The truth behind Putin’s hit lists

If we are to believe the gossip, Vladimir Putin draws up death lists the way ordinary people jot down their shopping. And bang on schedule, as Joe Biden makes a point of labelling him a ‘killer,’ not one but two death lists materialise from parts unknown.

This weekend the Daily Mirror — not, it has to be said, usually a Kremlinologist’s ‘must-read’ — claimed that Putin is ‘now beside himself with rage’ and is drawing up lists of would-be victims, saying ‘we have long arms. No scum can hide from us.’ The quotes come from an unnamed office of Russia’s much-feared Federal Security Service (FSB), which is apparently planning how to execute Putin’s laundry list of kidnappings and murders.

Two of the alleged targets are key members of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s team: Vladimir Ashurkov, the director of his Foundation Against Corruption, now in asylum in London, and Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff, now in Lithuania.