Mokroye Delo (wet affairs)
Putin said in 2010, “Traitors will kick the bucket, trust me. These people betrayed their friends, their brothers-in-arms. Whatever they got in exchange for it, those 30 pieces of silver they were given, they will choke on them.” An FSB “special directive" obtained by British intelligence dating back to 1993 authorizes "elimination outside of the Russian Federation…of individuals who have left Russia illegally [and are] wanted by federal law enforcement.” The principle of executing Russia’s enemies overseas was enshrined in law in March 2006, when the Duma passed legislation on "counteracting terrorism," allowing state agencies the power to kill "terrorists" abroad.
The NKVD used the terms mokroye delo (wet work, or wet affair) and chornaya rabota (black work) to describe executions and assassinations. ode. To consolidate their rule, the Soviets have supplied terror tactics on a massive scale inside the Soviet Union, killing untold millions of people. Later the KGB used mokroye delo for foreign assassinations. In the 1930s the NKVD’s Administration for Special Tasks assassinated a number of enemies abroad. Those killed include Ukrainian and Russian nationalists, two leaders of the Russian émigré community in Paris, and Leon Trotsky. At least one American, Juliette Poyntz, was kidnapped in New York and then murdered for political deviation.
These operations were reported to have been handled by the KGB Spetsbureau 13, colorfully known as the "Department of wet affairs" (Otdel mokrykh del). After the Great Patriotic War, Joseph Stalin ordered the assassination of Josef Tito. The Yugoslav upstart became a major villain almost at Trotsky's level in Stalin's personal psychodrama. Stalin planned to employ the same methods which had silenced Trotsky - propaganda, intimidation, and assassination. Fittingly, he had admonished Tito with the warning: "We think the political career of Trotsky is quite instructive." Stalin confidently informed Khrushchev, "I will shake my little finger and there will be no more Tito."
The KGB continued to plan assassinations into the late 1950s. Two leading Russian émigrés, Lev Rebet and Stefan Bandera, were killed in West Germany. Bogdan Stashinskiy, the assassin of Bandera, was personally decorated by KGB Chair Aleksandr Shelepin. Plans for further assassinations were disrupted when Stashinskiy and Nikolay Khokhlov, who had been selected for assassination missions abroad, defected to the West. Stashinskiy and Khokhlov revealed details about the scope of the KGB’s plans in books and media interviews. Some soruces report that embarrassed by the defections, the KGB shut down the organization responsible for assassinations, but this seems not to have been the case. A further blow to plans for further political violence was the defection of Oleg Lyalin in 1971.
Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 remains one of the most horrifying -- and hotly debated -- crimes in American history. Because Oswald had briefly defected to the Soviet Union, some historians allege he was a Soviet stooge.
Although some attacks are well known, for example, the Bulgarian umbrella assassination of Georgi Markov in London, most received little publicity. The case of Romanian broadcaster Emil Georgescu is an example. Georgescu and his wife endured multiple attempts and threats on his life, including automobile “accidents” and a knife attack. Abo Fatalibey, found murdered under a couch in his apartment, was not so fortunate.
In Soviet-style assassinations, with reference to completed and attempted killings, the KGB used people indigenous to the area of operations as surrogates to mask the KGB's role. Its murders involve the killing of the victim and the elimination of the hired assassin. Specific instances of this tactic included the use of the Bulgarian secret police in the attempt to assassinate the Pope and the assassination of the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs. Propaganda cover-ups and disinformation were also tactics in masking Soviet-sponsored assassinations. It is hardly surprising that professional secret services such as the KGB covered their tracks extremely carefully on any involvement with international terrorism.
After the Cold War, within the FSB the Department for the the Investigation and Prevention of Organised Crime, known as URPO, was a secret unit. Its offices, for example, were not situated at the ‘Lubyanka’, the main FSB headquarters. URPO members, were tasked with special operations, which were on the borderline of legality. Alexander Litvinenko worked at URPO, the top secret department whose role was, “killing political and high business men without verdict".
In Russia the public & private sectors are difficult to separate, and elements of both are involved in or control illicit activities - for such individuals and entities the best way to consolidate their position and prevent too many queries is to remove those who could cause them difficulties - like prying journalists. Eliminating other Russians is relatively easy when the state itself is involved (or at least there is the suspicion that it is), even if it simply by a deliberately inconclusive investigation or bureaucratic indifference. Russia has long been considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. According to the New-York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, Anna Politkovskaya - killed in 2006 - was at least the 43rd journalist killed for her work in Russia since 1993. Most of the murder cases remain unsolved. The assassinations are meant to send a message. They are political killings by the Russian intelligence services.”
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