Fate must be kind to him: Almost all people who oppose or criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin sooner or later have a mysterious accident or find a tragic, violent death. This means that the lucky guy doesn’t have to deal with unpleasant criticism of his politics for too long.
“Most heads of government have a lot of trouble dealing with their critics. They have to engage with them argumentatively or sometimes even correct their course,” says political scientist Elfriede Hippen. “It’s different with Putin. He’s just incredibly lucky that anyone who could become a political threat to him or even publicly question Putin’s actions just happens to suffer a bad accident, commit suicide or be murdered shortly afterwards. “
The latest example of this extraordinary streak of luck for the Kremlin leader is the death of the most well-known opposition figure, Alexei Navalny , who, according to authorities, accidentally collapsed while walking in a penal colony in the polar region on Friday and died .
A few months earlier, Putin’s political opponent Yevgeny Prigozhin accidentally died in a plane crash in August 2023 . In September 2022, Lukoil boss and Putin critic Rawil Maganov accidentally died after falling from a hospital window. In 2000, anti-government journalist Igor Domnikov died from an accidental blow to the head with a hammer, while Tajik journalist Iskander Chatloni was accidentally killed by an ax blow in the same year.
In 2003, liberal Duma deputy Sergei Yushenkov was accidentally shot dead shortly after registering to run for the presidential election. In the same year, the dissident journalist Yuri Shchekhotschihin accidentally died of poisoning.
A year later it hit the journalist Paul Klebnikow , who died in a random hail of bullets from a car. In 2006, the journalist Anna Politkovskaya also happened to be hit by several bullets in the elevator of her apartment building – coincidentally on Putin’s birthday.
In 2006, prominent Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko died after accidentally ingesting the radioactive metal polonium.
The lawyer and civil rights activist Stanislaw Markelow, in turn, was accidentally shot dead on the street in 2009. In the same year, the body of human rights activist Natalia Estemirova was found in the forest. She happens to have gunshot wounds. Also in 2009, corruption fighter Sergei Magnitsky died in prison after guards accidentally beat him to death.
The oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who was critical of Putin, also died accidentally under mysterious circumstances in 2013.
In 2015, government opponent Boris Nemtsov was accidentally killed with four shots in the back of the head.
A list on Wikipedia lists a total of over 150 journalists, often critical of Putin , who happened to have had fatal accidents in one way or another since Putin came to power.
But even a lucky guy like Vladimir Putin also has bad luck: In March 2018, ex-agent Sergei Skripal was about to die from accidental Novichok poisoning – and survived.
The Putin critic Alexei Navalny mentioned above also survived accidental Novichok consumption in 2020 before he accidentally died.
Nevertheless: Hardly any other head of government has as much stupidity as Vladimir Putin. He is truly a child of happiness!
