Mokroye Delo (wet affairs)

The Russian term mokroye delo (wet affairs, also called “wetwork” in the West, as in bloody hands), means assassinations. Putin’s regime has embraced wetwork to an extent not seen since Stalin’s time. They symbolize a national criminal mentality which exceeds the realm of the credible. Some will simply refuse to believe what happened. The Russian expression "wet job" can be traced to at least the 19th century from Russian criminal slang (fenya, muzyka) and originally meant robbery that involved murder, i.e., spilling blood.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, there has been a rise in the number of fatalities among those who mix in Kremlin circles. It is thought the Kremlin has become increasingly frustrated with high profile figures and their failures in the war.

The Diplomatic Courier reported in March 2023, that at least nine senior Russian diplomats died of “sudden Russian death syndrome” between January 2016 and October 2021, including the ambassadors to India, Sudan, and the United Nations. The Russian foreign ministry said some of those diplomats died of "heart attacks" or "brief illnesses," but in most cases, Moscow never announced the cause of the death.

1. David Knowles, a journalist for the Telegraph, died in Gibraltar on 08 September 2024 following a suspected cardiac arrest. The 32-year-old worked as a senior audio journalist and presenter for the broadsheet, where he rose to prominence after launching Ukraine: The Latest, a weekday podcast focused on the Russian invasion. Professor Tim Wilson said :" I find it extraordinary that somebody who is only 32 should die of a heart attack... he was making waves reporting on Russia and the KGB or the FSB or whatever the various dark organizations might be in Russia at the moment are masters of various forms of poison. ... it's very difficult not to think or not to speculate that he was silenced in some ways"
2. On 21 August 2024 retired Major General Dmitry Dreval died in Moscow, presumably due to acute heart failure. The man felt unwell, an ambulance was called to the scene, but the doctors who arrived were unable to save him. Dreval served in the Ministry of Defense, and traveled to combat zones on numerous occasions. For some time, he held the position of deputy head of logistics for the Russian Armed Forces.
3. On July 11, businessman Igor Kotelnikov, who was an intermediary under Ivanov, also suddenly died in a pre-trial detention center.
4. On July 8, the head of the State Expertise Department of the Russian Ministry of Defense, General Khandayev, suddenly died. He was the right hand of the arrested ex-deputy Shoigu Ivanov.
5. On 21 February 2024, Andrey Morozov, a pro-Kremlin Russian military Z-blogger (call sign Murz), died by "suicide". The occupier and propagandist "Murz" shot himself after being harassed in the Russian Federation. In his death post, "Murz" complained about harassment by "political whores led by Volodymyr Solovyov" and other propagandists because of his statements about the losses of the Russian army near Avdiivka. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported to President Vladimir Putin that "Avdiivka was taken for minimal losses." Morozov was a Stalinist blogger, known in the mid-2000s as Fighting Cat Murz, who headed the national Stalinist group "Red Blitzkrieg". Unlike many of his fellow 'comrades', he wasn't a complete idiot. Murz failed to find a place for himself and his talents in a peaceful life at home.In 2008, he became the first Russian blogger convicted of an extremist article for publishing on the Internet. Then he was sentenced to three years in prison for posting on the Livejournal social network and illegal possession of weapons. In May 2014, the blogger went to Ukraine to fight as part of pro-Russian militants in Donbas. Murz was known for his frantic and highly effective advocation of innovations in the Russian military (top-notch communications, drones, etc.) and his endless criticism of the Russian military system as incompetent and archaic. Illia Ponomarenko said" he was among the Last True Soldiers of the Empire, dedicating every heartbeat of his to the Great Purpose -- which was never anything at least a bit more complex than 'we'll conquer them all and exterminate them all, and thus the kingdom shall come.'" The Russian military communicator "executed himself" to avoid embarrassment to the army. The blogger announced that he had "decided to commit suicide" to one whose publications caused embarrassment and anger among the military and senior officials in Russia. Many doubt the fact that he did indeed commit suicide, and estimate that he may have been directly eliminated by Kremlin officials.
6. On 19 February 2024, Maxim Kuzminov was killed in Spain. In August 2023, the Main Directorate of Intelligence carried out a special operation, during which a Russian serviceman drove a Mi-8 helicopter and components for aircraft in service with the Armed Forces of Ukraine to Ukraine. In addition to Kuzminov, there were two more Russian soldiers on board the helicopter. After landing on the territory of Ukraine, they were liquidated. Kuzminov was found murdered in the Spanish municipality of Villajoyosa. According to different versions, from 5 to 12 bullets were found in his body.Spanish intelligence officials estimate that the most senior officials in Russia are behind the assassination of Maxim Kuzminov. Officials in the security system in Ukraine said this week that they advised him not to leave the country, and warned him that his life was in danger if he left the country.
7. On 16 February 2024 Aleksei Navalny's family and close associates confirmed the Russian opposition politician's death in the IK-3 "Arctic Wolf" ["Polar Wolf"] prison nearl Vorkuta. They demanded his body be handed over, but officials have refused to release it, telling his lawyers and mother that an "investigation" of the causes would only be completed next week. Navalny's mother was told her son had died of a cardiac-arrest illness. Navalny, a longtime anti-corruption fighter and Russia's most-prominent opposition politician for over a decade, was 47. “Russia is responsible.” VP Kamala Harris , the keynote speaker at the Munich Security Conference, said. “Whatever story they tell, let us be clear: Russia is responsible." “There’s no doubt in my mind… [that] his death is a result of Putin’s brutality.” Former Secretary of State @HillaryClinton tells me that Alexey Navalny’s death “is a tragedy for Russia,” and places the blame firmly at Putin’s door. The Kremlin, which Navalny said was behind a poison attack that almost killed him in 2020, angrily denied it played any role in Navalny's death and rejected the "absolutely rabid" reaction of Western leaders.
   Navalny was undoubtedly a brave man, but he was not a liberal by the standards of the West. He allied himself with Russian ultranationalists, and in 2007 called for the deportation of migrants. Ian Garner commented "Navalny called on everyone from greens to communists, liberals, and nationalists to join his campaign.... Nobody at the time knew how to speak to or unite such a broad spectrum of Russia’s disparate opposition as Alexei Navalny. ... In court the day before he died, the political prisoner was seen laughing and joking — he rarely took the regime’s show trials seriously, choosing to mock rather than participate in them ... Navalny chose to martyr himself in the name of overthrowing Putin. Yet today, he leaves behind him no united opposition, no leader to occupy his place, and little hope that tomorrow will be any brighter for the Russian Federation."
8. On 16 November 2023 a highly decorated former commander of Russian air defences General Vladimir Sviridov was found dead, alongside his wife Tatyana, in their home in the village of Adzhievsky in the Stavropol region. The bodies were lying in bed for a week before they were found. In a 2007 interview with a Russian aviation magazine, he vented openly about the shoddy training of Russian pilots, calling them “third-rate” and admitting, “We are forced to appoint not fully trained officers because there are no better ones.” “For the same reason we are sending to military academies third-ranking pilots. This did not happen in the past.”
9. Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash on 23 August 2023. The long-secretive and then suddenly brashly, blatantly, profanely outspoken figure behind a range of shadowy and unwholesome enterprises, from a “troll farm” that meddled in U.S. elections to a mercenary army that has fought in Syria and Ukraine -- where it was at the center of the long, bloody battle for Bakhmut -- and active in several African countries.
10. Dmitry Utkin is believed to have died in the plane crash on 23 August 2023. The Russian plane was carrying Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and Utkin, who was Prigozhin's second-in-command. The plane also carried three other people, including the pilot, co-pilot, and a flight attendant. Utkin was a Russian army officer and special forces officer in the GRU. He was also the co-founder of the private military company. His call sign was "Wagner".
11. On 12 October 2023 the head of the Department of Pan-European Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Nikolai Kobrinets, was found dead in his hotel room in Istanbul, Türkiye. According to preliminary investigation information, the senior diplomat died of a heart attack.
