The US National Intelligence Service released a previously classified report from 2016 that assessed how widely Russian intelligence agencies practice political assassinations abroad.
Bloomberg writes about it.
The report is called "Kremlin-Ordered Killings Abroad Likely to Continue." It was prepared by the US National Intelligence Council for the US Congress as part of the discussion of the bill on intelligence spending in 2016.
The document lists murders that Russian special services, according to US intelligence, may have committed abroad between January 1, 2000 and July 2016.
The report calls the car bombing of one of the former leaders of Ichkeria, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, in Qatar the first apparent contract killing abroad. Other Kremlin-related murders include the 2006 poisoning of former FSB officer Oleksandr Litvinenko in London.
The authors of the document consider political opponents of Russian leader Vladimir Putin to be one of the Kremlinʼs targets abroad, such as Russian businessman Oleksandr Perepelichny, who died suddenly while jogging near his estate in Great Britain in 2012. Then the press wrote (and the same assessment is given in the report). that Perepelichny was killed with an unnamed biological toxin shortly before he was to testify about Kremlin-linked tax fraud. However, the investigation, which did not take intelligence reports into account, concluded that Perepelichny probably died of natural causes.
The US intelligence officials have noted that Russia can kill people using "chemical and biological agents."
Political and opposition leaders in key former Soviet republics are also at risk. As an example, they cite the poisoning of ex-president of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko in 2004 — it is assumed that Russian intelligence mixed dioxin into his food during the period when he was a presidential candidate and advocated the European integration of Ukraine.
Another target of the Kremlin could be separatists in the east of Ukraine disloyal to Moscow — because of this, in 2015, they killed the so-called Minister of Defense of the unrecognized "LPR" Oleksandr Bydnov (Batman), who was burned in an armored car with the help of a "Bumblebee" flamethrower.
According to the US intelligence estimates, Putin probably personally authorizes the assassination of high-ranking people abroad. The authors of the report support their conclusion with the data of the official investigation into Lytvynenkoʼs poisoning.
Putin also allowed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov to kill natives of Chechnya abroad, the report said. Murders committed by "Kadyrovites" abroad have a special character — as a rule, they are accompanied by shooting, and Russian special services can also use other methods, including poisoning.
The document was declassified under the US Freedom of Information Act. However, part of the information from it is still considered secret by American intelligence, so the document was published with hidden text.
For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine please follow us on X.