– Nothing like this happens without Putin’s blessing, says security expert Orysia Lutsevych to news. She is deputy commander of the Russia department at the renowned think tank Chatham House in London. Or “Londongrad”, as she reminds us that the city is also called: – Because there have been so many suspicious deaths among Russians here. Chatham House: Ukrainian researcher Orysia Lutsevych is deputy head of the renowned think tank’s Russia department. Photo: Gry Blekastad Almås / NRKChatham House: Ukrainian researcher Orysia Lutsevych is deputy head of the renowned think tank’s Russia department. Photo: Gry Blekastad Almås / news We will return to some of them. Now it is the death of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin that we want to talk to her about. – It was a matter of time. But it was spectacular in all its evil, says the Ukrainian researcher. The alleged death of the coup maker It has long been speculated whether Vladimir Putin would punish the disloyal Wagner boss, who turned his troops in the middle of a coup attempt against the Kremlin this summer. Putin has called him a traitor, but is said to have made a deal with him nonetheless. “Putin is buying time, but he wants to get revenge on the Wagner leader,” CIA Director William Burns told NBC News in July. Although it has not been confirmed why the plane carrying the Wagner leadership crashed on Wednesday, it is not uncommon for critics of the Putin regime to be poisoned, killed or acid attacked – without the person or persons who ordered the crime ever being caught. Prigozhin’s death occurred exactly two months after he ordered his army to march on Moscow. Warning to Putin’s inner circle – This murder is not a signal to Putin’s opposition, but to his inner circle, that they should not so much think about opposition or challenge to Putin’s war narrative, or his way of conducting the war, says Orysia Lutsevych . And it is precisely the audience for the action that distinguishes the plane crash in which Prigozhin died, from poison attacks against regime critics in Great Britain or attacks against politicians and the opposition in Russia, she believes. Orysia Lutsevytj is deputy head of the Russia department at the renowned think tank for foreign affairs, Chatham House, in London. Photo: Gry Blekastad Almås / NRKOrysia Lutsevytj is deputy head of the Russia department at the renowned think tank for foreign affairs, Chatham House, in London. Photo: Gry Blekastad Almås / news She gets support from another British security expert and Russia connoisseur, Edward Lucas. – Now everyone in Putin’s inner circle is paranoid, and with good reason. They wonder who will be next, says Lucas to news in London. The long-time journalist was in his time thrown out of the Soviet Union. He believes violence is the core of the political system in Russia. – This is a significant escalation, says British Edward Lucas to news. He compares what he is convinced is the murder of the Wagner group’s leader with previous poisonings of Russian defectors in the UK like this: – Discreet poisoning is quite different from using anti-aircraft missiles on a failed coup plotter. In 2006, defector Alexandr Litvinenko was poisoned and killed in London. In 2018, the double spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were tried to be poisoned in Salisbury. – A civil war is quietly going on in Russia. Politically stable systems do not deal with opponents by shooting down their planes, he says. Edward Lucas is a long-standing journalist and editor, and an outspoken critic of Putin’s regime. Photo: Håvard Blekastad Almås / NRKE Edward Lucas is a long-standing journalist and editor, and an outspoken critic of Putin’s regime. Photo: Håvard Blekastad Almås / news – Sword over the head It is almost ten years since 25,000 Russians took to the streets of Moscow to say that they were against Russia’s interference in Ukraine. The protests have since subsided. Those who have tried have often been imprisoned. Even then, author and journalist Masha Gessen told news that the protest movement was completely crushed. – It is a common lesson that anyone who challenges Putin for political power is living dangerously, says Patricia Kaatee, political adviser at Amnesty Norway. – Political dissidents live with a sword over their head that can fall at any time, she continues. And there are several examples of that. Uses blue-green substance and violence Last month, the well-known Russian investigative journalist Jelena Milasjina was beaten up. She was on her way to cover a trial against a human rights activist for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper. Jelena Milasjina was beaten up in the street and covered with a blue-green substance, which is presumably the same used in protests and attacks on critics in Russia Photo: Sergei Babenets The blows left her with brain damage and 14 broken hands. Her hair was shaved, and the attackers threw a blue-green antiseptic over her head. The Russian journalist Elene Milashina suffered extensive injuries after she was attacked. She was on her way to cover the trial of Zarema Musayeva, the mother of three critics of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Photo: Anna Artenyeva The blue-green substance was probably the same that Russia’s leading opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, also had thrown at him. But it was not the first time the regime critic was subjected to attack. Alexei Navalny has for a number of years stood up and criticized President Putin. This photo is from an arrest in July 2013. Photo: Evgeny Feldman / AP In 2020, he was poisoned with a nerve agent on a plane. He barely survived. This month he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for so-called “extremism activities”, a sentence strongly criticized by the UN, the EU and the US. – They want to scare you, not me, and take away your will to resist, he wrote on Facebook after the verdict was announced. Through his lawyers, he has said that in his prison cell he constantly has to listen to Putin’s speeches and patriotic songs. Others have experienced more subtle visions. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny is on a video link from a prison colony in Melekhovo as he has an appeal heard in the Supreme Court in Moscow on Wednesday this week. He was not successful and is now serving a prison sentence criticized by the international community Photo: The Russian Prison Service / AP Shot at the elevator On Putin’s own birthday 17 years ago, the journalist and author Anna Politkovskaya was shot and killed. She was on her way out of the elevator in her apartment block in Moscow. The award-winning journalist became known for her coverage of the war in Chechnya, where she exposed a series of abuses by the Russian side. Politkovskaya was shot and killed outside her own home in Moscow in 2006, but it took six years before anyone was convicted. Photo: Claudio Bresciani / SCANPIX Six people were convicted of the murder, but no one has revealed who ordered it. In the same year that Politkovskaya was killed, the Russian defector and former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko also died. He was served a cup of tea in a hotel lobby in London. stirred into the tea was the radioactive substance polonium-210, a substance used to make the first atomic bombs. The defector Aleksander Litvinenko was given polonium in his tea in 2006. The radioactive substance was previously used in atomic bombs. Photo: AFP His internal organs slowly failed in the hospital. The hair fell off the head. “You may have succeeded in silencing a man, Mr. Putin, but the cries of protest will ring in your ears for the rest of your life,” he wrote in a letter read outside the hospital when he died. Russian authorities denied having anything to do with Litvinenko’s death. Completely broken back In 2011, after large protests against Putin during the presidential election campaign, a series of laws were introduced to make it impossible to criticize him. Human rights defenders and other critics are branded as “foreign agents”. They are called traitors, blasphemers and enemies of Russia. – After Russia went to full-scale war against Ukraine, laws were passed that limit the ability to criticize the war. Participating in demonstrations is not possible in Russia today, says Kaatee in Amnesty Norway. – Civil society in Russia is completely broken because every action and statement that goes against Putin’s policy ends in prison and arrest, says Kaatee.
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– Now everyone in Putin’s inner circle is paranoid – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