12. On 14 August 2023 came the strange death of General Gennady Lopyrev, the former head of the North Caucasian division of the service, the keeper of the secrets of the construction of Putin's palace in Gelendzhik. Lopyrev was preparing for parole from prison when for no reason at all, he turned to the medical unit - he could not breathe and had a hoarse voice (Navalny described such symptoms when they tried to poison him). In the evening was transferred to intensive care, where he died.
13. Oleksandr Senchenko, Ukraine’s charge d’affaires and acting ambassador in Armenia, died in an apparent drowning incident in five feet of water at the high-altitude Lake Sevan in the country’s east on 13 August 2023. Senchenko played a pivotal role in thwarting elusive Russian imports seeking to evade sanctions. His death, allegedly after drowning in merely 5-ft-deep water, giving rise to speculations whether it was also a high-profile assassination by the Russian agencies — fighting in the shadows to help Moscow win a losing war.
14. Anton Cherepennikov, who had a core role in Russia's spying network, was found dead in his office in Moscow on 27 July 2023. This key ally of Vladimir Putin became the second high profile Russian to die under mysterious circumstances in 48 hours. Cherepennikov was the owner of the country's largest IT company, ICS Holding, which was used by Russia's Federal Security Service [FSB] for surveillance to wiretap phones and store internet traffic data. Aged just 40 years old, his death has been put down to a "cardiac arrest" by the country's media. “I do not believe [he died of] cardiac arrest," said Vasily Polonsky, a close friend of Cherepennikov. One opposition source said Cherepennikov was "an absolutely key tool in Putin’s repression." He continued: "His assassination cannot be ruled out as the security apparatus becomes desperate due to the failing war."
15. Igor Kudryakov, a billionaire oligarch and former government official, was found dead in his Moscow apartment 21 July 2023. Kudryakov founded delivery service Service 77 - distributing food and other goods in Russia's capital, which he later sold for $15 million. One of the richest people in Russia, in 2006 he was appointed to the post of first deputy head of the main department of the State Housing Inspectorate of the Moscow Region. There is no directe indication of how he moved from millionaire to billionaire, though the Housing Inspectorate would seem an opportunity for shakedown operations. His daughter said that Igor Vladimirovich was seriously ill. The 64-year-old had previously been diagnosed with cancer.
16. On 20 May 2023, Pyotr Kucherenko, the 46-year-old deputy head of the Ministry of Education and Science and the husband of singer Diana Gurtskaya, died. He was returning from a business trip to Cuba, he became ill on the plane, was urgently landed in Mineralnye Vody and they tried to save him. The preliminary cause of death is heart failure. Roman Super, an independent Russian journalist, wrote on his Telegram channel Kucherenko had told him "I drink antidepressants and tranquilizers at the same time. Handfuls," And that doesn't help much. I hardly sleep. I feel terrible. We’re all held hostage.” Super said Kucherenko encouraged him to leave in order to save himself and his family, adding: “You can’t imagine the degree of brutalization of our country. You won’t even recognize Russia in a year.” Kucherenko allegedly told Super that it was impossible for him to leave because authorities had taken away his passport. “And there’s no world that would be happy to see a deputy Russian minister after this fascist invasion,” Kucherenko said, according to Super.
17. On April 17, 2003: Sergei Yushenkov, a veteran politician and leader of the anti-Kremlin party Liberal Russia, is shot in front of his Moscow home. Yushenkov had been at the forefront of efforts by liberal lawmakers to investigate the possible involvement of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in a series of deadly apartment bombings in 1999. The bombings, which killed some 300 people, were blamed on Chechen militants and used by Moscow as a pretext to launch the Second Chechen War.
18. Vladlen Tatarsky, a military blogger and vocal supporter of Russia's war in Ukraine, was killed by an explosion at a St Petersburg cafe on 03 April 2023. The killing of Russian is being investigated as a "high-profile murder", authorities said. Twenty-four others were taken to hospital and six were in critical condition, the health ministry said. Tatarsky was a guest speaker at an event hosted by the cafe when was presented with a statue in a box as a gift, which had a bomb hidden inside. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak blamed the blast on a Russian "internal political fight", tweeting: "Spiders are eating each other in a jar."
19. Andrey Botikovm, a top scientist who worked on the development of Sputnik V coronavirus vaccines, was strangled to death in his Moscow apartment on 02 March 2023. The 47-year-old virologist was one of the 18 scientists who worked on the Sputnik V vaccine at the Gamaleya National Research Center which was released in 2020. He was found strangled by a belt at his Rogova Street home. The suspect's name is Alexei Z and he has previously spent 10 years behind the bars for providing sex services.
20. Viatcheslav Rovneiko, 59, was 'found unconscious' late at night at his home in an elite gated village 23 February 2023. Doctors could not save him, according to a report by Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. The circumstances of his reported death were unclear. The Russian oil magnate who was a former spy and close to Vladimir Putin's foreign intelligence chief. Rovneiko's former business partner was Leonid Dyachenko, whose then wife Tatiana was the powerful daughter of President Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first president.
21. Marina Yankina, the head of the financial support department of the Ministry of Defense for the Western Military District, was found dead in St. Petersburg. The body of the head of the financial department was found on the morning of 15 February 2023 under the windows of the apartment where she lived. On the common balcony on the 16th floor, the police found her documents and personal belongings. According to the media, the investigation considers suicide as the main version. "This mysterious death of Marina Yankina is consistent with the Russian intelligence doctrine of ‘wet affairs’ – or the spilling of blood," Rebekah Koffler, a former Defense Intelligence Agency intel officer for Russian Doctrine & Strategy, told Fox News Digital.
22. Police Major General Vladimir Makarov, the former deputy head of the main department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for combating extremism (Center "E"), was found dead on February 13 in a country house in the village of Golikovo near Moscow. Next to the body was a Berkut-2M carbine. Makarov allegedly committed suicide.
23. On February 8, Corporation for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic (KRDV) Director General Igor Nosov died at the age of 43. The death was officially announced as caused by a stroke.
24. Pavel Antov, a lawmaker and Russian sausage magnate who criticized the war on Ukraine, mysteriously died at a hotel in India on 27 Dececember 2022 while traveling for his birthday—becoming the latest in a string of puzzling high-profile critics of Vladimir Putin who have died under unexplained circumstances since the country launched a war with Ukraine. Antov died after falling from the third floor of his luxury hotel in the southern district of India's Rayagada. A wealthy lawmaker from Russia's Vladimir region, Antov made headlines this summer as he condemned Russia’s airstrikes on Ukraine—lamenting "it's extremely hard to call this anything other than terror"—only to later edit the post, calling it a misunderstanding, and stress that he had always supported the Russian president.
25. Vladimir Budanov, Pavel Antov's friend, was found dead on 25 Dececember 2022 at the hotel following a sudden heart attack on the trip, according to a doctor who noted Budanov had a pre-existing heart condition and "had alcohol on an empty stomach" the night before he died.
26. Dmitry Zelenov, 50, real estate baron and one-time billionaire, died on 04 December 2022 while visiting friends on the coast of France after suddenly becoming ill during dinner and then falling down a flight of stairs, according to French newspaper Var Matin; police are investigating the death.
27. Viktor Cherkesov, a longtime ally and deputy of Russian President Vladimir Putin who was fired in 2007 after publicly discussing infighting within Putin's inner circle, died following "a severe illness,"
28. Russian shipyard executive Alexander Buzakov died, with officials providing no cause of death.
29. Ravil Maganov, the chairman of oil company Lukoil who openly opposed the invasion of Ukraine, died in early September 2022 after falling from a sixth-floor hospital window. Some sources claimed he tripped and fell while smoking, stating a pack of cigarettes was found by the window. LUKoil, Russia's largest private oil company and one of the few corporate voices to oppose to the Kremlin's war in Ukraine, said Maganov had died in Moscow following a "serious illness,"
