Our President's Hero Rubs Out Another One...

[Lord Jim]

But that's okay because American soldiers have killed a lot of people too...

Hours Before He Died, a Putin Critic Said He Was a Target

KIEV, Ukraine — A former Russian lawmaker who fled to Ukraine last year was gunned down on a sidewalk in Kiev on Thursday morning, the latest in a string of politically hued murders of critics of the Russian government abroad, going back more than a decade.

The killing coincided with a fire and explosion at a gigantic Ukrainian Army ammunition depot in the country’s east that the authorities blamed on Russia, suggesting an escalation of Russian special operations inside Ukraine.

Ukraine’s president, Petro O. Poroshenko, said it was “no accident” that the killing of the lawmaker, Denis N. Voronenkov, occurred at the same time as the ammunition depot explosion. Ukraine’s military said a drone may have touched off the blast, near the city of Kharkiv, sending tank shells firing in all directions and forcing the evacuation of 20,000 people.

Though the Kiev police said it was too early to determine a motive in the killing, Mr. Poroshenko blamed the Russian government for “an act of state terrorism.”

Mr. Voronenkov was a member of the Russian Parliament before defecting to Ukraine last year with his wife, Maria Maksakova, a fellow Russian politician and a Bolshoi opera singer, saying they were escaping political prosecution.

In Kiev, the couple had kept a high profile, speaking out frequently against Russian policy in Ukraine. But the Russian authorities accused them of corruption and said they had left to avoid prosecution.

In Ukraine, Mr. Voronenkov had promised to testify for the prosecution in a criminal case against Ukraine’s former Russia-aligned president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, and to provide an insider’s information about Russian government deliberations and actions during the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

In his statement, Mr. Poroshenko called Mr. Voronenkov “one of the main witnesses of Russian aggression against Ukraine.”

For a contract murder, a common occurrence in former Soviet countries usually executed with precision, the killing in Kiev was unusually bloody and chaotic.[Undoubtedly to send the message, "we will take you out anywhere any time"]
The shooting occurred just as Mr. Voronenkov was walking to an upscale Kiev hotel, Premier Palace. The assassin opened fire with what the police said was a TT pistol, a Soviet-era design, and Mr. Voronenkov’s bodyguard fired back.

In total, the police say, the two fired at least 20 shots a few yards apart, leaving spots of blood and shell casings scattered around the sidewalk. Hours later, the body of Mr. Voronenkov, his tan dress shoes still protruding from a black tarpaulin, remained on the spot as the police investigated.

Mr. Voronenkov was hit four times and died at the scene, according to Yuri Lutsenko, Ukraine’s prosecutor general. The bodyguard was shot in the chest but survived. The assassin was captured after suffering a head wound, but later died at a hospital.

Mr. Lutsenko said Mr. Voronenkov could have been killed to prevent the embarrassing court testimony against Mr. Yanukovych, [Paul Manafort's old boss] who is being tried in absentia, or because Mr. Voronenkov knew details about money laundering schemes used by the Federal Security Service, the main successor agency to the K.G.B.[Gee, it might have been very useful to have this guy interviewed by FBI investigators looking in to the Trump-Russia connections...oh well...]

“This was the demonstrative murder of a witness, common for the Kremlin,” Mr. Lutsenko said.

Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker, said in an interview that he and Mr. Voronenkov had discussed opening a nongovernment group in Kiev to study Russian corruption. “He knew everything about everybody” in Russia, Mr. Gerashchenko said.

Mr. Voronenkov had worked as a prosecutor in Russia before joining Parliament and socialized with close aides to President Vladimir V. Putin. Vladislav Surkov, a senior political adviser to Mr. Putin, had attended Mr. Voronenkov’s wedding.

The brazen daytime assassination was chosen, Mr. Gerashchenko said, because “they want to show that anybody who wants to run away from Russia will be liquidated at any cost.”

In Russia, Mr. Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri S. Peskov, denied any Russian involvement. “We consider any accusations of the notorious Russian trace to be absurd,” he said.

Mr. Voronenkov’s former colleagues in the Russian Parliament suggested a more elaborate theory. Two used the phrase “sacred sacrifice,” which in the Russian political world means the murder of an ally with the aim of pinning the blame on an enemy. [I expect Trump will say he buys that explanation; if he says anything]

Contract killings in Russia are often carried out with a theatrical flourish or significant timing, to amplify the message. When the Russian opposition leader Boris Y. Nemtsov was shot to death in 2015, his body fell on the sidewalk of a bridge with the red brick walls of the Kremlin and St. Basil’s Cathedral, symbols of the Russian state, as a backdrop.

