Window or Tea

How Russia manages to keep its population compliant

If you’re relatively new to the issues related to Kremlin propaganda and how it’s affecting other countries (including the United States), I recommend reading some background posts I wrote that explains things in more detail along with links to other sites where you can read more to educate yourself.

There is a peculiar thing in Russia under Vladimir Putin where certain prominent Russians have suddenly died from either drinking poisoned tea or falling out of a window of a tall building or some other type of strange circumstances. Sometimes it happens in Russia while other times it has occurred in other countries. Here's a 60 Minutes story about this curious phenomenon.

The Wikipedia also has a page about it.

This phenomenon has been going on for years. Way back in 2006 a former officer with both the KGB and its successor FSB named Alexander Litvinenko was living his new life in London after he fled Russia in 2000 when he suddenly felt sick. On that day he had met two fellow Russian ex-KGB officers at a hotel bar then met an Italian officer and nuclear expert at a sushi restaurant. He was admitted to a hospital where tests showed that he had drank tea that was laced with polonium-210, a substance which was used in the making of early nuclear bombs. Litvinenko died soon afterwards.

In 2020 opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the Novochuk nerve agent. He was evacuated to a hospital in Berlin where his life was saved. After he recovered he flew back to Russia where he was promptly arrested on bogus charges and sent to prison, where he remained until he suddenly died earlier this year.

Ever since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 more prominent Russians have suddenly died. In late 2022 Kirill Stremousov, a Ukrainian who sided with Russia and became the deputy head of the Russian-occupied Kherson, died in a mysterious car accident (which looked like a bomb had ripped the vehicle in half) after he had a dispute with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu over the Russian military defeat in Kherson.

The following year Wagner Group co-founder and founder of the Internet Research Agency troll farm Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a mysterious plane crash on the two month anniversary of the day that Prigozhin made a coup attempt against Vladimir Putin that he ultimately called off.

The most recent example of this phenomenon is 39-year-old Russian ballet star Vladimir Shklyarov, who died last weekend after falling from the fifth floor of a building. His death is considered to be a major loss in the ballet world. Before his death he wrote this social media post expressing his opposition to his country's invasion of Ukraine, which is the sort of thing that makes you wonder whether Shklyarov was simply a klutz or if it was really a murder that was made to look like an accident.

By now so many Russians have died under mysterious circumstances that the question of “window or tea” have become a sick joke. Yet these sudden mysterious deaths continue for a reason—to send a message to Russians to not even THINK about opposing Vladimir Putin, especially when it comes to the war in Ukraine. Seeing a popular ballet star who was in the prime of his career like Vladimir Shklyarov suddenly die is enough for most Russians to keep their mouths shut if they want to avoid suffering the same fate.

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