30. Anatoly Gerashchenko, the former head of of the Moscow Aviation Institute, died in September 2022 after reportedly falling "from a great height" inside the institute's offices. Gerashchenko was pronounced dead after falling down "several sets of stairs", according to a statement issued by the institute.
31. Ivan Pechorin, a top manager at the Corporation for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic, was found dead in Vladivostok after allegedly falling off his luxury yacht and drowning near Cape Ignatyev in the Sea of Japan. "On September 12, 2022, it became known about the tragic death of our colleague," a statement from the company said.
32. Dan Rapoport, a Latvian-American investment banker and outspoken Putin critic who had just left Ukraine after the Russian invasion, was found dead on 14 August 2022 in front of a luxury apartment building in Washington DC. Police say they were not treating Rapoport's death as suspicious, the Washington-based Politico reported, but the case remained under investigation. Rapoport became rich while in Moscow before falling out of favour with the Kremlin, mostly due to his support for the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, according to reports. In 2017, Rapoport's then-business partner, Sergei Tkachenko, fell to his death from his Moscow apartment's window.
33. On 20 August 2022, a car driven by Darya Dugina exploded not far from Moscow. Dugina was a reporter working for RT, the Russian propaganda outlet and the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, "Putin’s ideologue". The FSB claimed that the assassination of Dariya Dugina was orchestrated by the Ukrainian special services. The assassin is said to be a Ukrainian woman who fled to Estonia after committing the crime. FSB quote: "It has been established that the crime was prepared and performed by the Ukrainian special services. The perpetrator is a citizen of Ukraine, Natalia Pavlivna Vovk, born in 1979; she arrived in Russia on 23 July 2022, together with her daughter Sofia Mykhailivna Shaban, born in 2010.
34. Multi-millionaire businessman Yuri Voronov was found on 04 July 2022, in the swimming pool at his home in the affluent Vyborgsky neighbourhood of St Petersburg with a gunshot wound to his head. The police retrieved a handgun at the scene, while bullet casings were found at the bottom of the pool, local media reported. The 61-year-old Voronov, whose death was deemed to have been a suicide, was the CEO of Astra-Shipping transport and logistics company, a subcontractor to Gazprom.
35. Aleksandr Subbotin, a former top Lukoil manager, was found dead in the basement of a residence in a Moscow suburb in May 2022. Russian news reports said the house belonged to a self-styled healer, Shaman Magua, who practised purification rites. Magua testified that Subbotin came to his house under the influence of alcohol and drugs and demanded that the healer, whose real name is Aleksei Pindurin, performs a healing ritual for hangover symptoms.
36. Andrei Krukovsky, the 37-year-old director of a Sochi ski resort owned by gas giant Gazprom, died on 02 May 2022 after allegedly falling off a cliff while hiking near the Achipse fortress, the scenic area's landmark monument.
37. Sergey Protosenya, who had a fortune of £330 million, was found on 19 April 2022 hanged in Spain with his wife and daughter killed. The body of Sergey Protosenya, 55, was found hanged outside a Spanish villa, with his wife Natalia, 33, and their teenage daughter Maria found hacked to death with an axe inside. Spanish police said no suicide note was left and no fingerprints were on the weapon. The businessman had served as deputy chairman of natural gas company Novotek, a company closely linked to the Kremlin. Several family friends came out in public to state that Protosenya is, in fact, the third victim of a "staged suicide" and that the oligarch would have been incapable of murdering his family.
38. Vladislav Avayev, his wife and daughter died in a 'murder-suicide' on 18 April 2022. The body of Vladislav Avayev, 51, was found in his elite Moscow penthouse alongside his wife Yelena, 47, and daughter, Maria, 13. Avayev was previously a vice president at Gazprombank. Avayev was not the last Gazprom top-level manager to die under strange circumstances.
39. On 24 March 2022, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported the death of billionaire Vasily Melnikov in his luxury apartment in Nizhny Novgorod. Melnikov — who reportedly worked for the medical firm MedStom — was found dead in the apartment together with his wife Galina and two sons. They had all died from stab wounds and the knives used for the murders were found at the crime scene.
40. Alexander Tyulyakov, 65, a senior executive of Gazproms's Corporate Security,died at his home in the same village as Shulman the morning after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. According to the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, his body was found hanged in the garage. Gazprom's own security unit arrived at the scene of the suicide at the same time as the police and was also investigating the death.
41. Ukrainian-born Russian tycoon Mikhail Watford was found dead in his home in Surrey in the U.K. on 28 February 2022. Watford, 66, was found hanged in the garage of his home by a gardener. His wife and children, who were at home at the time, were unharmed. UK authorities were treating Watford's death as unexplained but not suspicious.
42. Alexander Tyulakov died in suspicious circumstances. On February 25, the day after the Ukraine war started, the body of Alexander Tyulakov, 61, a senior Gazprom financial and security official at deputy general director level, was discovered by his lover. His neck was in a noose in his £500,000 home. Yet reports say he had been badly beaten shortly before he 'took his own life'.
43. In January 2022 Gazprom top manager Leonid Shulman was found dead in the bathroom of a cottage in the Leningrad region, next to a note that led police to believe he died by suicide. Leonid Shulman died in suspicious circumstances. Shulman, 60, head of transport at Gazprom Invest, was found dead with multiple stab wounds in a pool of blood on his bathroom floor. According to the police authorities, a suicide note was allegedly found next to his body, in which he recounted his suffering after a leg injury -- which Gazprom claimed caused him to take a leave of absence. Shulman, who was the head of the transport service at Gazprom Invest, was involved in a possible corruption case at the Russian gas giant.
44. Yegor Prosvirnin, the founder of nationalist blog Sputnik and Pogrom, died in December 2021 after falling out of a window of a Moscow apartment building. Prosvirnin's naked body was found next to a knife and a gas canister after shouts and yelling were heard from his apartment, local media reported. Prosvirnin, a right-wing activist, originally supported Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 but later became a vocal critic of Putin
45. Kirill Zhalo was the son of General Alexey Zhalo, deputy director of the FSB's Second Service, responsible for dealing with internal political threats for the Kremlin. On 19 October 2021, the Russian diplomat was found dead after he fell from a window of the Russian embassy in Berlin, Der Spiegel reported. The unidentified man was a second secretary at the embassy, but German intelligence sources told the newspaper they suspected he was an undercover officer with Russia's FSB. Investigative outlet Bellingcat said it used open-source data to identify the man. Exiled Russian journalist Roman Dobrokhotov alleged Zhalo was an undercover secret agent posing as a diplomat and that the FSB executed him on suspicion that he was cooperating with German intelligence.
46. Alexander Kagansky, a top Russian scientist developing a novel COVID-19 vaccine, was found dead in December 2020 after falling from his high-rise apartment in St Petersburg. According to Russian outlets, police claimed Kagansky stabbed himself and then jumped to his death.
47. Alexey Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. Navalny fell ill 20 August 2020 after boarding a plane in Siberia, with aides saying they suspect he drank a cup of spiked tea at the airport. He was aboard a flight heading home to Moscow when he fell ill, forcing an emergency landing. A passenger posted a video to Telegram in which cries could be heard from inside the airplane’s lavatory stall. He was initially treated in a local hospital, where doctors said they were unable to find any toxic substances in his blood, before he was flown to Berlin for specialised treatment on 22 August 2020. The charismatic Yale-educated lawyer, who had been Russia's leading opposition politician for around a decade, was in the intensive care unit and remained on a ventilator. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her government had concluded that Navalny, 44, was poisoned with Novichok. Germany's claim that he was exposed to Novichok – the same substance used against Russian ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English town of Salisbury two years ago – prompted widespread condemnation and demands for an investigation. Navalny had long been a problematic figure for the Kremlin — detailing corruption and excess at the highest levels of the government on his popular YouTube channel. The channel’s mix of investigative journalism and caustic humor has resonated with younger Russians in particular.

