One by one Vladimir Putin's critics keep dropping dead, officially from natural causes. Among its recent targets is Vladimir Kara-Murza, a leader of the Russian opposition. He'd been urging American lawmakers to expand economic sanctions against the Russian regime under the Magnitsky Act, which is named for another dissident.
A month after he returned to Russia in May 2015, while meeting with other dissenters, Mr. Kara-Murza began feeling ill. As he recalls the near-fatal incident, "It all went so fast. In the space of about 20 minutes, I went from feeling completely normal to having a rapid heart rate, really high blood pressure, to sweating and [throwing up] all over the place, and then I lost consciousness." After he'd emerged from a week-long coma, his doctors told him he'd been poisoned, but they couldn't find any trace of the source. It all smacks of an M.O. a former KGB agent--like Vladimir Putin--would be familiar with.
Vladimir Putin's hit list seems long and comprehensive: muckraking journalists, advocates of human rights under his regime, members of the Russian opposition, whistle-blowers . . . . Somehow they wind up jailed on false charges or just rubbed out.
Yes, other countries--like the United States and Israel--resort to targeting their enemies, too. But always as a measure against terrorism rather than practicing it themselves. No big power employs terrorism as an accepted legal practice the way Russia does. It's all been legal there for a decade, ratified by an act of Russia's parliament. Its message to Russian dissenters: Drop dead. And many of them wind up doing just that.
Editorial on 08/24/2016