It doesn't begin with Skripal. It doesn't end with Navalny. Anyone who believes the Kremlin\u2019s political bloodlust is a whim of the present, a mere pathology of Vladimir Putin, is not wrong \u2013 but they fall short. Because the story of those who left Russia to escape the state \u2013 only to be struck down by its hand in the end \u2013 is not new. It is a system. A tradition. A message, deeply embedded in the blood archives of a secret service that never disappeared, only changed its acronym.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Emigration does not protect. It marks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since the days of the Bolsheviks, the traitor has been the true enemy. The dissenter, the emigrant, the defector \u2013 they carry not only guilt, but shame. And Moscow does not tolerate shame. As early as the 1920s, Soviet agents kidnapped exile generals like Alexander Kutepov and Yevgeny Miller. In 1940, an assassin commissioned by Stalin killed revolutionary Leon Trotsky in Mexico. The Soviet Union showed the world what it understood by sovereignty: its enemies remained enemies \u2013 no matter where they lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The KGB perfected the principle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What was once improvised later became structure. The \u201c13th Department\u201d of the KGB \u2013 responsible for so-called executive actions \u2013 was more than just a hit squad. It was part of a complex apparatus that pursued, poisoned, kidnapped, and discredited political opponents beyond the Iron Curtain. In cooperation with the Bulgarian DS, the East German Stasi, or the Czechoslovak security service, the KGB made dissidents disappear \u2013 not only physically, but symbolically. The message was clear: Moscow sees you. Moscow does not forget. Moscow does not forgive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The methods: gas, rumors, hostages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The weapons were diverse \u2013 and mostly silent. Ricin, cyanide, thallium. Poisons that kill without speaking. Umbrellas with needle tips, pens with gas nozzles, poisoned drinks, manipulated radios. The arsenal of Soviet poisoners was a laboratory of modernity \u2013 and at the same time a museum of fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But not all attacks ended in death. Often, the mere knowledge of constant threat was enough. Dissidents knew they had been sentenced to death in absentia. In Berlin, Vienna, London \u2013 shadows waited for them everywhere. Those lucky were discredited, not killed. Those unlucky disappeared. Or died, officially of heart failure. But in truth, of state rationale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The dead: Stepan Bandera, Georgi Markov, Nikolai Artamonov.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1957, Ukrainian nationalist Lev Rebet died on a staircase in Munich \u2013 later it emerged: he had been murdered with cyanide gas sprayed from a small pistol device. Two years later, Bandera met the same fate \u2013 same method, same perpetrator: Bohdan Stashynsky, a Soviet agent who later fled to the West and confessed the murder in full detail. The Federal Republic of Germany indicted the Soviet Union \u2013 a diplomatic scandal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1978, Georgi Markov died in London. The writer had criticized Bulgaria\u2019s regime. His killers shot a ricin capsule into his leg using a modified umbrella. An artistic murder in a pedestrian zone \u2013 and a case never officially solved, though all signs pointed to the KGB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then there is the case of Artamonov, aka Shadrin, a Soviet naval officer who worked for the United States \u2013 in 1975, he disappeared in Vienna, kidnapped by Soviet agents. The official version: heart failure during repatriation. The unofficial one: an act of revenge by design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The network of fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The KGB did not operate alone. It used alliances. Bulgarian intelligence did the handiwork, Stasi agents provided logistics, infiltrated agents in churches, media, and migrant organizations ensured subversion and disinformation. The Soviet secret service even infiltrated editorial offices of Radio Free Europe. It forged letters, constructed biographies, planted \u201cNazi pasts\u201d in r\u00e9sum\u00e9s. Those who were not killed were to be rendered impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The archives remain silent. The traces do not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1992, Boris Yeltsin announced the opening of the archives. But the files on political murders remained sealed. Only thanks to defectors like Nikolai Khokhlov and Oleg Kalugin did parts of the network become visible. Khokhlov, once part of a hit squad himself, warned his target \u2013 and was subsequently poisoned with thallium. Kalugin later publicly confessed to the operation against Markov. And then there is the Mitrokhin Archive \u2013 a treasure trove of evidence, smuggled out by a former KGB archivist. Inside: plans, names, targets. Only a fraction has ever been published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The names have changed \u2013 the FSB is not the KGB, but its DNA is identical. The methods are the same. The list lives on. Marsalek, Grozev, Dobrokhotov \u2013 the cases of recent years eerily resemble the past. They too are surveilled, robbed, intimidated. And the danger comes through detours \u2013 through Bulgarian networks, digital trails, assassination plans that read like pages from a Soviet screenplay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Consider Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned in 2006 in London with polonium-210 \u2013 an act a British court later attributed directly to Putin. Or Sergei Skripal, poisoned in 2018 in Salisbury with the military nerve agent Novichok \u2013 survived, but barely, together with his daughter. Or Alexei Navalny, whose 2020 attack once again exposed the deadly potential of Soviet-era chemical weapons: again Novichok, this time likely applied via clothing or a water bottle, by a special FSB unit \u2013 the so-called Center 34435.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oleg Kalugin, once part of the system himself, later said: \u201cThe KGB was never an intelligence service \u2013 it was a political weapon with a license to kill.\u201d And Christo Grozev of Bellingcat, one of the most threatened investigators of these structures, puts it succinctly: \u201cThe methods are the same. Only the technology has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Putin\u2019s Russia has never left the KGB school. It has perfected it \u2013 with new tools, but old logic. Every enemy of the system is a traitor. And every traitor is a target \u2013 whether in London, Berlin, or Los Angeles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The list is not complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It still breathes. It does not remain silent. It threatens \u2013 in every word, every accident, every \u201cnatural death\u201d that wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because Moscow sees. Moscow does not forget. Moscow does not forgive.<\/p>\n
Es beginnt nicht mit Skripal. Es endet nicht mit Nawalny. Wer glaubt, die politische Mordlust des Kreml sei eine Laune der Gegenwart, eine blo\u00dfe Pathologie Wladimir Putins, der irrt nicht \u2013 aber er irrt zu kurz. Denn die Geschichte jener Menschen, die Russland verlie\u00dfen, weil sie dem Staat entkommen wollten \u2013 nur um am Ende […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-x","category-world-news"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kaizen-blog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/KGB.webp?fit=994%2C500&ssl=1","author_info":{"display_name":"Rainer Hofmann","author_link":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/en\/author\/admin\/"},"yoast_head":"\n