48. On 23 August 2019, former Chechen field commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot dead in Berlin. Russian citizen Vadim Sokolov (Krasikov) was arrested on suspicion of the murder and subsequently sentenced to life in prison. German authorities claim that Sokolov acted on orders from the Kremlin. Putin personally greeted the killer Krasikov at the airport as if he were an old friend. Kremlin spokesman Peskov made the sensational claim that, "as a surprise," Krasikov was an active officer in the Russian security services and, moreover, was connected to #Putin's personal security services.
49. Arkady Babchenko reportedly died of his wounds in an ambulance after his wife found him covered in his blood in their home 29 May 2018. Police said they suspected the murder was due to Babchenko's professional activities. But Babchenko later spoke at a televised press conference in which he apologized to friends and loved ones and thanked Ukraine's security services for saving his life. His death may have been faked intentionally. Babchenko, a former soldier in the Chechen war who became one of Russia's best-known war correspondents, had left his homeland fearing for his life after criticising Russian policy in Ukraine and Syria. He had been denounced by pro-government politicians in Russia over comments on social media about the Russian bombing of Aleppo in Syria's war, and over his characterisation of Russia as an aggressor towards Ukraine. Police officials said the operation was carried out in an attempt to lure out those behind the threats. They said that one arrest had been made so far.

