Multiple Russian opposition figures and Kremlin critics have been poisoned during Vladimir Putin’s rule. The latest alleged poisonings began in the fall of 2022.
At least three Russian journalists and human rights activists who fled the country in the wake of President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine say they were poisoned while traveling through Europe in the last year.
The Insider, an independent Russian investigative news outlet, released a report on Tuesday publishing details of the alleged poisonings which began in the fall of 2022.
Multiple Russian opposition figures and Kremlin critics have been poisoned during Putin’s rule, including former Ukrainian leader Viktor Yushchenko, British-naturalized Russian defector and former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko and former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal.
In October Elena Kostyuchenko, a journalist for Novaya Gazeta and Meduza, said she was poisoned in Munich, Germany. A week later, Ekho Moskvy journalist Irina Babloyan said she had almost identical symptoms in Tbilisi, Georgia. And this spring, the head of the Free Russia Foundation, Natalia Arno, said she was poisoned with a neurotoxic substance, the Insider reported.
Kostyuchenko, who previously reported on Putin’s initial 2014 invasion and occupation of eastern Ukraine, travelled to Ukraine as Novaya Gazeta’s special correspondent at the start of the February 2022 full-scale invasion. In March 2022, she wrote four stories before colleagues and Ukrainian intelligence sources warned her that an attempt could be made on her life.
