Anna Politkovskaya, award-winning journalist, Putin foe, author of, inter alia, Putin's Russia, critic of Putin's war on Chechnya,

shot dead, once point blank in the head, in the elevator of her apartment building on October 7, 2006, Vladimir Putin's birthday.

According to Wikipedia:

"Her murder was widely perceived as a contract killing..."--I'm going to try to remember that characterization --"Russia's Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika...met with Putin and FSB director Nikolai Patrushev, during which he made an official announcement:

"Our investigation has led us to conclude that only people living abroad could be interested in killing Politkovskaya...Forces interested in de-stabilising the country,--Same there--in stoking crisis...in discrediting the national leadership, provoking external pressure on the country, could be interested in this crime. Anna Politkovskaya knew who ordered her killing. She met him more than once."

I do not know if Anna ever met Putin.

Alexander Litvinenko, ex-KGB agent and defector, Putin critic,

 assassinated by Putin loyalists by plutonium poisoning in London, England, November 23, 2006.

Stanislav Markelov, human rights lawyer who represented Anna Politkovskaya,

shot in the head outside the Kremlin, January 19, 2009 by a "Russian nationalist extremist." According to President Obama that should just be "extremist."

Natalya Estemirova, human rights activist, winner of numerous awards--including the Anna Politkovskaya award-- for her reporting on Putin's war on Chechnya,

 abducted and murdered as she left her home in Grozny July 15, 2009 by "unknown persons."

Alexei Devotchenko, actor, Putin critic--"I've had enough of all this tsar-state stuff, with its lies, its cover-ups, its legalised theft, its bribe-taking and its other triumphs."--

--the circumstances of Alexei's demise on November 5, 2014 are uncertain. ABC News:

"Russian investigators originally told reporters his death "was of a criminal nature," but they later said they found he cut his hand and hit his head after drinking too much, and bled out, according to The Telegraph."

The Independent:

"Some Russian news outlets said he was discovered in a pool of blood in his apartment, while others claimed he was found inside his home.

The online tabloid Lifenews reported that Mr Devotchenko hit a glass cabinet with his hands and died of blood loss after sustaining severe cuts in the incident. It said empty bottles of whiskey and packets of phenazepam, a legal Russian drug prescribed to treat epilepsy, were discovered near his body.

(You know: Wasn't alcohol poisoning the initial account given of Neil Heywood's death in China? Gotta stay away from the booze.)

Meanwhile, one law enforcement source reportedly told Russian news agencies: 'There is reason to suppose that the artist's death is of a criminal character.'"

This nettlesome ambiguity flummoxes Russian police to this day. No arrests.

Boris Nemtsov, ex-First Deputy Prime Minister, Putin opponent, "a bridge between Russia and Ukraine,"

shot in the back four times while walking with a Ukrainian woman on Moskvoretsky Bridge, February 27, 2015.

The Kremlin is very pretty, isn't it? So dramatic at night.