Notable Poisonings in the USSR and Russia 1921-Present

Most Recent Update: July 31, 2024

Here is a chronology of notable poisonings of regime opponents from 1921 until the present.  The list is grim but instructive about how Soviet, and now Russian, methods have scarcely changed.  

The actual number of Soviet and Russian assassinations by other means is so large that it has to be broken out into separate lists (see sister links at the end of the main link). The acknowledged assassinations by the Putin regime are almost all Chechens, while the suspected ones involve political opponents, journalists, and others. In addition, here is a recent survey of suspicious deaths of notable Russians 2022-2024. See also the CBS 60 Minutes story on the assassination of Putin opponents worldwide, including in the United States. Here is a declassified ODNI analysis of Putin's assassination program.

 

1921

The first Soviet government poison laboratory, Lab X,  is established.  Its activities expand significantly during the Stalin era.

1925

Defector Vladimir Nesterovich, former GRU station chief in Vienna, is poisoned in Mainz on August 6, 1925.

1928

White Guard General Baron Peter Wrangel poisoned in Brussels on April 28, 1928.

 

1930

White Army General Alexander Kutepov is drugged and kidnapped in Paris.  He dies in transit due to an overdose of the drug used to subdue him.

 

1936

Soviet writer Maksim Gorkiy and his son are allegedly poisoned on orders of NKVD head Genrikh Yagoda.

 

1937

Future NKVD boss Nikolay Yezhov, aka “the poisoned dwarf” is allegedly the object of a poisoning plot by his predecessor, Genrikh Yagoda.

 

1937

White Army General Yevgeniy Miller is drugged and kidnapped in Paris.  He is later executed in the Soviet Union.

 

1938

Abram Slutskiy, head the Foreign Intelligence Service of the NKVD, is poisoned with cyanide put in his tea.

 

1938-1946

Laboratory No. 1, headed by Grigoriy Mayranovskiy, provides poisons for use by Pavel Sudoplatov’s NKVD Administration for Special Tasks.  Mayranovskiy’s laboratory is later accused of experimenting on live human subjects in order to determine the most effective poisons to use in dealing with enemies of the state. 

 

1947

Ukrainian Catholic Archbishop Theodore Romzha is poisoned by the MGB with a dose of curare.

1953

Wolfgang Salus, one of Trotsky's secretaries, in poisoned in Munich, 13 February.

 

1953

Soviet leader Josef Stalin is allegedly poisoned by MGB Chief Lavrentiy Beria.  The more accepted explanation, however, is that Stalin died of natural causes.

 

1953

Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito is allegedly the object of an MGB poisoning plot, which was reportedly called off shortly after the death of Stalin.

 

1957

Following his defection to the United States in 1953, former KGB Assassin Nikolay Khokhlov is poisoned, probably on KGB orders.  He recovers in a West German hospital.  The exact poison was never determined, but was narrowed to two suspects: Thallium and Polonium.

1957

Ukrainian emigre leader Lev Rebet poisoned in Munich, 15 October.

 

1959 

Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera is assassinated in Munich on 12 October by KGB agent Bogdan Stashinskiy.  Stashinskiy shot Bandera while passing him on the steps, using a cyanide gas gun concealed in a rolled up newspaper.  Initially, it was thought that Bandera had died of a heart attack. 

 

1962

During their investigation of Colonel Oleg Penkovskiy for espionage, KGB agents reportedly plant poisoned wax on the seat of Penkovskiy's office chair.  As a result, Penkovskiy was hospitalized, giving the KGB the opportunity to plant bugs and cameras in his office and apartment and thereafter to obtain incriminating evidence.  Penkovskiy, one of the most effective spies ever recruited by the West, was the first to reveal that the so-called "missile gap," a dominant theme of the Kennedy-Nixon campaign, did not actually exist.

 

1971

According to former KGB official Oleg Kalugin, five KGB agents successfully poison dissident novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn with a near-fatal dose of ricin.  The five agents followed Solzhenitsyn into a grocery store in the city of Novocherkassk and stuck him with a needle to administer the poison.

 

1975

Georgian dissident Zviad Gamsakhurdia reportedly survives two KGB attempts to poison him.

August 27, 1978.

Vladimir Kostov, a former Bulgarian intelligence officer who defected to France is shot with a pellet gun concealed in an umbrella as he rode an escalator in the Paris Métro. The pellet contains ricin. Kostov falls gravely ill but miraculously survives the attempted assassination. 

 

September 7, 1978

Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov is fatally poisoned by ricin while walking in London.  The ricin was delivered by means of an umbrella that was jabbed into him from behind. Although he was poisoned by an agent of Todor Zhivkov, it is likely that the USSR provided technical assistance. On September 11, 2023, SVR head Naryshkin dedicates a new statue to Felix Dzerzhinskiy at SVR headquarters in Yasenovo, coincidentally, perhaps, on the 45th anniversary of the poisoning death of Georgi Markov.

