Vladimir Putin has spent nearly a quarter of a century in power, ruling Russia with an iron fist. And when somebody has been at the helm of affairs for such a long time, there’s bound to be dissent, criticism, and opposition. But the eerie thing about Putin’s opponents or critics is that most, if not all of them, have died in mysterious or violent ways. Let’s start with the most recent individual who took a stand against Putin and died, Alexei Navalny.
To the uninformed, Alexei Navalny was an activist who was the opposition leader in Russia. He was known for his anti-corruption investigations against high-ranking Russian officials and was the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. He also was one of the biggest domestic critics of Vladimir Putin and was jailed multiple times for it.
This is Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption activist in Russia. He was poisoned with nerve agent in 2020, imprisoned in 2021 as a political prisoner, and killed at the hands of Vladimir Putin in 2024.#istandwithukraine #saytheirnames pic.twitter.com/PRzQ2VkG3f
— Ellie Leonard🇺🇦 (@RedPencilScript) February 28, 2025
Navalny died last February while being held at a penal colony in the Yamalo-Nenets region in Siberia. Many foreign leaders, including the then-Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, called his death a murder. Harris specifically blamed the Kremlin and Putin for Navalny’s death, as he was regularly thrown in a punishment cell, significantly malnourished, and exposed to the elements of the Arctic Circle.
Apart from Alexei Navalny, several other political foes or critics of Vladimir Putin have met their end in varied ways like poisonings, shootings, and even a plane crash! That being said, let’s take a look at the diverse ways in which the Russian President has allegedly silenced his opponents.
Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko was a former member of Russia’s FSB security services who became an opponent of Putin and defected to the West. Litvinenko died of polonium-210 poisoning in 2006 in London and became the first known victim of Putin’s dark ways of eliminating opposition.
Last pictures of Alexander Litvinenko before he died after being poisoned with radioactive polonium-210.
In January 2016 it was determined that Litvinenko’s murder was carried out by the two suspects and that they were “probably” acting under the direction of the FSB and with… pic.twitter.com/sF0KRlFzdJ
— Morbid Knowledge (@Morbidful) July 18, 2023
His assassins both had links to Russian Intelligence and were accused of spiking his tea with the radioactive element. Alexander Litvinenko, shortly before his death, revealed that the FSB security services were still operating Soviet-era poison laboratories. A British inquiry probing his death eventually concluded that Russian agents had killed Litvinenko, probably on Putin’s orders.
Anna Politkovskaya
A journalist who worked with The Novaya Gazeta, Anna Politkovskaya was a critic of Vladimir Putin and the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov. She also was one of the prominent journalists in Russia.
To all the Russia sympathizers, enjoy the bliss of your ignorance, it it only temporary. You are digging your own grave.
This is Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who reported on political and social events in Russia.
2001 – While reporting on human rights abuses in… pic.twitter.com/zMdQZ5mgTW
— Dennis Ionkin (@gofordennis) March 8, 2025
Politkovskaya was shot dead in her apartment in Moscow, with her murder sending chills down the spines of journalists in Russia. While 5 people were arrested for her murder, prosecutors admitted that they weren’t able to definitively find out who ordered the killing. Putin did call for the killers to be apprehended, but also claimed that Anna Politkovskaya’s effect on Russian life was “very minor.”
Boris Nemtsov
Boris Nemtsov was a Putin critic and an opposition leader who had served as the deputy Prime Minister in the Boris Yeltsin administration. Many felt that Nemtsov would succeed Yeltsin. In 2015, he was shot four times in the back by an unknown assailant around the Kremlin.
On this day 10 years ago, Boris Nemtsov was killed by Putin. pic.twitter.com/hVt01nHjtA
— EssenViews (@essenviews) February 27, 2025
Eventually, 5 men of Chechen origin were arrested for the killing, but people close to Nemtsov claimed that it was Putin and the Kremlin who called the shots. A joint investigation, conducted by the BBC, Bellingcat, and The Insider, revealed that Boris Nemtsov was tailed by FSB agents for close to a year before his assassination. Eerily, the same agents were involved in the poisonings of other outspoken critics of the Kremlin.
Yevgeny Prigozhin
The former head of the Wagner paramilitary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was on very sore terms with Vladimir Putin when he arrived in Moscow last year. He was there for negotiations with Putin after an aborted mutiny that saw him and his mercenaries take over the city of Rostov and march toward Moscow.
While it looked like he had reached a truce with Putin and the Kremlin, having agreed to move his group to Belarus and focus on activities outside Ukraine, Prigozhin died aboard his Embraer Legacy 600 jet after an explosion sent the plane spiraling down to the ground. The crash killed him, his field commander Dmitry Utkin, and 8 others who were aboard the jet.
🇷🇺 The Former-Leader of the Wagner PMC Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin is now CONFIRMED to have DIED when his jet crashed the Tver Region of Western Russia. pic.twitter.com/wJ2XV3ise9
— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) August 23, 2023
Vladimir Putin eulogized Yevgeny Prigozhin after his death, saying, “I have known Prigozhin for a long time, since the 1990s. He made some serious mistakes in life, but he also achieved the necessary results for himself, but also for the greater good when I asked him.” Putin then ordered the Wagner paramilitary troops to swear an oath to the Russian flag.
Apart from these individuals, other critics of Putin who have died in mysterious ways, are Boris Berezovsky and his associates. To those unaware, Berezovsky was a Kremlin insider who went on a self-imposed exile to the UK after becoming a vocal critic of the Putin Administration.
Boris berezovsky
The man who is behind the rise of Vladimir putin in the Kremlin in the late 1990’s and made him president and then Putin betrayed him pic.twitter.com/gngoZszmwO— NASH (@nash_certified) May 27, 2024
Berezovsky was found hanged in the bathroom of his Ascot home in 2013. Many of his associates such as Georgian oligarch Nikolai Glushkov, Yukos oil founder Yuri Golubev, and Badri Patarkatsishvili were found dead in London as well.
