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Russian riot police lead a charge on demonstrators protesting the arrest of Alexei Navalny – hero of the democracy movement – following his return from Germany, after his first poisoning with the banned chemical Novichok in 2021. (Photo by Olga MALTSEVA \/ AFP) (Photo by OLGA MALTSEVA\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s \u201ctheatrical assassinations\u201d of Vladimir Putin\u2019s critics, even those who made it to seeming sanctuary in the United Kingdom, via exotic state-concocted poisons could presage the mass deployment of chemical weapons by Putin\u2019s armies in a future war with NATO, says an eminent scholar at King\u2019s College London.<\/p>\n
Elena Grossfeld, a world-leading expert on Russia\u2019s shadow war<\/a> on the West, including the killing of democrats and defectors stretching from Siberian prison camps to the British capital by Moscow\u2019s intelligence operatives, says these ongoing attacks could one day morph into chemical assaults on NATO troops.<\/p>\n A scholar at the prestigious King\u2019s Centre for the Study of Intelligence, Grossfeld told me in an interview that across the blogs of fervent Kremlin nationalists and \u201cRussian propagandists, they are already in a war with NATO.\u201d <\/p>\n The recent joint finding by five European governments, of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands, that Russian democratic torchbearer Alexei Navalny<\/a> was assassinated via a poison banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention underscores Moscow\u2019s contempt for international treaties constraining its weapons of war or its macabre statecraft of extrajudicial killings. <\/p>\n The assassination of Putin\u2019s foes, whether in Britain or inside Russia, via internationally prohibited chemical weaponry, \u201cis a form of statecraft, conducted by intelligence organizations on behalf of the state,\u201d Grossfeld says. <\/p>\n Russia\u2019s use of banned chemical weapons along Ukraine battlefronts<\/a>, and dispatch of poison-armed hit squads transnationally, all continue the Kremlin\u2019s assaults on the UN-backed world order based on rule of law.<\/p>\n Romans stage a torchlight procession in the Italian capital in memory of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny just days after he was assassinated in an Arctic prison camp in 2024 (Photo by Andrea Ronchini\/NurPhoto via Getty Images)<\/p>\n NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s flouting of treaties like the Chemical Weapons Convention could escalate ahead, during any full-scale war with the West.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t believe that in case of full on war with NATO Russia will care about conventions it repeatedly ignored before,\u201d Grossfeld says.<\/p>\n \u201cIn case of war with NATO,\u201d she adds, Russian deployment of chemical munitions could explode.<\/p>\n In a doctoral dissertation titled \u201cThe Strategic Culture of KGB and its Legacy,\u201d Grossfeld traced a century of Russian state-ordered assassinations, starting after the communist revolution of 1917, spiking first under Joseph Stalin, and then again during Putin\u2019s reign.<\/p>\n Stalin orchestrated the macabre murder of his onetime rival, the Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky, a continent away in Mexico, while executing his fellow revolutionaries across the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n These days, while Kremlin-dispatched assassins still sometimes use pistols to target \u201cenemies of the state\u201d like political reformists and journalists calling for a post-Putin democracy, the most prominent critics of Russia\u2019s Neo-Tsar are subjected to poisons that are held only inside the highest rings of power, including the president and his closest military and security lieutenants. <\/p>\n Using specialized state-perfected poisons, like the extreme toxin Novichok developed by Soviet weapons designers, or the radioactive polonium that can only be produced inside a nuclear reactor, sends out a powerful message that the Kremlin has hand-crafted this instrument of terror to Russian dissidents, and to government leaders around the world.<\/p>\n \u201cPoisoning in general is a particularly frightening and intimidating form of assassination,\u201d Grossfeld says.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the majority of Russians are terrified of joining protests regardless of the method of assassination, and repression within Russia is quite effective, but of course those theatrics add on.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRussian, and before that the Soviet intelligence in certain periods, did indeed carry out assassinations worldwide.\u201d <\/p>\n Killings by Kremlin operatives skyrocketed under Putin, who outdid all of his Soviet predecessors in lethally targeting his critics.<\/p>\n UK envoys brief the UN Security Council on the Novichok poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal – an assassination attempt they attributed to Russian military intelligence operatives (Photo by Spencer Platt\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n Getty Images<\/p>\n The most theatrical hits, with the most bizarre poisons, she says, are reserved for \u201cthose that are considered traitors,\u201d like the former Russian intelligence agents Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal, who both found asylum in the UK.<\/p>\n Litvinenko died in agony after being poisoned in London with radioactive polonium, with the British government reporting, following a years-long investigation, that the Kremlin-orchestrated assassination<\/a> was probably personally approved by President Putin, a former KGB mastermind.<\/p>\n The coalition of European nations that investigated Alexei Navalny\u2019s death, via bio-samples smuggled out of Russia, stated two weeks ago that: \u201cThe UK, Sweden, France, Germany and The Netherlands are confident that Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a lethal toxin.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNavalny died while held in prison, meaning Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison to him.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRussia\u2019s repeated disregard for international law and the Chemical Weapons Convention is clear,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n In the earlier Novichok poisonings of Navalny, and before him Sergei Skripal, they added, \u201conly the Russian state had the combined means, motive and disregard for international law to carry out the attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese latest findings once again underline the need to hold Russia accountable for its repeated violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe and our partners,\u201d they vowed, \u201cwill make use of all policy levers at our disposal to continue to hold Russia to account.\u201d<\/p>\n During our interview, scholar Grossfeld told me \u201cthe operatives in charge of developing and executing the assassinations should be named and sanctioned.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet she added that any prosecution of Vladimir Putin would depend on regime change in Russia.<\/p>\n Yulia Navalnaya, Alexei Navalny\u2019s wife and now head of the Russian democracy movement in exile, said in a powerful video<\/a> recorded on the sidelines of the just-ended Munich Security Conference that the leaders of the five-power European coalition had personally delivered their finding that her martyred husband had been murdered with a rare banned poison. <\/p>\n \u201cI will do everything in my power to fight for change in Russia,\u201d she vowed. \u201cThe rule of thieves and murderers must end.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAlexei devoted his life to this. He died fighting for the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI promised that I would continue his fight. I promised that the truth would be revealed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I will do everything to ensure that Putin and everyone involved are held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court has already prepared an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin<\/a> on charges of crimes against humanity committed during his invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n