50. Nikolai Glushkov, a close associate of late Putin critic Boris Berezovsky, was found dead in his London home on 12 March 2018. The body of a 69-year-old man was found in New Malden, London. The counter terrorism police had been drafted in to investigate due to "associations" the man had. After Berezovsky was found dead in 2013 of an apparent suicide, Glushkov said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper: “too many deaths [of Russian emigres] have been happening.”
51. On 04 March 2018, Sergei Skripal, ex-colonel of the GRU and former British intelligence agent, and his daughter Julia were founcd unconscious in the town of Salisbury and taken to hospital in critical condition. Skripal and his daughter, who arrived from Russia the day before, drove to a shopping center in Salisbury, where they had a drink at a pub and dinner at a restaurant. About a half hour later, emergency personnel were called to assist the two, who were found in "extremely serious condition" on a bench near the shopping center. The police officer who was first on the scene also remained hospitalized.

    British Prime Minister Teresa May immediately stated the main thing: "The British government considers it very likely that Russia is responsible for the attempt on the life of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia.... Mr. Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent of military origin, developed in Russia. It is known as Novichok ["Beginner"]," the prime minister said, adding that "the Russian authorities have the experience of eliminating people with the help of poisonous substances... Russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so. Russia's record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations, and our assessment that Russia views some defectors as legitimate targets for assassinations, the government has concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the act against Sergei and Yulia Skripal," she said. The government was accused of failing to learn from the murder of Litvinenko and the fact that in the case of Skripal, the special services were unable to protect their agent.

    Vil Mirzayanov, the Russian chemist who helped develop the Soviet-era nerve agent used to poison Skripal and other, insisted only Moscow could be behind the attack. He told Reuters he had no doubt that Mr Putin was responsible, given Russia maintained tight control over its Novichok stockpile.

    President Vladimir Putin reacted to the scandal rather laconically. Vladimir Vladimirovich smirked after BBC journalist Steve Rosenberg asked if Russia was responsible for the attack. "You'll sort it out there yourself, and then we'll discuss this with you," he said in response to a question from the British broadcaster. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on 13 March 2018 that Moscow would not respond to May’s ultimatum until London provided access to the nerve agent that was allegedly used. "Russia is not guilty," Lavrov said.

    The Skripals were in a critical condition for weeks and doctors at one point feared that, even if they survived, they might have suffered brain damage. But their health began to improve rapidly, and Yulia was discharged in April. Sergei Skripal, the former Russian spy who was poisoned by a nerve agent in Britain, was discharged from hospital, England's health service said on 18 May 2018, more than two months after the poisoning event.

52. Former Russian lawmaker Denis Voronenkov was shot dead in Kyiv 23 March 2017 in a likely contract killing ordered by Russia, Ukrainian police said. Voronenkov fled to Ukraine in 2016, fearing for his safety and testified in a treason case against Ukraine’s pro-Russia former president, Viktor Yanukovych. Ukraine's general prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, said Voronenkov’s testimony in the case likely led to his death. "In broad daylight in the center of Kyiv, former Russian lawmaker Denis Voronenkov was shot,” Lutsenko said. “He had provided investigators of the military prosecutor's office with highly important (witness) testimony for the case. This was a typical show execution of a witness by the Kremlin."

53. In November 2016 the police found the body of Sergei Krivov, on the consulate’s floor, unresponsive and with a “blunt force trauma” to his head. He was a 63-year-old security officer at the Russian consulate in New York City’s Upper East Side. Witnesses testified the man fell from the consulate’s roof. Russia maintained the cause of Krivov’s death was a heart attack, but the NYC medical examiner found no evidence to confirm the man had a heart attack.

54. On 20 July 2016 a car bombing killed Pavel Sheremet, a pioneering journalist and radio talk-show host who left his home country of Belarus six years ago after run-ins with its autocratic leader, Alexander Lukashenko, and a suspended prison sentence. Sheremet was driving to work when a bomb exploded under the Subaru SUV belonging to his girlfriend, Olena Prytula, the former editor-in-chief of the newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda. She wasn’t in the car. The bomb had been triggered by remote control. Sheremet’s highly public slaying smacked more of Moscow than Kyiv.

55. On July 10, 2016, DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered in Washington DC, with multiple gunshot wounds in his back. DC cops suspected Rich was a victim of an attempted robbery, but they found his wallet, credit cards and cellphone on his body, and the band of his wristwatch was torn but not broken. Julian Assange of WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in the Rich case. He hinted that the slain man had been a source of 30,000 internal DNC emails. Was Rich the source who provided Wikileaks with the DNC’s internal emails? Right-wing media outlets floated unproven theories that Rich was the person who provided Wikileaks with thousands of internal DNC emails, and suggested his death was retribution for the supposed leak. If true, what becomes of the mantra “Russia did it?” All the more reason the Russian's would have killed him to throw suspicion off their trail.

56. Matthew Puncher, 2016, was the radiation expert who discovered that Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko had been given toxic polonium. Five months after a trip to Russia, he was found dead by multiple stab wounds. A coroner ruled suicide.

57. Major Russian opposition leader and former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov was shot dead Feb. 27, 2015 in central Moscow. The Interior Ministry said Nemtsov was shot four times from a passing car as he walked across a bridge over the Moscow River right next to the Kremlin. Police say Nemtsov was walking with a woman visiting him from Ukraine, who was not hurt. Once a deputy prime minister tipped to be a possible successor to former President Boris Yeltsin, Nemtsov carved a unique role for himself as an opposition leader who still maintained contacts inside the Kremlin and could open doors abroad, from Brussels to Washington.

58. Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent figure in the Russian opposition movement, was hospitalized in 2015 after becoming critically ill, and he and others believe his illness was the result of poisoning. He was hospitalized again with the same symptoms February 2017, but regained his health. Kara-Murza nearly died from kidney failure in 2015, although doctors have not identified the poison. Both times, he spent several days in a medically induced coma. After the most recent incident, his family sent his blood samples to a private lab in Israel to determine the toxin. He was flown out of Russia for treatment. The coordinator at Khodorkovsky's Open Russia foundation and a close associate of Nemtsov, Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. is largely unknown to most Russians, but his wide contacts in the West arguably made him a thorn in the Kremlin's side.

59. Scot Young, 2014, was a wealthy "fixer" to the super-rich and often fronted deals for Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. He was part of a network of associates who funneled Berezovsky's cash through offshore companies, and repeatedly worried about being targeted by the Russian mafia. He was found impaled on the railings beneath a London flat.

60. Johnny Elichaoff, 2014, was a businessman and the former husband of TV presenter Trinny Woodall. He had battled painkiller addiction, and reportedly rolled himself off a shopping center roof after a string of oil investments went wrong.

61. Boris Berezovsky, 2013, was an expat businessman and critic of Putin. He was found dead at his home in an apparent suicide by hanging.

