World
November 26, 2024 16:40
amsterdam - An uncovered secret memo from 2016 reveals that US intelligence agencies believe Vladimir Putin will persist in carrying out assassinations abroad.
The memo, officially titled 'Kremlin-Ordered Assassinations Abroad Will Probably Persist', was unearthed by Jason Leopold, a journalist at Bloomberg news agency. After eight years of legal battles, the National Intelligence Council of the Office of The Director of National Intelligence released the document.
The memo, prepared in 2016, was a response to urgent requests from the Intelligence Committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate, prompted by the murders of Boris Nemtsov and the death of Mikhail Lesin in 2015.
Nemtsov, a charismatic politician and one of Vladimir Putin's biggest opponents, was shot dead in February 2015 on the Moskvoretsky Bridge, near the Kremlin. Coincidentally, all surveillance cameras on the bridge were 'turned off for maintenance' at the time. Five Chechens were eventually arrested for the murder. The main perpetrator, sentenced to 20 years in prison, later confessed after torture.
Mikhail Lesin, a former media czar of Vladimir Putin, officially 'died from the consequences of multiple falls' in a hotel room in Washington. The investigation revealed he had just concluded days of heavy drinking and succumbed to head, neck, and torso injuries. There was an ongoing US corruption investigation against him at the time.
In 2017, Buzzfeed reported that several intelligence agencies believed Lesin was murdered. An FBI agent cited by the website mentioned that no one in the intelligence services believed Lesin died from falls. The later autopsy report revealed a bone in Lesin's neck was broken, which typically does not happen from falls but rather from strangulation.
The US memo, however, does not delve into these two murders, likely because it couldn't be definitively proven that Putin was behind them. Instead, it mentions other possible murders attributed to Putin and his associates. The first noted by American intelligence services occurred in 2004 in Qatar when Chechen separatist Zelimkhan Jandarbijev was eliminated. Two Russian military intelligence GRU officers were arrested on the spot.
In 2006, the Kremlin even acknowledged that murder was part of the government's anti-terrorism policy. That year, Putin ordered the perpetrators behind the murders of four Russian diplomats in Iraq to be killed. The Russian parliament also passed a law in 2006 allowing terrorists to be killed outside the country's borders.
According to the memo, various opponents of Putin could end up on the hit list, including terrorists, dissidents, and defectors from intelligence services. Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy murdered in London in 2006 by exposure to the radioactive isotope polonium, fell into the latter category.
The death of Alexander Perepilitsyniy in 2012 may have also fit this category. He was about to testify about a major tax fraud in the Kremlin and allegedly died from 'natural causes' after a jog near London, although US intelligence suspects he may have been a victim of 'biological poison'.
The US memo also mentions political opponents of Putin as potential targets for liquidation, referencing the attempt to poison Ukrainian politician Viktor Yushchenko in 2004. Yushchenko survived an assassination attempt with the toxin dioxin. The death of Oleksandr Bednov, a separatist in Ukrainian Donbas opposed to Kremlin commands, is also attributed to Putin.
However, the memo leaves many other possible victims of Putin unmentioned, such as critical journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment in 2004. Or businessman Boris Berezovsky, engaged in a lengthy legal battle with Putin & co over ownership of his media companies and an oil company. He allegedly hanged himself in the UK in 2013, but the British pathologist left the cause of death open after the autopsy.
Since the memo's release, several prominent opponents of Putin have been killed or barely escaped assassination attempts, validating the document's assertion that Putin will not cease murdering. Dissident Alexei Navalny was most likely murdered in a Siberian penal colony, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin found himself in an exploding plane, and defected spy Sergei Skripal narrowly survived a Novichok nerve agent attack in the UK.