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| Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images |
- Fourteen fixers, oligarchs, and other critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin have succumbed to mysterious deaths around the UK as the British government turns a blind eye, according to a bombshell BuzzFeed investigation. [BuzzFeed / Heidi Blake, Tom Warren, Richard Holmes, Jason Leopold, Jane Bradley, and Alex Campbell]
- In a report that reads like a spy thriller, BuzzFeed has begun to release names of men whom intelligence officials say were killed by members of the Russian Mafia or security forces. Officially, British police have ruled that the 14 victims died of heart attacks or suicide, but the BuzzFeed investigation alleges the cause of death is something more sinister. [BuzzFeed / Heidi Blake, Tom Warren, Richard Holmes, Jason Leopold, Jane Bradley, and Alex Campbell]
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| Alexander Perepilichnyy |
- At least one of these assassinations — of Russian financier Alexander Perepilichnyy — came from direct orders from Putin, according to US intelligence officials. Before he died in 2012, Perepilichnyy helped expose massive tax fraud by Russian officials. [BuzzFeed / Heidi Blake, Jason Leopold, Jane Bradley, Richard Holmes, Tom Warren, and Alex Campbell]
- Assassinations of journalists and Putin critics in Russia are nothing new, and are troubling in their own right. [Vo x / Vladimir Milov]
- But evidence that the Kremlin is going further afield to silence its critics — combined with the allegations that Britain is looking the other way — is noteworthy.
- The most well-known assassination of a former Russian is the 2006 poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko had recently gotten British citizenship and was living in London when he was poisoned via radioactive polonium in his tea. [BBC / Frank Gardner]
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| Alexander Litvinenko on his deathbed |
- The years following Litvinenko’s death saw outrage and a period of extremely tense relations between Britain and Russia. They also saw the Russian Parliament pass new laws allowing that country’s special services to target and kill “extremists” abroad — except their definition of extremists included people who slandered the president. [BBC / Steven Eke]
- So what changed between Russian and the UK from then to now? Money, and fear.
- There’s billions of Russian money in British real estate, which made former Prime Minister David Cameron loath to impose tough sanctions on Russia when it invaded Crimea in 2014. [Reuters / Tom Bergin and Brenda Goh]
- Now, with Russian hackers meddling in the US election and attempting to interfere in the French elections as well, intelligence officials say the British government is too afraid of retaliations to confront Putin about the assassinations taking place on its soil. [BuzzFeed / Heidi Blake, Tom Warren, Richard Holmes, Jason Leopold, Jane Bradley, and Alex Campbell]
- BuzzFeed says it plans to release more names of those killed in Britain in the coming days.