62. Alexander Perepilichnyy, 2012, was a financier who helped expose fraud by Russian government officials. He died in Surrey in 2012 after visiting Paris, and BuzzFeed News reported that there were "signs of a fatal plant poison" discovered in his stomach.

63. Robbie Curtis, 2012, was a friend of property dealer Paul Castle [2010], and, like him, worked in property. He too killed himself, with US intelligence reportedly believing he may have been driven to suicide by Russia.

64. Paul Castle, 2010, a property dealer with flamboyant spending habits, died by suicide after stepping in front of a tube train. BuzzFeed reported that he may have been threatened with a slow and painful death by people linked to the Russian (and Turkish) mafia if he didn't kill himself.

65. Gareth Williams, 2010, was a British spy. His bodyfound in a bag in his apartment in 2010. While police said they think it was an accident, intelligence agencies allegedly believe he may have been assassinated.

66. Russian activists blamed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for maintaining a climate that resulted in the 16 July 2009 murder in the Caucasus of journalist Natalya Estemirova. The body of the renowned human rights activist, with bullet wounds to her head and chest, is found in Ingushetia, hours after her abduction near her home in the capital of Chechnya, Grozny. Her colleagues from the Memorial human rights organization and other groups told a Moscow news conference that Mr. Putin's protégé in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov is specifically responsible for Estemirova's death. Memorial chairman Oleg Orlov called Natalya Estemirova the soul of the organization; a journalist dedicated to uncovering widespread criminality in Chechnya. Orlov accused Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov of responsibility for her death.

67. Badri Patarkatsishvili, 2008, the best friend and former business partner of Boris Berezovsky, lived close to his friend in Surrey until he died of a heart attack after a family dinner. British intelligence officials asked their counterparts in the US for information about Patarkatsishvili's death, and any possible links to Russia.

68. Abdulla Telman Alishayev died in the hospital 03 September 2008. Two men shot Alishayev the previous evening, as he sat in his car in the republic capital, Makhachkala. Officials said Alishayev suffered shoulder and head wounds. Doctors operated, but they could not save his life. Alishayev was an editor and show host for an Islamic television channel. He also produced documentaries about Wahhabism, a radical form of Islam.

69. Ivan Safronov, a veteran military correspondent for the Kommersant newspaper, died in a mysterious fall from the fifth floor of his Moscow apartment building on 5 March 2007. At the time of his death, Safronov, a former colonel in the Russian armed forces, had been investigating alleged Russian plans to sell weapons and military aircraft to Iran and Syria via Belarus, as well as working on another article on the proposed sale of tactical missiles to Syria. Prosecutors initially suggested that suicide was the most likely explanation, although Safronov's colleagues at his newspaper as well as a number of other journalists said this was highly unlikely.

70. Daniel McGrory, 2007, was a foreign correspondent for the British newspaper The Times and was found dead at his North London flat. He had reported extensively on Alexander Litvinenko's death. While his family believe he died of natural causes, British intelligence officials later asked US counterparts to investigate his death.

71. Anna Politkovskaya, a renowned journalist and Kremlin critic best known for her reporting of atrocities in Chechnya and corruption among Russian officials, was shot dead in the stairwell of her Moscow apartment block on 7 October 2006. The killer ambushed her in the elevator, fired four shots from a silenced Makarov pistol and fled. A surveillance camera captured an image of a man leaving the building after the shooting, but no further details of his identity or motives were released. A mother of two, Politkovskaya often traveled to the breakaway republic where she reported on cases of kidnapping, torture and other crimes -- atrocities she blamed on forces of the Russian military and the Moscow-backed government in Chechnya. The 48-year-old, who enjoyed a higher profile abroad than in Russia itself, had been employed by the twice-weekly Novaya Gazeta newspaper as an investigative reporter since 1999, following a five-year stint at another liberal-minded newspaper, Obshchaya Gazeta. Politkovskaya said she was investigating a case of alleged kidnapping, torture and murder perpetrated by Chechnya's Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov and his personal army of heavily armed fighters. Her final article, which she was still writing at the time of her death, focused on the use of torture by the authorities in Chechnya.

72. Daniel McGrory, 2007, was a foreign correspondent for the British newspaper The Times and was found dead at his North London flat. He had reported extensively on Alexander Litvinenko's death. While his family believe he died of natural causes, British intelligence officials later asked US counterparts to investigate his death.

73. Andrey Kozlov, first deputy chairman at the Central Bank of Russia, died in hospital on 14 September 2006, hours after being shot by two unidentified gunmen in a Moscow street. His driver was killed in the same attack. Kozlov built his reputation in Russian banking by spearheading a drive against white-collar crime. Under his supervision, the CBR revoked the licences of a number of banks suspected of involvement in money laundering and other criminal activity. Aleksey Frenkel, a senior executive at two of the banks to lose their licences, was arrested in January 2007 and charged withordering Kozlov's killing. He denied any involvement. Banker Aleksandr Slesarev, his wife and his daughter were killed in a drive-by shooting on a road near Moscow on 16 October 2005. Slesarev was the former owner of Sodbiznesbank, which had its banking licence revoked by the Central Bank of Russia in May 2004 on suspicion of money laundering, charges it denied. This move led to a crisis in Russian banking, with other lending institutions fearing they would meet the same fate. Another bank owned by Slesarev, Kredittrast, was declared bankrupt in August 2004. Slesarev's killers have never been caught.

74. Yuri Golubev, 2006, an oil tycoon and friend to jailed political dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky, died in London. An obituary at the time said he "felt unwell," returned from a trip early, and subsequently "died peacefully," though US intelligence suspects foul play.

75. Igor Ponomarev, died in 2006 shortly before Litvintenko, right before he was due to meet with someone investigating Russian activities in Italy. US intelligence may have evidence that the diplomat was assassinated, BuzzFeed reported.

76. Gen Anatoliy Trofimov, formerly deputy head of Russia's Federal Security Service, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Moscow on 10 April 2005. His wife sustained serious injuries in the attack and died a few hours later. Trofimov, who was appointed as deputy FSB chief and Moscow security chief by then President Boris Yeltsin in January 1995, was sacked just over two years later for "gross violations and flaws in his work". Investigators initially said the most likely explanation for Trofimov's murder was a contract killing relating to his business dealings, but the crime remained unsolved.