Mr. Voronenkov knew he was a target for assassination, according to multiple interviews he gave in the weeks before his death. In the last, in Gordon, a Ukrainian news site, posted at 10 a.m., about an hour and a half before the murder, Mr. Voronenkov said he might be “killed like Bandera,” a reference to the K.G.B.’s poisoning of Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist leader, in Munich, Germany, in 1959.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/worl ... raine.html

[BoSoxGal]

I've been watching Rachel Maddow's presentation of all the Russian stuff the past few weeks, and it's just making me so angry that #45 is so cozy with and defensive about Putin.

Putin is a Godfather, and Russia is in the grasp of organized crime - it's nothing less than that.

[RayThom]

... Putin is a Godfather, and Russia is in the grasp of organized crime - it's nothing less than that.

And Lord Dampnut is a Fredo:
"It ain't the way I wanted it! I can handle things! I'm smart! Not like everybody says... like dumb... I'm smart and I want respect!"

[dales]

Drumph better hope that he isn't invited to go fishing at Lake Tahoe.

[Lord Jim]

One of the things I've thought would be key to the Trump-Russian investigation, if it is to really lead to something substantive, would be to bring in Russian defectors who could bring some additional information and evidence to the table...

A guy with intimate knowledge of the Russian oligarch money laundering schemes would certainly have been very useful in that regard...

Putin had a lot of reasons to have this guy offed, but it's not unreasonable to think that one of them might have been that he had info about Russian oligarchic money being used to buy Trump properties, invest in Trump businesses, or provide loans to Trump...

[rubato]

Manafort is a key link and the reason Reagan sucked ass to Jonas Savimbi.


The GOP have never changed their spots.


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

LMAO!!!

[rubato]

In my day the facts and the truth matter.

Reagan sucked ass to Jonas Savimbi, Roberto D'Aubuisson, and Augusto Pinochet.

Reagan was the best friend that a brutal totalitarian dictator ever had.



yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

In my day the facts and the truth matter.

ROTFLMAO!!!!!

Yeah right...



That's double hilarity...

You've had all that crap deconstructed for you before here rube...

Go do an advanced search and look it up...

I'm not going to waste my time reposting it again just for the benefit of an idiot who has the honesty and knowledge retention span of Donald Trump...

ETA:

Are you PWI again rube?

You know that never ends well...

[rubato]

Reagan sucked ass to Savimbi, D'Aubuisson, and Pinochet. And others as well.

And you have never been able to contradict any of it.


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

Oh dear, he's in his cups again...



And what pray tell Sweetness, would any of that bolloxed, cherry picked history have to do with the question of Trump's involvement with the Russians, and the assassination of Voronenkov?

[dales]

Lemme see, it's Saturday afternoon and rube's got a snootful.

Some things never change.

[Joe Guy]

[Lord Jim]

It's an old story...

He can't "best me" intellectually, and I kick his ass regularly on the facts on a wide variety of topics, so he's always trying to find some other trolling way to "get at me"...

("your wife used to have a meth habit", "Ronald Reagan was the worst president in history", etc....)

Believe me when I tell you that's not going to work...

[RayThom]

I expect Manafort will continue to deny any Russian connection at these upcoming hearings.

A possible bout with the "polonium-210 flu" will be a strong motivator for misinformation and silence.

Regardless, he might want to lay off having a cup of tea for awhile.

[Lord Jim]

I expect Manafort will continue to deny any Russian connection at these upcoming hearings.

Well, there's a limit to how much he can deny it, given what is publicly known...

This whole thing stinks to High Heaven...

We have a President Of The United States who may very well be a Russian agent of influence...

It's like a Tom Clancy novel come to life...

[Guinevere]

Wait until Flynn flips.

[Lord Jim]

Wait until Flynn flips.

Hopefully before that happens he won't meet with an unfortunate "accident"... or be found in his garage with the exhaust running in an apparent "suicide"...

[Guinevere]

If he has or is in the process of cutting a deal, hopefully the FBI either puts him in witness protection or gives him high level security and protection.

Rumors are that he isn't on the upcoming witness list for the House hearing because he has or is cutting a deal.

[RayThom]

And call out the border guard, The kingdom is crumbling!