By ,
Published January 22, 2016
Crossing Vladimir Putin carries a high price.
Whether they are poisoned, gunned down on the streets of Moscow or blown to bits in their homes, people who have crossed or merely criticized the Russian president have turned up dead around the world.
A British judge's finding that Putin likely gave the green light to the 2006 fatal poisoning in London of KGB agent-turned-dissident Alexander Litvinenko confirmed long-held suspicions in that case and lent credence to claims of Kremlin involvement in others like it.
"Today's report on the Litvinenko assassination just confirmed in a credible manner what we have known for a long time: that Putin is a cold blooded killer," Bill Browder, author of “Red Notice, A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice,” told FoxNews.com. "If the British government Doesn't toughen up its current weak response, it basically gives Putin the green light to kill all of his enemies in London with impunity."
Browder, a Russia-based investor in the 1990s, recounts in his book details of the consequences he and his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, suffered at the hands of the Putin regime. Magnitsky was murdered in prison in 2009, after being arrested for exposing a $230 million tax fraud scheme involving law enforcement and government officials.
Critics within Russia and the international community say too many of Putin’s enemies have been killed for the 63-year-old, who has run the country through the posts of either prime minister or president since 1999, to claim his hands are clean.
Among the more notable cases:
Like Litvinenko, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned more than a decade ago in yet another case that raised suspicions of Putin's hand.
The world saw the effects of dioxin poisoning on the face of Yuschenko in 2004, when he was running for the office he held until 2010. The poisoning followed an assassination attempt, and although no one was ever charged, suspicion focused on the Kremlin which, in a twist that foreshadowed by a decade the current tension between Moscow and Kiev, may have feared Yuschenko would take Ukraine toward better relations with western Europe.
Litvinenko, who authored the Kremlin expose “Blowing up Russia,” and was living under asylum in Great Britain, was given a fatal dose of polonium in November 2006. The main suspect is reportedly former KGB agent and Putin crony Andrey Lugovoy, who has since been elected to Russia’s Duman, putting him out of reach of extradition laws.
Litvinenko, who lingered for three weeks in a British hospital, was loyal to the end to Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a onetime billionaire who was in exile in Great Britain and leading a campaign against Putin when he, too, turned up dead. Russian officials say he hanged himself, but an independent autopsy found Berezovsky was attacked and hanged.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/russian-rubouts-opposing-putin-carries-high-price