From Russia with Blood: How Much Do You Really Know About Vladimir Putin?

Ignorance of his true nature is a luxury we can ill afford.

This article is Part 1 of a two part series. Part 2 will be posted tomorrow, April 26, 2PM Eastern Time.

Back in our Calcata days, John and I used to fraternize with people who were even stranger than we are, which is really saying something. Calcata, an artists’ colony that sits on a rock in the middle of a valley, attracts exactly the kinds of people you’d think it would.

One of those people was a member of the forgotten and largely inconsequential Italian aristocracy, a man who referred to himself as principe. Prince. He was a descendent of Marie Antoinette, a fact he proudly crowed to anyone who would listen, shoving a leather-bound genealogy book in their faces and tapping his index finger on the page with his name on it. “Look!” he’d say in his impeccable English, “I’m related to French royalty.”

He was a handsome man, the principe. Intelligent, well read, wonderfully cultured. In previous years, he’d worked as a fashion photographer, and his photos were so sumptuous, they looked like paintings by Renaissance masters. He cooked us an asparagus risotto once that would have made the Pope swear off religion. His knowledge of history, of art, of Italy itself made him a joy to be around.

Over a period of perhaps a year, he began to change. He started sharing laughably absurd, conspiratorial Gateway Pundit articles about George Soros, Freemasons, Hillary Clinton, “the Jews.” In political discussions, he’d brook no disagreement. “You’re American,” he would bark at me with a dismissive flick of the wrist. “You have no sense of things.” He’d never been this aggressive before, so ready to defend his position at any cost. John and I were puzzled—and alarmed—when he appeared in a T-shirt with a picture of Vladimir Putin’s face on it. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” John said when he saw the principe strutting around the piazza in that T-shirt. “Has he lost his damn mind?”

As though the T-shirt weren’t enough of an insult, the principe glommed on to other ultra rightwing dernier cri. One night, while having dinner on the terrace of our apartment, he practically shouted that Vladimir Putin was a brilliant statesman, infinitely superior to American presidents. “The guy has 200 billion dollars in personal wealth,” I shot back. “Your ‘statesman’ is a stick-up artist. He’s killed two dozen critics and and at least as many journalists.”

Again, the flick of the wrist. “You couldn’t possibly understand,” the principe said with his usual condescension. Implied, again, was the idea that my gender and nationality precluded me from absorbing the intricacies of geopolitics.

I wanted to sock him in the throat. The fact that I didn’t is a testament to my good nature. Later, however, when during a discussion of racial tensions in the U.S., he baited me with the “All Lives Matter” dog whistle, I did tell him to go f*ck himself. Right to his face at the dinner table. That’s a first for me. I don’t ordinarily insult guests.

I’m sharing this story not only to illustrate how educated people can be profoundly stupid, but to also demonstrate the success of Putin’s rightwing disinformation campaign. In hindsight, I can see why the principe was drawn in. Here was a man who resented Americans and was prepared to believe anything bad about them. He also considered his bloodlines to be infinitely purer than anyone else’s—proof of his intellectual superiority; whereas, I, a mutt of uncertain lineage and no information, embodied the “typical” American.

The whole rightwing ideology is constructed around these two talking points: 1) relentless persecution by “snowflakes” like me, 2) their own moral, racial, and intellectual superiority. Even when supplied with facts from reputable slant-free news agencies like Reuters or Radio Free Europe, the principi of this world refuse to listen. Why admit errors in judgment? Why let go of the comforting illusion of superiority?

Putin suffers from that same illusion. He believes western culture is effete and decadent, that America is a land of drowsing hippos. When he invaded Ukraine on February 22, 2022, he saw his actions as natural, an unfortunate but necessary correction, a regrettable use of force against a stubborn and recalcitrant corner of Russia’s vast empire, one that had mysteriously gone rogue.

In a February 21 speech right before the invasion, Putin claimed that “Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood,” which was patently false. He also incorrectly described the country as having been created by the Soviet Union, which was as bold a fabrication as his claim that the Ukrainian government was run by neo-Nazis.

To be clear, Ukraine is an Eastern European (not Soviet) sovereign nation with a constitution and a duly-elected president—which is more than you can say about Russia. The “Ru” in the word Russia actually comes from rootsi, by the way, which means Sweden. Putin has no right to make such claims.

Does he genuinely believe these falsehoods? Is he trying to convince himself—or the world? Definitively answering that question might go a long way toward understanding who and what we’re dealing with. Is Putin a textbook psychopath (chronic mental disorder characterized by violent or abnormal behavior) like his predecessor Stalin? Is he a sociopath (personality disorder manifesting in extreme antisocial behavior) who doesn’t much care who he hurts, provided he gets his own way? We know he’s still smarting from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. What if his actions can be interpreted through that lens as opposed to mental illness?

With that in mind, let’s start by taking a look at a list, by no means comprehensive, of suspicious deaths, attacks, and poisonings attributed to Putin. There are literally dozens—and those are just the ones we know about—so I have purposely selected the most high-profile cases. Most of the English-speaking world has only a vague idea of who Vladimir Putin is and how he dispatches his enemies. I’d like to change that by creating a more comprehensive view of the atrocities he’s committed.

1.Former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko: In 2004, Viktor Yushchenko ran against Kremlin darling Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine's presidential election and was left permanently disfigured following an assassination attempt. During his election campaign, he ingested potentially lethal amounts of TCDD, tetrachlorodibenzodioxin, the ingredient in Agent Orange. This attack is widely believed to have been greenlit by Vladimir Putin.

