Yet Another Assassination Occurred in Moscow This Week

Who could be behind all of these deaths?

Another bomb went off in Moscow. This time, it took out a Lt. General. Here is the official tally of all the recent assassinations carried out within Russia courtesy of AI.

• Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov – killed by a scooter bombing in Moscow (Dec 2024), widely reported as a Ukrainian intelligence operation. Wikipedia+1

• Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik – killed in a car bombing (April 2025). Reuters

• Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov – killed by a car bomb in Moscow (Dec 2025). Reuters+1

• Vladimir Sviridov – Former lieutenant-general of the Air and Air Defence Forces found dead; cause not definitively explained. Reddit

• Roman Starovoit – Former transport minister found dead after his dismissal; officially ruled a suicide, but circumstances were noted as suspicious by independent reporting. Wikipedia

• Kirill Stremousov – Russian-aligned official in Donbass Ukraine died in an alleged car accident, with observers questioning the official narrative. Wikipedia

• Valery Trankovsky – Russian naval captain, killed by explosive devices (Nov 2024). Reuters

• Vladen Tatarsky (Maxim Fomin) – Pro-war Russian military blogger; bombing at a café in Saint Petersburg (Apr 2, 2023). Wikipedia

• Armen Sarkisyan – Pro-Russia paramilitary leader reportedly killed by a bomb in Moscow (Feb 3, 2025). The Guardian

• Pavel Antov – Member of Legislative Assembly; fell from hotel window (India) (Dec 24, 2022). National Security News

• Magomed Abdulaev – Chairman of Government of Dagestan; died after traffic incident crossing road (Jan 2023). National Security News

• Vyacheslav Trubnikov – Foreign Intelligence Service General; unclear circumstances. The New Voice of Ukraine

• Lev Sotskov – Foreign Intelligence Service General; reported suicide. The New Voice of Ukraine

• Vladimir Makarov – Deputy Head, Interior Ministry’s extremism division; gunshot wound. The New Voice of Ukraine

• Alexei Maslov – Former commander of Russian ground forces (died unexpectedly in hospital) (Dec 25, 2022). National Security News

Igor Strelkov comments from prison [charges of discrediting The Shoigu]:

Igor Strelkov on the main reason for enemy sabotage in the Russian rear

Indeed, there’s no point in commenting on the death of yet another of our generals in isolation. (https://t.me/i_strelkov_2023/2350) I want to focus on another issue: that after three years and ten months of war, our authorities still haven’t reconsidered their approach to it.

Everything has been done to ensure that this war continues on the periphery and doesn’t affect the habitual way of life and the habitual way of governing of our officials. Apparently, nothing will be done about it until the very end of this war, or at least until a severe crisis erupts. This means that a severe crisis in this war is becoming completely inevitable.

Perhaps Russia has ever seen such an example, if ever, in a slightly different form: during the First World War, which, as we know, ended extremely tragically for Russia. It was precisely the unwillingness to change old management methods in any way, to adapt to the escalating situation, to periodically emerging crises, and the utter unwillingness to pursue a personnel policy different from that pursued in peacetime that ultimately led Russia to disaster.

I fear the same could happen here. Because the authorities are not only unwilling, but apparently completely incapable of even considering any changes that are even remotely inconvenient for them (our VIP officials and the system they’ve built), let alone that in any way infringe on their interests in favor of the country and the people.

This sad conclusion, it seems, is irrevocable. Although, who knows? Let’s hope. Hope is the only thing we have left in this regard.

But there were also many other high profile deaths of important people in the government-business sphere in Russia over these last ±4 years. Here:

2022

• Leonid Shulman (Gazprom Invest service) — found dead in bathtub. IntelliNews

• Alexander Tyulyakov (Gazprom deputy) — hanged. IntelliNews

• Vladislav Avaev (Gazprombank VP) — found shot dead with family. IntelliNews

• Sergey Protosenya (Novatek) — murdered with family in Spain. IntelliNews

• Ravil Maganov (Lukoil) — fell from hospital window. IntelliNews

2023–2024

• Oleg Zatsepin (Kogalymneftegaz) — found dead in office. IntelliNews

• Vladimir Nekrasov (Lukoil chairman) — died suddenly. IntelliNews

• Vitaly Robertus (Lukoil VP) — found dead in office. IntelliNews

• Natalia Bochkareva – Daughter of ex-Governor; found dead in apartment (Jul 14, 2023). Wikipedia

• Anton Cherepennikov – Head of state-affiliated company Citadel; found dead in office (Jul 22, 2023). Wikipedia