77. Stephen Curtis, 2004, a lawyer who represented an imprisoned Russian oil tycoon, was killed in a helicopter in England in 2006. Again, US intelligence suspects that Russia may have played a hand in his death.

78. Paul Klebnikov, the 41-year-old editor-in-chief of the Forbes business magazine's Russian edition, was shot dead as he left his Moscow office on 9 July 2004. A US citizen of Russian descent, Klebnikov joined Forbes in 1989 before launching its Russian edition in April 2004. An outspoken critic of Russia's oligarchs, he also published a best-selling book in which he was highly critical of the exiled business tycoon, Boris Berezovskiy. In May 2006, a Moscow court cleared three men of murdering Klebnikov on the orders of a former Chechen rebel leader, but six months later the Russian Supreme Court overturned the ruling and ordered a new trial. Proceedings in this new trial are currently suspended after one of the defendants disappeared and was placed on the federal wanted list. By 2009 Russian authorities said Klebnikov was killed by ethnic Chechens. They say the men killed him on orders from another ethnic Chechen.

79. Yuriy Shchekochikhin, an opposition MP and deputy editor of the twice-weekly Novaya Gazeta newspaper, died in a Moscow hospital on 3 July 2003 after contracting an unexplained illness. The 53-year-old was best known for his reporting of organized crime and corruption, and at the time of his death was investigating the alleged involvement of the Russian security services in a series of bombings in residential areas of Moscow in 1999. He was also a fierce critic of Russian government policy in Chechnya and a prominent member of the Memorial human rights group. Shchekochikhin's family, friends and colleagues suggested he may have been poisoned, possibly with a radioactive substance, as punishment for one of his exposes. But hisfamily is said to have failed to secure access to medical records.

80. Igor Klimov, acting director-general of Almaz-Antey, Russia's largest manufacturer of antiaircraft missiles, was shot dead near his home in central Moscow on 6 June 2003 by unidentified gunmen wearing camouflage uniforms. Klimov, a former intelligence officer, had only taken charge of the company in February, and his death came just weeks before a permanent chief executive was due to be appointed. Hours after Klimov was shot, gunmen also killed Sergey Shchitko, commercial director of one of Almaz-Antey's subsidiaries. In October 2005, a Moscow court convicted five men of carrying out Klimov's murder and handed them prison sentences ranging from 22 years to life. Two other men were arrested in May 2006 and charged with masterminding the killing.

81. Stephen Moss, a British lawyer, had an apparent heart attack and died in 2003. US intelligence officials allegedly believe he may have been assassinated.

82. Veteran liberal MP Sergey Yushenkov was shot dead outside his home in a Moscow suburb on 17 April 2003, just hours after registering his new party, Liberal Russia. A member of parliament since 1990, Yushenkov was well known to Russians for his liberal views and his opposition to many areas of government policy. After Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, Yushenkov and his associates founded Liberal Russia, but differences among its leaders forced the movement to split into two factions. Just under a year after Yushenkov was killed, a Moscow court convicted a member of the rival Liberal Russia faction, Mikhail Kodanev, of ordering the murder and sent him to prison for 20 years. Another man was convicted of carrying out the attack and was given the same sentence. However, Kodanev's associate, exiled tycoon Boris Berezovskiy, said the Russian authorities were behind the crime.

83. Valentin Tsvetkov, governor of the gold-rich Magadan Region in Russia's Far East, was gunned down in one of Moscow's busiest shopping streets during rush hour on the morning of 18 October 2002. It was the first time in the history of post-Soviet Russia that a regional governorhad been murdered. The killing was thought to be related to Tsvetkov's attempts to establish control over the region's principal industries of gold mining, oil and fishing. In July 2006 Spanish police detained two Russian men as prime suspects in the case.

84. Vladimir Golovlev, an MP and one of the leaders of the small opposition party Liberal Russia, was shot dead on 21 August 2002 while walking his dog near his Moscow home. The killing came just months after Golovlev had switched to Liberal Russia, founded by the exiled tycoon Boris Berezovskiy, from the Union of Right Forces (SPS). While still a member of SPS, Golovlev was stripped of his parliamentary immunity so that prosecutors could press corruption charges against him in connection with property dealings in Chelyabinsk Region in the Urals. No one has ever been convicted of his murder.

85. Maj-Gen Vitaliy Gamov, commander of the border guards on the Far Eastern island of Sakhalin, died in a Japanese hospital on 28 May 2002, one week after an arson attack on his apartment on Sakhalin. Gamov's wife, Larisa, suffered severe burns in the attack but survived. The attack was seen as retribution for the general's attempts to clamp down on illegal fishing. In December 2006, a court on Sakhalin sentenced three people to four years in prison for the attack. One of those convicted had been the subject of a manhunt until an investigator's wife spotted his name in the credits of a television show. However, prosecutors have not pressed murder charges against anyone.

86. Maxim Vladislavovich Tarasenko was killed by a car 14 May 1999 in Zelenograd where he lived. His step-son was injured. Maxim was one of the most brilliant researchers and historians of the Soviet/Russian space program, and a key member of Novosti Kosmonavtiki magazine staff. From 1991 to the present he was a Research Associate at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at MIPT where he developed an independent expertise of national space activities, conducted analyses of space programs and policies both in Russia and abroad, and became an internationally recognized expert on space program histories. Whereas one of the main problems with reporting on Soviet-era space history is that so many of the Russian chroniclers/memoirists have an ideological or bureaucratic axe to grind (hence, ten different stories of an event), Maxim was interested in the facts and the truth and approached his subject with an objective view. It was his greatest strength as a researcher and historian. He was surely one of the best, most forthright, and hardest-working of the Russian space scholars, and a gentle and close friend.

87. Galina Starovoytova, a respected MP and prominent member of the Russian opposition, was shot dead outside her apartment in St Petersburg. Starovoytova, who enjoyed great respect outside Russia for her commitment to human rights and was seen by her admirers as a champion of democracy, at one time advised President Boris Yeltsin on interethnic relations and human rights. In June 2005, a court sentenced two men, Yuriy Kolchin and Vitaliy Akishin, to 20 and 23 years respectively for Starovoytova's murder. Four other defendants were acquitted.

88. Aleksandr Shkadov, one of the highest-ranking executives in the Russian diamond industry, was shot dead near his home in the town of Smolensk on 1 August 1998. Shkadov was managing director of Kristall, Russia's largest diamond processing factory, and president of the Russian Association of Diamond Processors. The crime remains unsolved.