2. On February 27, 2015, Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov was shot at close range just outside the Kremlin walls two days before he was slated to attend a peace rally against Russian involvement in Ukraine.

3. Seven days before the end of his one-year prison detainment, by Russian law the most permitted without a trial, Ukrainian-born Russian tax advisor Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death in his cell after exposing corruption, fraud, theft, misconduct, and human rights violations by Russian government officials. His case generated international attention and led to then-president Obama sanctioning Russian officials directly responsible for carrying out the assassination, although Putin is believed to have authorized it.

4. On 23 November 2006, Putin critic and former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko died from polonium-210 poisoning on 23 November in London, where he’d been granted asylum after accusing his superiors of ordering the assassination of the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. The attack was particularly audacious because it took place on British soil and potentially placed thousands of Britons at risk. Polonium poisoning results in multiple organ failure as alpha radiation particles bombard the liver, kidneys and bone marrow. Litvinenko apparently drank tea laced with polonium during a meeting at a London hotel. 

5. Anastasia Baburova was twenty-five when she was assassinated, the fourth Novaya Gazeta journalist to be killed since 2000. As a reporter, she was investigating atrocities committed by the neo-Nazi movement in Russia, having written in her diary: "It is difficult to look in the eyes of a Korean student, who has only just been struck in the temple by two juvenile thugs... they waved ‘Sieg Heil’ towards the tram and ran off."

Per one Russian analyst regarding her tragic death, "In the opinion of the Novaya Gazeta staff, of which I am a member, the Russian security services or rogue elements within these services are the prime suspects in the murders of Baburova and Markelov. The boldness of the attack by a single gunman in broad daylight in the center of Moscow required professional preliminary planning and surveillance that would necessitate the security services, which closely control that particular neighborhood, turning a blind eye. The use of a gun with a silencer does not fit with the usual pattern of murders by nationalist neo-Nazi youth groups in Russia, which use homemade explosives, knives, and group assaults to beat up and stab opponents to death".

6. For the crime of authorizing a book critical of Putin, Anna Politkovskaya was found shot dead in the elevator of her apartment block in central Moscow on October 7, 2006. Chechen suspects were arrested, then acquitted, in what would prove to be a clown car of a trial. According to a former captain of Russia’s special forces, "The next signature murder was on 7 October when Anna Politkovskaya was shot on [Vladimir] Putin’s birthday. They certainly could not afford another method – the whole effect would be lost should she die in a car accident or of a heart attack. It was all self-protection, of course, as the lady had slapped Putin in the face by publishing her book Putin's Russia in the West.”

7. Human rights activist Natalya Estemirova was abducted on July 15, 2009, from her home where she’d been working on sensitive cases of human rights abuses involving hundreds of alleged kidnappings, torture and extrajudicial killings by Russian government troops or paramilitaries in Chechnya. Her remains were found riddled with bullets to the head and chest, stirring an international outcry. The murderer was never caught nor the organizer identified, but Vladimir Putin is widely believed to have authorized her assassination.

8.On 26 December 2016, former general in both the KBG and FSB and then-chief of staff at Russian state-owned oil company, Rosneft, Oleg Erovinkin was found dead in the back of his car in Moscow. Media sources speculated that Erovinkin was an unnamed informant for the Steele dossier, a document compiled by former M16 spy Christopher Steele, detailing connections between former president Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian agents. Before going radio silent on the subject of Erovinkin’s mysterious death, FSB officials claimed that Erovinkin, 61, died of a heart attack.

There are confirmed reports that under Putin, a variety of poisons have been developed that are designed to trigger fast-acting cancers, cardiac arrest, or even mood-alterations that can create the appearance of the kind of profound depression that often lends itself to staged suicides.

9.Russian business oligarch Boris Berezovsky, himself complicit in many shady dealings during the tumultuous Yeltsin years of the 90s, was found hanging from a rafter in his Sunninghill house in the U.K., on March 23, 2013. Accused by Russian officials of fraud and embezzlement, Berezovsky managed to evade extradition from Britain, which then became a point of tension between the two countries. His death, while consistent with that of most enemies of Vladimir Putin, might not have been all that suspicious were it not for the repeated calls to police by his close business associate Scot Young in the months leading up to Young’s death. On December 8, 2014, Young fell or was thrown from a fourth-floor London flat and then impaled on the railings below. U.S. spy agencies believe that the Russian state was responsible for his death, a claim given even more credibility when the U.K. police shut down the investigation without conducting any forensics tests.

10. Dr. Matthew Puncher, a British citizen, was the renowned radiation scientist whose court testimony helped a judge determine that Alexander Litvinenko (see above) had been assassinated, likely at the behest of Putin. A few months after the verdict, Puncher was found dead—stabbed with two knives. Local police ruled it a suicide, but U.S. intelligence strongly suspects it was murder.

Check back tomorrow for Part 2 of From Russia with Blood: How Much Do You Really Know About Vladimir Putin to learn more about the mobster tactics Vladimir Putin employs to avenge himself against his enemies, including the story of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, whose poisoning on British soil caused an international firestorm, and most recently, four recent 'suicides' of high profile Russian gas industry executives and their young children.

As always, I am looking forward to hearing from you. Feel free to leave your comments below. If you like this article and want to gift someone you know with a subscription to Cappuccino, here’s the link you’ll need to do that.

Copyright © 2022 Stacey Eskelin