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Say What You Will of Joe Biden, But He Was Right — Putin is a Killer
In retrospect, Putin showed a lot of signs of an aggressor.
It started in 1999, when bombings in Moscow were blamed on Chechnyan rebels which provoked Putin’s launch of a horrific bomb raid on the Chechen capital, Grozny, killing tens of thousands of civilians.
This act of war only solidified Putin’s popularity ratings with the Russian people. Many now believe that these bombs were planted by the FSB (the continuation of the KGB, the USSR’s Secret Police), which Putin arguably put in motion.
1999 was a warning sign of things to come — and very few people saw it coming.
Once Putin became President in Russia, he had to swiftly discard anyone who would challenge his rule.
So, let’s go through a number of these dissidents who, in Putin’s eyes, were irredeemable to the extent of deserving capital punishment for the gall to oppose his iron rod.
Anna Politkovskaya
Consider the “curious” assassination of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the 13th journalist killed under Putin’s regime. Politkovskaya often covered Chechnya and war frequently on the ground to report on human rights abuses.