89. Lev Rokhlin, a former Russian army general and chairman of the Duma Defense Committee, was shot dead at his country home near Moscow on 3 July 1998, with a gunshot in his head at point blank range. Rokhlin, who was 51 at the time, had previously commanded the Russian forces which recaptured the Chechen capital of Groznyy from rebels in 1995. Subsequently, however, he condemned Russian army conduct in the republic and was involved in controversial efforts to reform the military. Rokhlin, one of the most distinguished retired Russian generals, was dissatisfied because Russian soldiers were not being paid their salaries and their pensions, publicly called for the impeachment of Boris Yeltsin. For 6 months there was an attempt made to remove Lev Rokhlin from his chairmanship of the Duma Defense Committee and for 6 months he resisted. His wife the next day admitted that she killed her husband in a fit of rage. But then the stories started to unfold. Lev Rokhlin's daughter and his son-in-law said that was not the case, that three people had, in fact, entered Lev Rokhlin's apartment, had assassinated him, and had told his wife if she did not, in fact, take the responsibility for the assassination, she and her entire family would be killed. Mysteriously, three bodies were found in the vicinity of Lev Rokhlin's apartment in the days following that assassination. They did not have identification and their bodies were, in fact, burned. Two years after Rokhlin's death, his widow, Tamara, was found guilty of his murder, but the Supreme Court overturned the verdict two years into her prison sentence. The case went to a retrial, and, in November 2005, Rokhlina was convicted for a second time and given a suspended four-year sentence.

90. Mikhail Manevich, deputy governor of St Petersburg and the head of the city's privatization committee, was shot dead in his official car on his way to work, apparently by a sniper. His wife, who was also in the car, escaped with minor injuries. The 36-year-old had been deputy governor for a year, and was also heavily involved in drawing up privatization legislation and plans for a national housing and public utilities programme. In the 10 years since Manevich's murder, investigators have questioned more than 2,000 witnesses, but, despite naming a number of suspects, they did not press charges.

91. Yuriy Polyakov, an MP from the left-leaning Power to the People faction (Narodovlastiye), was abducted in Krasnodar Region in southern Russia on 3 December 1996. He was last seen alive leaving the offices of the state-owned farm which he managed, heading for his family home a few hundred metres away. Investigators suggested Polyakov's abduction may have been linked to his business interests. His body was never found, but police pronounced him presumed dead two years later and his kidnappers have never been caught.

92. US businessman and hotelier Paul Tatum was shot dead in a Moscow underpass in 1996. At the time he was embroiled in a long-running dispute with the Chechen-born businessman Umar Dzhabrailov and other local partners over ownership of Moscow's Radisson Slavyanskaya hotel. Dzhabrailov was questioned by police following Tatum's murder but he has dismissed all accusations of involvement in any sort of crime. Tatum's killers have never been caught.

93. Anatoliy Stepanov, a deputy justice minister, was found dead at the entrance to his Moscow apartment block on 23 May 1996. Police initially claimed Stepanov had been shot dead but later they said he was probably killed by a blow to the head with a blunt, heavy instrument. Investigators suggested he was killed by an acquaintance, but no-one has ever been charged with his murder. Stepanov had been in his post almost three years and was in charge of monitoring lawyers.

94. Sergey Markidonov, an MP from the small Stability group, was shot dead by his bodyguard in his Siberian constituency on 26 November 1995. The bodyguard, who was drunk, committed suicide immediately afterwards. The 34-year-old Markidonov was on the campaign trail at the time, in preparation for the following month's parliamentary elections.

95. Ivan Kivelidi, 46, died on August 1, 1995, three days after tiny quantities of a mystery nerve agent were found on his telephone and possibly slipped into his tea. His secretary, Zara Ismailova, also died after apparently being poisoned. Kivilidi fell into a coma because of kidney failure, and the deceased secretary did not even touch the tube, but only wiped the dust in the office. Before her death, she managed to tell that "she had the same thing as Kivilidi", which allowed the investigation to understand that they were poisoned. During the investigation it was found out that a hazardous substance was purchased from a member of the GNIIOKhT branch located in Shikhan, Saratov region.
96. Vladislav Listyev, director-general of Russian Public Television, Russia's only national TV network at the time, was shot dead by the entrance to his Moscow apartment block on 1 March 1995. Listyev, who was 38 at the time, was one of Russia's favorite television presenters, and had helped to devise a range of highly popular and innovative programmes in the years before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His death was mourned across Russia and provoked a huge public outcry. Despite a lengthy investigation, the crime remains unsolved.

97. Sergey Skorochkin, an MP from Vladimir Zhirinovskiy's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, was kidnapped in Moscow Region on 1 February 2005 and found dead in a nearby forest shortly afterwards. There was some suggestion the killing was linked to Skorochkin's business interests. The case was brought to trial on several occasions and although the defendants were acquitted, on each occasion the Supreme Court ordered retrials. The case was closed in 2005 under the statute of limitations, 10 years after the murder took place.

98. Communist MP Valentin Martemyanov was beaten up and robbed in the street near his Moscow home on 1 November 1994 and died four days later of his injuries. Some of Martemyanov's political associates linked his death to his efforts to recover party property, but others believe robbery was the primary motivation. The killers have never been traced.

99. Dmitriy Kholodov, a reporter for the popular Moskovskiy Komsomolets newspaper, died on 17 October 1994 when a briefcase he had been told to pick up at a railway station exploded in the newspaper's Moscow offices. At the time the 27-year-old was investigating corruption in the Russian military. Six years later a court found six men, for of them former army officers, not guilty of murdering Kholodov. A retrial at a military court in 2002 resulted in a similar verdict. In 2005 Russia's Supreme Court upheld those rulings.

100. Russian MP and businessman Andrey Aydzerdis was shot dead in a Moscow suburb on 26 April 1994. It was the first time a member of the Russian parliament had been assassinated and the killing was widely covered in themedia. Aydzerdis, a member of the New Regional Policy faction, was chairman of a bank and owned a newspaper which had published the names of hundreds of individuals alleged to be involved in organized crime. Police linked the murder to his business interests.

101. Nikolay Likhachev, one of Russia's leading bankers, was shot dead by gunmen near his Moscow home on 2 December 1993. Likhachev, chairman of a major commercial bank, Rosselkhozbank, had worked in the Soviet and Russian banking systems since the 1970s. Russian banks observed a day of mourning several days after his death.