1979 

Soviet dissident writer Vladimir Voinovich is poisoned in Moscow.

 

1979

Just prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late December, the KGB reportedly attempts to poison the food of rebellious Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin, whom KGB chief Yuriy Andropov erroneously believes is a CIA agent.  The attempt fails, although Amin’s son does suffer poisoning symptoms.  Two weeks later, the KGB resorts to more direct measures: special KGB Alpha troops and GRU Spetsnaz land in Kabul in advance of the Soviet invasion and take Amin’s palace by force, killing him and his guards. 

 

1993

There are allegations, never substantiated, that elements of the defunct KGB successfully poisoned to death former Georgian leader Zviad Gamsakhurdiya.  The more accepted version is that Gamsakhurdiya committed suicide, although his wife says he was murdered. 

 

1995
 
Russian banker Ivan K. Kivelidi died of cadmium poisoning. Authorities say the drug had been spread on his office telephone.

 

March 2002

Prominent Chechen commander Omar Khattab is poisoned in an FSB operation.  Khattab was handed a letter by a trusted associate who had been turned by the FSB.  The letter, which was doctored with an unspecified neurotoxin, killed Khattab in five minutes.

 

July 3, 2003

Apartment bombing investigator and Yabloko Duma Deputy Yuriy Shchekochikhin dies suddenly, reportedly of an "acute allergic reaction."  Relatives and political allies believe, however, that he was poisoned.  Observers speculated at the time that Shchekochikhin may have been murdered in order to prevent him from uncovering the true story of the FSB's involvement in the 1999 apartment bombings, which took 243 lives and were blamed on Chechen terrorists.  The Russian authorities refused to cooperate with relatives in an investigation of Shchekochikhin's death.  Speculation that Shchekochikhin may have been poisoned was lent greater credence by the fact that only three months earlier another apartment bombing investigator, "Liberal Russia" Duma Deputy Sergey Yushenkov, was shot to death.  Just to muddy the waters further, in September 2003, stories surfaced in London that an SVR agent had attempted to poison exiled Oligarch Boris Berezovskiy, a prominent proponent of the FSB-apartment bombing theory. 

 

October 2003

On October 26, during the Nord Ost crisis, Russian authorities pump "incapacitating gas" into a Moscow theater in an effort to free over 800 hostages held by Chechen terrorists.  The gas, Tri-Methyl Fentanyl, was intended to knock out everyone quickly, but, through dreadful miscalculation, was pumped into the theater in sufficient strength to have fatal effects.  129 hostages died (most from the gas, although reportedly a few hostages were shot by mistake by the Special Forces that stormed the theater).

 

January 2004

Russian Presidential candidate and Berezovskiy ally Ivan Rybkin mysteriously disappears from Moscow in late January.  Five days later, he resurfaces in Kyiv.  Later, after returning to Moscow and then London for drug tests, Rybkin claimed he was lured to Kyiv on the false promise of peace talks with Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov.  Instead, according to Rybkin, he was drugged and compromising videos were taken of him.  As of now, no proof has surfaced to substantiate Rybkin's claims.  Putin spin-doctor Gleb Pavlovskiy theorized that Rybkin was just seeking an excuse to withdraw from the Presidential contest, and that he dreamed up the kidnap story to cover himself.  Others are not so sure, but the following month Rybkin did indeed withdraw from the race.

 

April 21, 2004

Chechen Guerilla Commander Lecha Islamov is poisoned to death in prison.  Islamov had met on several occasions with FSB officials, who tried unsuccessfully to turn him.  A month later, jail officials summoned him to another meeting, at which he was offered tea and a snack.  Shortly after this meeting, Islamov suffered symptoms consistent with Thallium poisoning and died.

 

September 2004

Anna Politkovskaya, one of Russia's premier investigative journalists, is allegedly poisoned while traveling to Beslan to cover the hostage crisis.  According to Politkovskaya, she got on a plane, drank some tea and promptly passed out.  Politkovskaya believed that she was sidelined on orders from the FSB, but could offer no proof.  Two years later, on October 7, 2006 Politkovskaya was shot to death in her apartment elevator.  Two Chechens have been arrested and are on trial for her murder.  Politkovskaya, known for her criticism of the policies of President Putin, was murdered on his birthday.

