On Tuesday, this Putin critic feared he would never be forgiven. On Thursday, he was shot in the head
Denis Voronenkov worried about Russian retaliation in a chilling interview, less than 48 hours before his street assassination in Kiev
Denis Voronenkov, a former Russian member of parliament and harsh critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had much to worry about.
On Tuesday evening, he said in an interview that he feared for his life, citing anonymous threats against him and his wife, Maria Maksakova, a former member of the United Russia party founded by Putin, with whom he fled to Kiev last year. After receiving Ukrainian citizenship in December, he had testified in the case against Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russia former Ukrainian leader who was toppled in a 2014 revolution after dozens of protestors were killed.
“The system has lost its mind,” Voronenkov said of his homeland. “They say we are traitors in Russia. And I say, ‘Who did we betray?’ I gave testimony against the citizen of another country who was president, who fled his country, created a bloodbath, betrayed his country.”
For our personal safety, we can’t let them know where we are
As he left the interview, he added: “It’s hard to imagine we will be forgiven.”
On Thursday, Voronenkov was gunned down in downtown Kiev in an apparent contract killing.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the murder an act of state terrorism by Russia.
A suspected assailant was arrested after Voronenkov was shot twice in the head, dying on the spot. The suspect’s identity or other details were not immediately made public. In Moscow, a Kremlin spokesman denied Russian involvement in the killing.
Before fleeing Russia, Voronenkov was the target of a fraud investigation. He was formally charged in February after a high-profile interview where he compared the patriotic fervour in Russia to Nazi Germany.
Voronenkov said the charges against him over a corporate raiding case had been fabricated by his political enemies.
On Tuesday, he called the Russian state under Putin “totalitarian,” said he had always opposed Russia’s annexation of Crimea despite having voted for it in 2014 in parliament. He said he planned to live in Kiev for the foreseeable future, where he had friends in the pro-Western bureaucracy from his time in the Soviet army.
He could likely return to Russia only after Putin’s death, he said.
In the three years since Ukraine’s revolution, Kiev has become something of a meeting point for Russian opponents of the Kremlin. The city has taken on the role of a modern Casablanca just 800km southwest of Moscow, where members of Russia’s liberal, leftist and nationalist opposition - as well as those seeking to escape a tightly controlled political landscape in Moscow - have congregated in relative safety.
Voronenkov’s death, if tied to a Kremlin order, indicates that Kiev has become a more dangerous place for them.
“For our personal safety, we can’t let them know where we are,” he said toward the end of the hour-long interview. “It’s a totally amoral system and in its anger it may go to extreme measures. There’s been a demonisation of us. It’s hard to say what will happen.”
In the months before his death, there had been attempts to hack his Twitter account and his wife’s email account. He had sought out security contractors to try to safeguard his devices and there were rumors he was under surveillance.
On Thursday, the gunman opened fire at Voronenkov and his bodyguard outside of the hotel, where he was on his way to meet another former Russian member of parliament in exile, Ilya Ponomarev. Voronenkov’s bodyguard, who opened fire at the assailant, was injured.
Voronenkov and Maksakova’s defection had aroused criticism both in Russia and among Ukrainian circles on the right, who questioned whether the former Russian parliament members were seeking to curry favour in their adopted home by suddenly and aggressively criticising Putin after benefiting under his regime.
