“Garry Kasparov told us what it’s like to live in fear of being assassinated by Putin”
“Jim Edwards – Jan 23, 2018”
“In 2007, a former KGB general warned that he believed former chess champion Garry Kasparov was next on a list of Putin critics to be assassinated.
Putin is suspected of condoning the assassination of 14 people in the UK.
Kasparov has lived in exile in New York since 2013. “Look I’m an optimist and I think it will not last forever,” he told Business Insider.
Putin will be a major issue at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year because US President Donald Trump will address the meeting. Putin and Trump have a relationship that baffles outsiders.
Trump gets unusually positive coverage in the Kremlin-controlled Russian media, Kasparov says.”
“When I met Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess grandmaster and Putin critic, in Lisbon recently, he was sporting a large Band-Aid on his forehead. The wound had been sustained in the back of a taxi in London on the way from Heathrow Airport to a conference in Canary Wharf. With traffic crawling along, as it always does in London, Kasparov decided he didn’t need to wear a seatbelt.
Then the taxi driver slammed on the brakes.”
“I was just talking to my wife, talking to my mother, looking at my phone. And next thing I remember I’m just lying on the floor with my head covered in blood,” Kasparov says. “At first, I was screaming because — now it looks fine — but I was bleeding for more than an hour, so it was pretty nasty. Then I realised how lucky I was because I had my glasses on me, these glasses, one inch down, could be my eyes. One inch on the side could have been temple.”
Kasparov went flying across the back of the Hackney cab, and hit his forehead on the top side of the jump chair. After a couple of stitches at Newham University Hospital Urgent Care, he posted a picture of his injury on Twitter. It spawned a rash of jokes in response: “Lame assassination attempt, Putin is desperate,” that kind of thing, Kasparov says. “The best one was, ‘are you preparing to play Gorbachev at Halloween?’ I was lucky, but now I buckle up.”
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“Kasparov really is one of Putin’s potential assassination targets. In 2007, the former KGB general Oleg Kalugin told Foreign Policy magazine that Putin’s targeted killings would one day reach Kasparov. The year before, Kasparov had been one of the founders of Other Russia, a liberal, anti-Putin, opposition group that Russian authorities have repeatedly prevented from getting onto national election ballots.”
“Cryptically, Kalugin said: “People who knew them are all dead now because they were vocal, they were open. I am quiet. There is only one man who is vocal, and he may be in trouble: [Former] world chess champion [Garry] Kasparov. He has been very outspoken in his attacks on Putin, and I believe that he is probably next on the list.”
“Kasparov has twice been arrested by Russian police while demonstrating, and he was prevented from renting an official meeting hall for supporters of Other Russia in 2007, which is a pre-ballot legal requirement for any politician who wants to run against Putin.”
“Kasparov has lived in New York since 2013.
Business Insider asked him what it is like to never be able to go back home to Russia, where his mother still lives.
“Oh, back to Russia, I could go today! The problem is not going back to Russia – it’s leaving Russia again! I still have my Russian passport,” he says.”
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“Kasparov is no longer one of Putin’s most visible critics, but Putin still regularly assassinates inconvenient Russians. Fourteen people have been killed in the UK on Putin’s orders, according to an exhaustive investigation by BuzzFeed.”
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“As world leaders, billionaires, and oligarchs meet at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, again this year, Putin and Russia are suddenly one of the biggest issues at the conference.”
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Russia…the country itself is relatively poor..
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Russia’s influence in the West is limited in large part because European and US companies are afraid of doing business with Russia, precisely because of the ever-present threat of showing up on Putin’s radar.”
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“‘Putin is only 65. The bad news is, I don’t know when and how his rule ends. But the good news is, he also doesn’t know that!’
That means individual ex-patriot Russians in the West who disagree publically with Putin — like Kasparov — can never go home. Does Kasparov worry about being in danger from Putin?
“Would it help? I live in New York, so what else can I do? I live in New York, I don’t drink tea with strangers,” he says.
“Tea with strangers” is a reference to the death of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian FSB secret service agent who was fatally poisoned in 2006 when he met two Putin agents at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair who placed radioactive polonium-210 into his drink.
“I don’t travel to certain countries where I believe that my security could be in jeopardy. So, unfortunately, the list of the countries I have to avoid is growing,” Kasparov says.”
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“… there are places where Russian influence is really strong.”
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“And by the way, Trump kept repeating it, but that was the Kremlin’s narrative,” Kasparov says.”
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“‘America-bashing is 24/7 on all the Russian channels, on Kremlin-controlled media. Trump is an exception. Trump personally is not criticised.'”
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“Kasparov hopes that will stand as a teaching moment for ordinary Russians. The weakness and the strength of the American system is that being the US president is not the same as being the Russian president. In a democracy, a president is merely one powerful actor who must get the permission of two other branches of government in order to act.
Not like a dictator, in other words.”
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/garry-kasparov-fear-of-being-assassinated-by-putin-2018-1