 

September 5, 2004

Ukrainian opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko falls ill shortly after having dinner with SBU head Ihor Smeshko.  In December, Austrian doctors confirm that Yushchenko was poisoned with a near-fatal dose of dioxin.  Ukrainian authorities claim that they know who was behind the poisoning, and subsequent reports have implicated former SBU Deputy Chairman Volodymyr Satsiuk.  Satsiuk and others have fled to Russia, which has refused to extradite them on the grounds that they are Russian citizens.

 

September 24, 2004

Roman Tsepov, a shady businessman and associate of Vladimir Putin during his days as Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg, dies of poisoning.  The type of poison was not identified, but it was radioactive and the symptoms were the same as those suffered two years later by Litvinenko.  Tsepov, who had a number of connections with the St. Petersburg underworld, had been the target of numerous assassination attempts over the years.

 

2006
Killings outside Russia are given legal sanction by the Russian Duma.

November 23, 2006

Berezovskiy associate and former KGB agent Aleksandr Litvinenko dies of Polonium poisoning in London.  Former KGB agent and current Duma Deputy Andrey Lugovoy is suspected in the murder.  Russia has refused extradition on the grounds that he is a Russian citizen.

 

March, 2007

American citizens Marina Kovalevsky and her daughter Yanna return to Los Angeles after suffering Thallium poisoning in Moscow.  Initially listed as being in fair condition, they are treated at Cedars Sinai Hospital and released.  It is unknown whether they were deliberate targets of poisoning, or just unlucky.

November, 2007

On 2 November 2007, Russian defector Oleg Gordievskiy was reportedly taken by ambulance from his home in Surrey to a local hospital, where he spent 34 hours unconscious. He claimed that he was poisoned with thallium by "rogue elements in Moscow".^[29] 

 

October, 2008

Russian human rights lawyer Karina Moskalenko falls ill in Strasbourg, complaining of symptoms that include nausea, headaches and vomiting.  A few days later, Moskalenko’s husband finds ten mercury pellets in her car and notifies the French police.  According to Le Figaro, the police have concluded that the poisoning was accidental, the result of a broken thermometer that was left in the car by its previous owner.  Moskalenko spends much of her time before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg representing Chechen human rights victims, had also represented Aleksandr Litvinenko.  Before she fell ill, Moskalenko was due to attend the trial of the Chechens accused of murdering Anna Politkovskaya, in her capacity as lawyer for the Politkovskaya family.

November 2010

Former KGB Colonel Viktor Kalashnikov and his wife are poisoned with mercury in Berlin.

November 2013

Berezovskiy associate Nikolay Glushkov apparently poisoned when two Russians approach him in a hotel in Bristol and offer him champagne. He is so ill the next day he has to be hospitalized.  

Five years later, on March 12, 2018, Glushkov was found hanged in his London home. Police concluded that he was first strangled and then positioned to make the death look like a suicide. 

Boris Berezovskiy himself died of an apparent suicide on March 22, 2013 by hanging himself in his bathroom. Forensic evidence indicated, however, that he might have been strangled first and then hanged by someone who had easy access to his home.

   

May 2015, February 2017

Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza suddenly becomes ill during a Moscow meeting. Taken to a local hospital, he is diagnosed with poisoning. The symptoms recur in 2017, and Kara-Murza is put into a coma to save his life.  Attempts to investigate the poisonings are rebuffed by the Russian authorities.

Kara-Murza fled abroad but later returned to Russia. He was imprisoned by the authorities, and in 2024 released in a trade for Russian spies that also involved Wall Street Journal Reporter Evan Gershkovich and American ex-Marine Paul Whelan, among others.

2016

Sergei Mokhov, an anthropologist, is injected with poison in his upper thigh and nearly dies. The case is never solved, but Mokhov's wife, Lawyer and opposition activist Lyubov Sobol blames Putin associate Yevgeniy Prigozhin for the attack. Prigozhin announces in June that he will sue Ms. Sobol for damaging his reputation. 

March 2018

Former Russian spy Sergey Skripal and his daughter are poisoned near their home in Salisbury, England., and are transported to hospital in critical condition. Dozens of others are also affected, including a policeman, who is hospitalized in serious condition.  Soon, British authorities determine that the poison used was "Novichok," a particularly dangerous nerve agent that is only manufactured in Russia.  The UK expels 23 Russian diplomats and the U.S., France and Germany stand in solidarity with the British. British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson says that Putin probably ordered the attack, though there is no hard evidence to this effect.  Further responses to the poisonings are under consideration. Three months later, Charlie Rowley discovers a discarded perfume bottle and gives it to his girlfriend, Dawn Sturgess. It is the assailants' Novichok dispensing device. Both fall gravely ill, Sturgess dies.

2018

Russian-Canadian activist Pyotr Verzilov, the unofficial spokesman for Pussy Riot, is poisoned in Moscow, treated successfully in Berlin.