2025

• Andrey Badalov (Transneft VP) — fell from his apartment window. The Kyiv Independent

• Roman Starovoit (former transport minister) — found with a gunshot wound hours after being dismissed (ruled suicide by officials). Wikipedia

• Andrey Korneichuk (Starovoit’s deputy) — died same day of reported heart failure. Wikipedia

• Evgeny Golovatiy – Senior anti-corruption police official; found dead with reported self-inflicted gunshot (Feb 27, 2025). Moneycontrol

• Artur Pryakhin – Chief of Karelia antitrust agency; died after fall from window (Feb 4, 2025). Moneycontrol

• Konstantin Klyuev – Deputy city admin in Vladivostok; died after fall (Jan 14, 2025). Moneycontrol

And about two dozen others that may or may not have been assassinations. Like Alexei Navalny dropping dead of a heart attack in prison. Maybe it was the Death Vax. Maybe he was discarded by his sponsors in the West.

Maybe it was Kira, writing names in his Death Note.

But you don’t need to be a world famous detective like L to be able to notice that many of these deaths were suspicious and seemed to benefit Putin’s inner circle of oligarchs. It seems almost trite and banal to point out that it is very unlikely that all of these important businessmen and officials suddenly decided to jump out of windows right after the start of the SMO. Does anyone actually think these were acciental deaths?

Generally speaking, we have an ideal situation for the secret police everywhere to do their work as a result of this war. And these goon squads of spooks can now also just blame each other for the deaths, and the increased repressive measures ensure that no investigation or public outcry over these deaths is possible. With the bombings targeting Russian military men though, you have to wonder why they are being carried out with such ease and impunity.

Yes, Ukraine has also suffered some mysterious deaths.

Andriy Parubiy — Former Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) and former Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. Shot dead in Lviv on 30 August 2025 in a daylight attack by an assailant disguised as a food delivery courier.

Iryna Farion — Former Member of Parliament (Svoboda party), linguist and nationalist figure. Shot dead in Lviv on 19 July 2024; police later arrested an 18-year-old suspect.

(Unnamed/SBU Intelligence Officer) — Senior Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) intelligence officer/colonel. Shot dead in broad daylight in Kyiv (10 July 2025).

At least ~26 local officials in Ukraine died in attacks during 2022 alone, including mayors and regional councilors. Russian-installed officials (in occupation zones like Kherson or Donetsk) were also killed in partisan attacks and incidents of resistance. ACLED

Oleksiy Vadaturskyy — Founder of Nibulon, one of Ukraine’s largest agricultural and grain-logistics companies; one of Ukraine’s wealthiest businessmen. 31 July 2022 — killed along with his wife by a Russian missile strike on his home in Mykolaiv during heavy bombardment.

But either the reporting is worse on Ukraine or the scope of the killings is far, far less.

What does this tell us?

Well, naturally, it proves to us that Putin is far more Christian Values Moral. He refuses to target Ukrainian security goons and generals and morally targets only poor conscripts, which is the Christian Values thing to do. The people to blame for the state of Nazi-Analic-Satanism in Ukraine and the West are the destitute proles and peasants that are forced at gunpoint into the army, yes. Why is Putin so morally superior to you and me though? Ah, that’s because he has built 6 million churches in Russia. Would someone who has built 60 million churches in Russia assassinate enemy generals? No, never! Zelensky, meanwhile, has destroyed 6 trillion Churches, because he worships Neopaganism aka Satanism. He even plans to abscond to Agartha to worship Yakub and Odin and the rest of the pagan pantheon of gods when this war is over, not the Holy Land, after all.

Case closed.

But if we discard the Christian Values Morality argument for the time being, a more disturbing picture emerges.

Putin is clearly doing a lot of killing on his own. Only, the targets of his killings are mostly confined to Russia. There are some notable exceptions, like the killing of the grain tycoon by missile at his private residence, for example. This was clearly an FSB hit, seeing as Patrushev and his son run Russia’s major agricultural holdings, and they’ve never been squeamish about using military assets to eliminate their business competition. That is what the whole Odessa bombing campaign focused on.

Remember?

But there have been no hits on Ukraine’s military officers. No killing of ministers and other officials. Only Russia’s officers end up getting blown up. And only Russia’s top businessmen and ministers, all of whom appear to be concentrated in the oil and gas industry, end up dying en masse due to spontaneous suicide and defenestration.

Curious, no? Here is what we can see emerging:

1. The Kremlin tolerates the killing of military officers, but does not respond in kind.

2. When they do kill, they only target business competitors using missile strikes. This is because of their strict adherence to Christianity Moral Values.

