Long history of Russia eliminating 'problem' people. Might be time for Putin to go.
"
Date and Event
--Nov. 9, 1989: Berlin Wall falls.
--June 1991: Yeltsin wins first ever Russian presidential election.
--March 1997: Yeltsin appoints Boris Nemtsov first deputy Prime
Minister.
--July 1998: Putin is appointed head of the Russian Federal Security
Service (FSB).
--Nov. 20, 1998: Galina Starovoitova, a prominent liberal member of
Russia's Parliament, is shot to death in her St. Petersburg
apartment.
--Sept.-Oct. 1999: Putin sends Russian troops back into Chechnya in the
wake of a series of bomb explosions in Russia which are blamed on
Chechen extremists.
--Dec. 31, 1999: Yeltsin resigns, Putin becomes acting President.
--May 12, 2000: Igor Domnikov, a newspaper special-projects editor who
reported on corruption in the Russian oil industry, is hit in the
head and left lying unconscious in a pool of blood in his apartment
building.
--July 26, 2000: Sergey Novikov, owner of an independent radio station
that often criticized the provincial government, is shot four times
in his apartment building in Smolensk
--Sept. 21, 2000: Iskandar Khatloni, a reporter for the Tajik-language
service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, is attacked in his
apartment by an ax-wielding assailant.
--Oct. 3, 2000: Sergey Ivanov, director of an independent television
company, is shot five times in the head and chest in front of his
apartment building.
--Nov. 21, 2000: Adam Tepsurgayev, a cameraman who covered the Chechen
war, is shot dead.
--April 29, 2002: Valery Ivanov, editor-in-chief of a newspaper that
exposed government corruption, is shot eight times in the head at
point-blank range outside of his home.
--Aug. 21, 2002: Vladimir Golovlyov, a leader of the Liberal Russia
faction in the lower house of Parliament, is shot dead in Moscow.
--April 17, 2003: Sergei Yushenkov, a member of the lower house of
Russia's Parliament and an outspoken critic of Putin, is shot to
death outside of his Moscow apartment.
--June 2003: Russian Government cites financial reasons for axing last
remaining nationwide independent TV channel.
--July 3, 2003: Yuri Shchekochikhin, a vocal opposition journalist,
dies after falling ill with a mysterious disease.
--June 19, 2004: Nikolai Girenko, a prominent human rights defender, is
shot dead in his home in St. Petersburg.
--July 9, 2004: Paul Klebnikov, the first editor of Forbes magazine's
Russian edition, is shot dead as he leaves his Moscow office.
--Sept. 14, 2006: Andrei Kozlov, the First Deputy Chairman of Russia's
Central Bank who shut down banks accused of corruption, dies after
he was shot outside of a Moscow sports arena.
--Oct. 7, 2006: Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist and fierce critic of
the Kremlin, is shot and killed in her Moscow apartment building.
--Nov. 23, 2006: Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer who was
critical of Putin, died after being poisoned with radioactive
polonium-210.
--March 2, 2007: Ivan Safronov, a journalist who embarrassed the
country's military establishment with a series of exclusive
stories, is found dead outside of his home.
--July 15, 2007: Marina Pisareva, deputy head of Bertelsmann AG's
Russian publishinghouse, is found stabbed to death in her home west
of Moscow.
--Aug. 2008: Russia invades Georgia; Medvedev signs an order
recognizing the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two
breakaway regions in Georgia.
--Aug. 31, 2008: Magomed Yevloyev, owner of a popular news site that
reported on human rights, dies from a gunshot wound to the head
sustained while in police custody.
--Nov. 2008: Russian Parliament votes overwhelmingly in favor of a bill
that would extend the next President's term of office from 4 to 6
years.
--Jan. 19, 2009: Stanslav Markelov, a human rights lawyer, and
Anastasia Barburova, a young journalism student, are shot dead
midday on a busy Moscow street.
--April 2009: Vyacheslav Yaroshenko, an editor at the newspaper
Corruption and Crime, is beaten outside of his home; he passed away
from his injuries weeks later.
--July 15, 2009: Natalia Estemirova, a prominent human rights
journalist, is abducted from her home in Chechnya and shot dead.
--Nov. 16, 2009: Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who was jailed in revenge
for his uncovering of massive tax fraud, dies in prison; Olga
Kotovskaya, a TV journalist who critically reported on government
leaders, dies after falling from a window.
--Dec. 15, 2011: Gadzhimurad Kamalov, founder and publisher of a
Dagestani newspaper known for its editorial independence, is gunned
down outside of his office.
--March 23, 2013: Boris Berezovsky, once the richest of the so-called
oligarchs who dominated post-Soviet Russia and a close ally of
Yeltsin who helped install Putin as President, is mysteriously
found dead in his home outside of London.
--July 9, 2013: Akhmednabi Akhmednabiev, deputy chief editor of a
Dagestani newspaper, dies after sustaining multiple gunshot wounds.
--Dec. 2013-Feb. 2014: Amidst large proreform protests in Ukraine,
Putin offers to purchase $15 billion of Ukraine's debt and to
reduce the price of Russian gas supplies to Ukraine. Violent
protests flare, and by 2/22/2014 Yanukovych had fled Keiv.
--March 2014: President Putin signs a law formalizing Russia's takeover
of Crimea from Ukraine.
--May 11, 2014: Pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk declare
independence after unrecognized referendums.
--July 17, 2014: Malaysian flight MH17 is shot down and crashes near
the town of Torez in Ukraine's Donetsk region; 298 people die.
--July 31, 2014: Timur Kuashev, a journalist critical of Russian policy
in Ukraine, goes missing and is later found dead.
--Sept. 5, 2014: Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels sign a truce in Minsk.
--Nov. 5, 2014: Alexei Devotchenko, a popular Russian actor and
opposition activist, dies in unclear circumstances.
--Jan. 24, 2015: Russian-backed rebels launch an offensive in Mariupol,
Ukraine, killing 30 people and wounding 102 others.
--Feb. 11-12, 2015: Germany and France broker Minsk II cease-fire
between Russia and Ukraine.
--Feb. 19, 2015: Ukrainian soldiers retreat from Debaltseve after 13
are killed and 157 wounded.
--Feb. 27, 2015: Boris Nemtsov, a prominent critic of Putin's war in
Ukraine and a former Deputy Prime Minister under Yeltsin, is shot
in the back four times by an unidentified attacker in a car as he
crossed a bridge near the Kremlin."
