18th February A simple twist of fate


Just how unlucky can one man be. That's the question that Vladimir Putin must be asking himself after yet another of his 'associates' suffered a tragic and unexplained death with news that Alexei Navalny suffered a fatal incident whilsy just out for a walk. It is fate, circumstance, coincidence or is it just unlucky to be a 'friend' of Vladimir Putin?

Alexander Litvinenko, a former buddy in the FSB security services died after accidentally ingesting some Polonium 210 that had mysteriosly made its way into a cup of tea in London in 2006. The journalist and pen pal Anna Politkovskaya found herself in the path of a stray bullet in her apartment building also in 2006 as did bridge partner Boris Nemstov in a 2015 episode of deja vu

Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer, touched a doorknob that had unexpectedly been smeared with Novichok, whilst Boris Berezovsk, inadvertantly slipped and hanged in the bathroom of his Ascot home. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former head of the Wagner paramilitary group, was on the other hand just unfortunate to find himself on board an aircraft with a faulty maintainance record.

Add to the list of tragic deaths, those of Badri Patarkatsishvili, a Georgian oligarch and business partner, and Nikolai Glushkov and the Yukos oil founder, Yuri Golubev, who were found dead in London and you can understand how Vladimir Putin might be thinking of himself as a bit of an unlucky charm.

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