How Vladimir Putin uses poison to eliminate critics as it 'combines easy deniability and vicious theatricality'
With the sudden illness of prominent Vladimir Putin critic Alexei Navalny hitting international headlines, questions have once again been raised about how involved the Russian president is in schemes that leave his dissenters disfigured, in medically-induced comas, and very often, dead.
Over the past two decades during which Putin has been in power, it has not been uncommon to hear that his critics have met gruesome ends. While methods with which they met their end have varied, poison has often been an involving factor, with experts suggesting its use appeals to Putin because it is both, difficult to trace and has the desired theatrical element.
"One of some poison’s great virtues for the politically minded murderer is their capacity to combine easy deniability and vicious theatricality," Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian security services, told Foreign Policy. "Even while the murderer denies any role, perhaps with a sly wink, the victim dies a horrific and often lengthy death. A message in a poison bottle."
That view was backed by other experts, who suggested that the amorphous nature of poisonings suited Russia's way of operating and had, therefore, become the "cornerstone of Russian malfeasance." By the time the connection to the Kremlin is made, it is too often, too late, which bodes perfectly well for Putin.
"From interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to the war in eastern Ukraine, the Russian authorities have been careful to launder their intentions through networks of proxy players: rebel groups, Kremlin-aligned businessmen, and useful idiots," Foreign Policy reported. "Although their ties to these players have eventually been exposed, it delays investigations and sows confusion and leaves Western democracies scrambling as to how to respond in the absence of smoking-gun evidence."
Another reason why poisons may appeal so much to Putin, Galeotti said, was "experience". Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin is believed to have set up Laboratory No. 12, a secret laboratory on Moscow's outskirts which researched poisons, drugs, and psychotropic substances, in 1921. Then, during the Cold War, Russia had invested heavily again in the developments of poisons to take out its enemies.
While doctors at Omsk’s emergency hospital No 1 who are monitoring Navalny have claimed he is suffering from a metabolic disease caused by low blood sugar, skeptics believe there was poison in the tea that he consumed in the airport just before he fell ill.
Indeed, the graphic nature of the incident does seem to suggest there was more to it than a pre-existing condition: mobile video shot on the flight he was taking from Tomsk in Siberia to Moscow showed him screaming in agony before losing consciousness, forcing pilots to make an emergency landing. It was also pointed out that, if it were a metabolic disease, it would not explain why he has not regained consciousness and is still in a coma on a ventilator.
Gennadi V. Gudkov, a former opposition member of Parliament and onetime colonel in the K.G.B, told the New York Times that the poisoning scenario was plausible because it was "simple" and did not require any special training. "It is easy, and easy to cover your tracks. Any person can use poison," he said.