August 2020

Russian opposition leader Aleksey Navalny is poisoned in Omsk with Novichok.  He is flown to Berlin and successfully treated. Navalny later tricks an FSB officer into admitting that he took part in the operation to poison him.  https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/21/europe/russia-navalny-poisoning-underpants-ward/index.html  

2022  

Moscow politician Elivira Vikhareva poisoned with heavy metals. 

March 3, 2022. 

"Members of a Ukrainian negotiating team meeting with 

Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and Ukrainian peace negotiators suffered symptoms of suspected poisoning after a meeting in Kyiv earlier this month, people familiar with the matter said.

"Mr. Abramovich, Ukrainian lawmaker Rustem Umerov and another negotiator developed symptoms following the March 3 meeting in Kyiv that included red eyes, constant and painful tearing, and peeling skin on their faces and hands, the people said. Mr. Abramovich has shuttled between Moscow, Belarus and other negotiating venues since Russia invaded Ukraine.

"Mr. Abramovich was blinded for a few hours and later had trouble eating, according to a person familiar with the matter.

"Some of the people familiar with the matter blamed the suspected attack on hard-liners in Moscow who they said wanted to sabotage talks to end the war. A person close to Mr. Abramovich said it wasn’t clear who had targeted the group." 

October 17, 2022.  Elena Kostyuchenko, a journalist for Novaya Gazeta and Meduza, was poisoned with an unknown substance in Munich.

October 25, 2022. 

Ekho Moskvy journalist Irina Babloyan was poisoned with an unknown substance in Tbilisi.

May 2, 2023  

"Natalia Arno, the U.S.-based chief of the Free Russia Foundation, says there are suspicions she may have been poisoned, "possibly by some nerve agent," after falling ill during a recent trip to Europe, amid a report that at least two other Kremlin critics have experienced similar episodes since 2020. 

"According to Agentstvo, the former U.S. ambassador who also suffered a similar illness is John Herbst. Once the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine and Uzbekistan, he is currently the senior director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center. 

Ambassador John Herbst

"He experienced possible poisoning symptoms several months before Russia launched its unprovoked ongoing invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

"Sources told Agentstvo that an investigation was launched into his situation as well, while Herbst declined to comment."

Bellingcat's Christo Grozev was also mentioned as a possible victim following a hotel room break-in in Montenegro.

More information: German Police Investigating Mysterious Illnesses Of Russian Activist, Journalist In Berlin; Russian Hit Team Feared in Suspected Poisoning of US Citizens.

July 2023

Perdue and Sheraton heiress Mitzi Perdue is reportedly poisoned at the Airport Sheraton in Warsaw after returning from an annual trip to Kyiv. Reportedly, she was injected with Novichok in an elevator by a pair of would-be assassins and was saved only when injected with atropine by emergency medical personnel. Perdue says she was told by Ukrainian sources that she was on Putin's hit list because of her charitable and journalistic activities in Ukraine.

October 12, 2023

Exiled Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova reported to French authorities that she may have been the target of a poisoning attempt. Subsequent investigation revealed no evidence of a poisoning attempt.

November, 2023

"[Ukrainian Military Intelligence reported that] Marianna Budanova had been poisoned and was receiving treatment. Her husband, Kyrylo Budanov, is the head of the agency known as G.U.R. and is one of the country’s most senior military leaders. Mr. Chernyak declined to speculate on the perpetrator or the type of poison used and provided no further details, citing the ongoing investigation. The agency’s spokesman, Andriy Yusov, later issued a statement with a similar account of the incident and said more information would be released as the investigation proceeds." 

Other sources indicate that Budanov has been subject to at least ten attempted poisonings, as Russian sleeper agents step up their efforts to kill Ukraine's leaders.  President Zelenskyy has been the target of at least a half-dozen assassination attempts. Source: New York Times, November 28, 2023.   

December 24, 2023. 

Rabidly anti-Ukrainian former RT Director Anton Krasovskiy reportedly poisoned.

January 5, 2024.

Zoya Konovalova, the head of one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's state TV channels, found dead after a suspected poisoning incident. Konovalova, 48, editor-in-chief of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Kuban, was found alongside the body of her ex-husband, 52, at a home in the Krasnodar region on January 5.

February 16, 2024.

Aleksey Navalny dies at the Polar Wolf prison colony as a prisoner trade for him was being negotiated. The Putin regime says it was from natural causes, but subsequent investigation by The Insider reveals that "the authorities deliberately removed all mentions of symptoms that did not fit the official version. As doctors confirm, these symptoms clearly indicate that Navalny was poisoned."

August 2, 2024.
"In a world first," Russian chess player (Amina Akbakarova) poisons rival's 
(Umayganat Osmanova) chess board with mercury.