Russian defector and crit- ic of Vladimir Putin, Alexander Litvinenko, had hauntingly predict- ed his own death, “You may suc- ceed in silencing me, but that silence comes at a price, you may succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.” While Russia under the iron grip of Putin did manage to silence Alexander Litvinenko soon (poisoned with radionu- clide polonium-210 whilst in exile in the United Kingdom), it didn’t stop the trail of mysteri- ous deaths of Putin’s critics. While the then British Pri- me Minister (current Foreign Minister), David Cameron, had slammed Alexander Litvinenko’s death as ‘state sponsored mur- der’, British Member of Parliam- ent, Ian Austin, went beyond ge- neralities and said, “Putin is an unreconstructed KGB thug and gangster who murders his oppo- nents in Russia and, as we know, on the streets of London ~ and nothing announced today is going to make the blindest bit of difference.” Indeed, many more promi- nent dissidents who dared to cross the path with Putin found themselves dead in the most bizarre and questionable ways. The recent death of the most prominent Putin critic in recent times i.e., Alexei Navalny, follows that same chilling pat- tern of inexplicable deaths. This dubious routine has already got a term and it is cal- led ‘sudden Russian death syn- drome’. It is a syndrome that af- flicts all those who dare question Putin’s authoritarian ways, as was done to Navalny ~ seeming- ly, the retaliation is always guar- anteed and it is invariably fatal. After all, Navalny’s anti- corruption, pro-accountability and pro-democracy crusade had led to his slamming and popularizing Putin’s ‘United Russia’ as a ‘party of crooks and thieves’ (which became a folk- loric epithet), and clearly, Putin does not have a history of accommodating dissent or con- trarian opinions. Putin’s insensitivity saw a steady rise in intolerance and reaction, as it first warned and debarred Navalny from polls. He then got embroiled in politically trumped-up charges of embezzlement and when that was not enough, he was put to the Russian dispensa- tion’s patent and favourite tactic i.e., poisoning with nerve agents. While he was evac- uated and rescued in the nick of time with Western med- ical wherewithal outside Russia, Navalny soon re- turned and faced a serious of escala- tory detentions and prison terms in unforgiving Arctic circle prisons (last year he was saddled with a 19-year term, on supposedly ‘extremist’ and ‘anti-national’ charges that are the wont of any illiberal and dic- tatorial dispensation). And the end came as it ha- bitually does, with a cold, cryptic and obviously insincere annou- ncement of a sudden death whilst taking a walk. A perfunctory clarification that seldom convinces anyone followed, “All necessary resusci- tation measures were carried out but did not yield positive results… The paramedics con- firmed the death of the convict”. The self-confessed ‘nation- alist democrat’ who took positi- ons that openly militate against those adopted by Putin e.g., on Ukraine, paid the price for the same. He had goaded Russians not to be a ‘nation of frightened people’ and ‘cowards who pre- tend not to notice the aggressive war’ brought upon them by ‘our insane tsar’! He had called out the completely sold/controlled and obsequious Russian media and their star anchors and war- ned that they, “should be treated as war criminals. From the editors-in-chief to the talk show hosts to the news editors, [they] should be sanctioned now and tried some- day”. Instead, it was only the odd opposition voice left such as Navalny who were put to rest, permanently. The fact is that almost all high-profile Rus- sians within and outside Russia who have been mysteriously shot or poisoned, or have ‘jumped’ from high build- ings, or simply hung ‘themselves’, are those people who are on the wrong side of Pu- tin; this adds to serious concerns of Kremlin com- plicity. A one-time associate of Putin who turned rogue on him was Boris Berezovsky ~ not only was his business empire system- atically decimated, but Boris was found hanging in his bath- room in the UK. Some other associates of Berezovsky such as Nikolai Glushkov and Yuri Golubev were found dead in equally mysteri- ous circumstances. A famous journalist who had refused to sell her soul and bend with the times, Anna Poli- tkovskaya, was shot dead in her apartment. While the impact of that murder (obviously unsolved) was immediate on the so-called ‘free press’, Putin was to downplay Anna’s voice as ‘very minor’. Someone as senior as for- mer Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, who was once seen as an alternative to succeed Boris Yeltsin (before Putin did so) was shot by ‘unknown’ assai- lants. Independent trackers were to note the shadowy presence of FSB sleuths (Federal Security Service, the successor to KGB), the same ones whose names propped up in the poisoning or ‘disappearances’ of other oppo- sition leaders. It seems that with each death, the Russians are insistent on making a larger and more specific point, be it to the com- munity of so-called ‘free press’, opposition leaders, activists, or any other form of dissenters. The killing of the head of the infamous Wagner mercenary army i.e., Yevgeny Prigozhin, was apparently to suggest the fate that awaited ‘traitors’. The common refrain on the Russian street that emerged from the dodgy aircraft crash that killed Prigozhin was ‘they finally got him’! Preceding the aircraft crash were haunting images of Putin slamming his one-time protégé as a backstabbing trai- tor who had instigated the mutiny ~ soon Prigozhin’s unnecessity was established, conclusively. The message to all other quasi-warlords or such autono- mous figures was unmistakable, for example General Sergei Surovikin (Head of Russia’s Aero- space Forces). Retribution for insecure and vain leaders like Putin has to be sure, public and to the point. The authoritarian Putin simply cannot afford to give up the carefully constructed image and narrative amongst Russians. Towards the same, anything goes from patronage networks that ensure disproportionate rewards, e.g., friendly oligarchs, to guaranteed retribution for those who dare to oppose. The institutions of checks- and-balances are either non- existent or completely compro- mised. The colossal loss of face in Ukraine is conveniently hushed-up or spin-doctored to suggest otherwise. Those few brave ones like Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko or most recently, Alexei Navalny, exemplify sure consequences of attempting to ‘speak truth to power’, but it is to the credit of these few brave ones that the vital flicker of chal- lenge still lingers.
The writer is Lt Gen PVSM, AVSM (Retd), and former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry