Putin's list is not Schindler's list

Alexei Navalni is for now the last critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin to join the long list of those who have said goodbye to this world or have been on the verge of death. Navalni was the opposition leader who managed to mobilize thousands of protesters both against the alleged rigging of the elections in Russia and against the constitutional reforms that will allow Putin to rule Russia's destiny until 2036. 

Like all those who have openly confronted him, Navalni has already suffered an attempt at annihilation while serving a prison sentence for having instigated precisely the anti-Putin demonstrations. According to his lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, he was poisoned with a toxic substance that caused severe burns to his face. Despite such a "warning", Navalni intensified his serious allegations of corruption, both against the Russian president and against numerous high officials, whom he accuses of enrichment and waste at their hands, all through his YouTube platform, called the Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK). The State Security, FSB (formerly KGB) had subjected all its family, friends and sympathizers to systematic harassment in the best Soviet tradition, to the point of forcing Navalni to announce last July the disappearance of its platform, drowned by financial pressures and even by the denunciation of an old war veteran, whose signature had been used for a manifesto supporting Putin's constitutional reforms.

Now, the toxic substance must have been poured into his tea, the only thing he seems to have ingested in the morning, according to his spokesperson, Kira Yarmish. His condition suddenly worsened as he flew over Siberia, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing to hospitalize him in Omsk. 

If we look at the background, the intellectual authorship of this attack will not be known this time either, which also shows that Russian research into poisoning is still at the forefront. This can be deduced from the case of ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who was given the lethal dose of polonium that killed him in London in 2006 after he claimed that the wave of attacks that rocked the country in 1999 had actually been orchestrated by FSB itself. 

With another toxic substance for military use, known as Novichok, FSB agents sprayed the doorknob of the house occupied by another ex-agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Julia, in the English city of Salisbury. Simple contact with the substance left them unconscious and in serious condition. Skripal, who had been the subject of a spy swap, was in Moscow's sights "for continuing to advise NATO against Russia's interests. 

When the poison was not enough, the opponents of Vladimir Putin's regime were shot by gunmen who either were never caught or disappeared from the scene without a trace. The case that most shocked world public opinion was that of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkoskaya. She was investigating and publicizing the excesses committed by Russian police and military forces in Chechnya when she was shot dead in the elevator of her home in October 2006. One of his main sources of information, Natalia Estemirova, who took the witness and wrote in the magazine Memorial about his findings, was abducted and killed three years later in the suburbs of the Chechen capital, Grozny. To cover up the trail, her body was dumped in a ditch in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia. 

It was also a gunman who would end the lives of Anna Baburova and Sergei Markelov in Moscow, who supplied the media with documents that apparently proved the corruption of the elites surrounding Vladimir Putin. As well as the former governor, minister and deputy of Yaroslavl Boris Nemtsov, who would be shot dead in 2015. At the time considered the main opponent of the Russian leader, Nemtsov had put together an extensive dossier allegedly demonstrating "Russian aggression" against Ukraine. 

Putin's list began as soon as he received power from Boris Yeltsin, when he threatened the Russian oligarchs, who had become rich through the privatization of the large state-owned corporations, to place themselves at his service. Those who came forward managed to keep their fortunes and continue to receive juicy contracts, obviously deriving a more or less considerable part to the objectives indicated by their benefactor. Those who opposed him had to go into exile until they also suffered sudden attacks of ill health, as was the case with the magnate Boris Berezovski. Others, more stubborn, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, president of the energy giant Yukos, had to be softened with successive prison sentences in Siberian prisons, until he agreed to cede his powers and his company in exchange for leaving the country in exile. 

The methods of the old Cold War are therefore still as valid as they were then. Russia's leader is accumulating as much power as the tsars or the bloody dictator Stalin. The people, or the people, however, go to the polls from time to time, both for a call for elections and to approve in a referendum that they continue to treat him more or less as usual.