Anatomy of a Kremlin assassination

New Statesman​

3 days ago

Russian law enforcement agents carry the body of former Transportation Minister Roman Starovoyt, who was found dead from a gunshot wound in an apparent suicide, outside Moscow, Russia. Photo by Evgeniy Razumniy/AP
It bore all the hallmarks of a classic Kremlin assassination. This month, Russia's ex-Transport Minister Roman Starovoyt was found shot dead in his car. It was mere hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin had dismissed him amid rumours of Starovoyt's implication in a corruption probe.
Suicide, proclaimed the Russian government. Well, it would do, wouldn't it? Yet, according to Mark Galeotti, Honorary Professor at UCL's School of Slavonic and East European Studies, that probably was the manner of Starovoyt's passing. He likely realised he was a scapegoat and chose death over hard labour: Russia's government has no need to assassinate a man it can easily imprison.
'It'll go after defectors abroad, but the Kremlin doesn't kill people at home,' says Galeotti. There are notable exceptions – opposition leader Alexei Navalny and ex-Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose high-profile challenges to Putin made their deaths desirable to deter others. Yet, Galeotti stresses that, on the whole, 'this is a system in which everyone has their own skeletons in the closet and so the instruments of the Kremlin are arrests, high-profile trials, imprisonments and expropriation of wealth rather than hurling people out of windows'.
Russian businessmen do have an unfortunate habit of getting defenestrated – or, in the case of ex-Lukoil manager Alexander Subbotin, dying from a toad venom hangover treatment administered by a shaman. They can't all be suicidal or clumsy or unlucky with toads. Galeotti believes such deaths are more likely to be murders stemming from business rivalries at a time of increasing competition for resources and rising contract killings.
The Kremlin is reluctant to take out foreigners like diplomats, spies or journalists. 'I'd hesitate to say they never would, but it would be a big escalation,' he says. 'Putin has this distinction between 'enemies' and 'traitors'. Enemies you fight with, but the hope is you'll meet some modus vivendi with them. Traitors you can do nothing with but kill'. A notable exception would be the alleged 2024 plot to assassinate Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger and other European defence industry executives arming Ukraine. While US and German intelligence claim to have foiled such a plan, Galeotti remains 'dubious' about it, given how little information has been supplied and what an escalation it would be from the standard Kremlin playbook.
Russian oppositionists abroad are another story, though. Ksenia Maximova, founder of the Russian Democratic Society, recalls that she and her compatriots marked the one-year anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine by projecting onto the Russian Embassy in London. Ambassador Andrei Kelin unexpectedly dashed out in his slippers to film them. Not long afterwards, she discovered via a fellow activist that she was on a Kremlin hitlist, complete with the patronymic only available on her Russian passport. She was reassured by Ukrainian government contacts that it was more likely to be 'psychological pressure' than the beginnings of anything more sinister.
Then came attempted hackings and a sophisticated phishing attack, in which she received a realistic-looking email purporting to be from Natalia Arno, head of the Free Russia Foundation – someone she had been expecting to hear from. Underside, a Telegram channel linked to Russia's FSB intelligence service, posted an investigation into Maximova that was later featured on Russian television. It contained information on her activities dating back years, protest footage in which individuals had clearly come close to film her, and even her 19-year-old daughter's name, university, and photo.
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She was amused by its portrayal of her. 'It was definitely to scare me, but it made me laugh.' The dossier claimed she had help from the Ukrainian government, exiled Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky and a friend of ex-premier Boris Johnson, presumably in the belief that 'there's no way a blonde ex-model could do all this by herself! I messaged the Ukrainians: 'Where's all my protection from the Ukrainian government?''
Maximova can rest easier knowing that the proxies upon which the Kremlin now relies are – in her own words – 'notoriously crap'. Recent plots have not been well-executed and so neither have the targets. This year, six Bulgarians were imprisoned in the UK for their roles in a Russian spy ring. The trial revealed their plot to murder exiled Russian journalist Roman Dobrokhotov: the Bulgarians quarrelled about how to kill him, one dismissing an accident in the shower as 'not dramatic enough' and proposing to poison him with ricin, spray him with acid or publicly burn him alive. Plans to transport the target back to Russia by launching him in a dinghy from Norfolk faltered over doubts about whether their handlers would trust them with a submarine.
Five other men were convicted this month of an arson attack on a London warehouse filled with supplies for Ukraine. They had also received orders to kidnap Putin critic Yevgeny Chichvarkin and burn down his restaurant and wine shop. One of the ringleaders messaged his Russian handler about establishing a 'partisan movement' in the UK to 'punish Russian traitors,' conduct sabotage and spy on the British government – all of which came to naught when he was arrested in a B&Q car park.
As Galeotti explains, the mass expulsion of Russian agents from embassies following the Ukraine invasion made Moscow turn to messaging apps and the darknet to hire local criminals and sympathisers. 'Their tradecraft is terrible,' he says, 'but they get it done. A thug with a hammer can do a lot of harm too. It's cheap, you can treat these assets as disposable, they're harder to identify in advance and there's always some other maladroit violent misfit willing to get hired'. Even if they fail to carry out instructions or get caught, Moscow doesn't mind, because 'everyone gets worried' all the same and 'Russia wants people to be scared of it. It likes plausible deniability with a knowing wink.'
And who's behind the screen, issuing orders? The Bulgarians' internal discussions imply substantial latitude on determining the where and when of a hit. Last year, ex-MI6 chief Richard Moore claimed that Russia's intelligence services had 'gone a bit feral'. But those agents are still on a leash. 'A killing generally requires sanction from the very top,' confirms Galeotti. He explains that the 2015 murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov sparked a 'massive crisis' in Russia, not only because he was 'regarded as one of us by the elite', but also because 'this had not been sanctioned. This was something by Chechnya's Ramzan Kadyrov'.
When the Kremlin does give that green light, it does not want targets removed quietly. Take the 2018 Salisbury poisonings targeting ex-spy Sergei Skripal. 'This was sanctioned from the top,' Galeotti says. 'It was complex and unnecessarily expensive. You use more outré methods because you are playing to the theatre of assassination, you want it to be shocking, bizarre and a news story. They wanted Skripal's death to be a lesson to other defectors or would-be defectors about what happens if you break the rules around your release'. While swapped agents are usually safe if they stay out of espionage, Moscow suspected Skripal of dabbling again, with the approval of the British government. 'Going after him was also a warning to the British government of 'don't try to double-cross us'.'
So what should you do if you end up on a Kremlin hitlist? Stay calm, Maximova advises. 'If you're constantly afraid, it's futile because if they really decide to, there's not much you can do. Otherwise, you just get on with it'.
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