3. Meanwhile, most of the dead are businessmen and officials within Russia, who were not part of the Kremlin inner circle.

4. Put another way, neither Putin’s nor Zelensky’s close friend and allies are dying.

5. The vast majority of the deaths are occurring in Russia-controlled territories

Me, I think that the common denominator here is that the deaths are clearly almost all occurring on FSB-controlled turf. That’s the common factor here. Does it make sense that Ukraine is relatively assassination free? Well, it seems like the SBU just isn’t carrying out a targeted killing campaign within Ukraine, clearly, even if we don’t know why.

But, is it possible that they’re not doing one in Russia either?

Conjecture, of course. It would make the most sense to blame the deaths of those generals and journalists and officials and militia leaders on Ukraine’s assassination efforts. The only problem with that narrative is that they’re not targeting close Putin supporters. Of course, with most of the deaths, we don’t know their political views, because these people are not allowed to share their political views, they’re supposed to just be functionaries.

The only problem is that for a few of the dead, we actually do know that they were critical of Putin and the war effort. We also know that there was widespread discontent in the military, which I covered extensively during the Prigozhin mutiny — a mutiny which I predicted some two months out, just FYI, in case anyone is keeping score at home.

Let’s take a look at some of the deaths more closely.

Tatarsky (Maxim Fomin), the pro-war Russian military blogger, was on record saying that the Donbass cause had been betrayed by Moscow. Before his death, he disavowed his earlier views and aligned himself as a Kremlin loyalist, causing a split among his peers that I remember clearly from that time. But he died anyway.

Stremousov had claimed that the Kremlin had betrayed Donbass after surrendering Kherson without a fight. He died soon after and I covered the bizarreness of his death:

Sarkisyan — yet another militia commander with harsh words to say about the Kremlin and the target of the Donbass oligarchs’ ire. Dead in Moscow.

Trankovsky — a naval commander who complained about the handling of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. You recall the insane policies taken to leave ships out in the open and abandon Snake Island and lift the blockade on Odessa, yes? And the Black Sea fleet lies in pieces under the waves for the most part now.

Oh and a near-miss occurred with Oleg Tsarev, who was the Crimean MP with harsh words for the Kremlin who almost died on his way back home from Moscow.

Is this enough of a pattern to draw conclusions from?

No, not quite. We’d need more information, of course. It would require interviewing close friend and associates of the dead men. That no one has, or no one has published such interviews is interesting to note as well, maybe. And another strange data point to consider is the long list of militia deaths in Donbass prior to the SMO of commanders that were critical of the Kremlin.

I don’t doubt that the SBU is killing people — that’s their job after all.

But I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there is some sort of arrangement that allows them to kill off people that the Kremlin is either neutral or hostile to. Because, you’d think that those people who were hostile to Putin would actually be the last people to be targeted by the SBU, right? I mean, if you wanted to topple Putin, would you be killing off disgruntled generals and militia commanders and upset media figures and rival oligarchs? Probably, you’d seek to support these people, and help them form an opposition to Putin, no? Maybe you’d even protect them. But the exact opposite is occurring. All the deaths from Navalny to Prigozhin to Mozgovoi to Darya Dugina have been of people who had problems with the Kremlin and who openly criticized the Kremlin.

I speculated about this before:

Isn’t this all rather curious?

Thus: we are supposed to believe that the SBU is killing off Putin’s critics and internal rivals for some reason.

… and this may indeed be true, actually.

It begs the question: why then is the SBU doing Putin’s government all these favors?

Maybe they are indeed the hand that did the deed. But then it require us to re-examine our understanding of the relationship between the two states. It would also explain why it appears to be so easy for them to pull off all of these killings. You and I can’t buy a cappucino without our biometrics being scanned and the time and date of our purchase being logged and all that info sold off to big data companies based in Israel.

But the SBU can, apparently, in cooperation with ISIS, carry off one of the largest terrorist attacks in history in Russia and no one could stop them beforehand or bring them to justice after the deed.

Does anyone even remember the Crocus attack?

Were we ever given an explanation for it other than some vague SBU-ISIS connection which was somehow proven by the fact that some Tajiks were caught trying to make their way across to Belarus in the aftermath? You know, before they were caught by Spetznaz and forced to eat their own ears, Hammon-style on Purim?

Why are there so many unexplained deaths and terrorist attacks in Russia?

It certainly doesn’t seem like the Kremlin cares very much.

They are more focused on battling the deadly spread of COVID, probably.