sick,"
Arnold Schecter, a dioxin expert at the University of Texas School
of Public Health at Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said.
"If you are trying to kill someone quickly, it's not the way to go, but
if you want to disable someone and want to do it subtly and have it
happen days or weeks or months after you have contact with someone,
this can do it," Schecter said. "Plus there are very few labs in the
world that can accurately detect dioxin in the blood."
And so many more…
This is hardly a conclusive list of Russian-linked assassinations and
attempts. In fact, it may be impossible to know how many times the
Kremlin has utilized poisoning in one form or another to silence
critics or affect change in foreign governments. Stories from people
like Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist that covered Russia's invasion
of Chechnya, who suddenly fell ill after drinking tea that apparently
contained poison. She would later be murdered in the elevator of
her apartment building.
Karinna Moskalenko was prevented via poisoning from returning to
Moscow to attend part of the murder trial that, ironically enough,
was for the killer of the aforementioned journalist Anna
Politkovskaya. Alexander Litvinenko claimed that her murder was
conducted under Putin's direct orders. After Moskalenko fell ill and
canceled her trip, her husband discovered Mercury pellets under the
seat of her car.
The list of these incidents goes on and on, which should come as no
surprise. As Litvinenko pointed out, the Russian intelligence
community sees poison as an effective tool to eliminate threats to
their foreign policy and to intimidate those who would betray the
Kremlin. When one takes a step back and looks at the broader use
of poisoning, even exotic poisons that seem to point the finger
directly at Moscow, the recent incident in Salisbury, England no
longer seems like an isolated incident, but rather the latest in
a long-standing policy employed by Putin's regime.
The real question, then, is… will anything be different this time
around? Only time will tell.