A ‘personal enemy’ of Vladimir Putin, who first revealed the dictator’s relationship with Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva, has died suddenly.
Grigory Nekhoroshev, 69, was editor-in-chief of a Russian newspaper which reported in 2008 that the Russian ruler planned to divorce his wife, Lyudmila Putina, and wed Kabaeva as an alternative.
Nekhoroshev died within the Latvian capital Riga, where he had lived in exile as a political refugee for 11 years.
Friends say he passed away at home within the Baltic NATO state after eating mushrooms he present in the yard of his home.
Though he was a mushroom aficionado, the mushrooms he collected turned out to be poisonous.
His friends described Nekhoroshev as having been ‘quite nervous’ while in Riga a few possible attack by assassins working for Putin.
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One other well-known Russian journalist based in Latvia, Bozhena Rynska, called his loss ‘incomprehensible’.
Igors Vatoļins, who saw Nekhoroshev shortly before he died, said the editor was ‘a not-old, not-ill person, filled with ideas and plans’.
He added: ‘Nekhoroshev was the primary to disclose the name of Putin’s common-law wife, rhythmic gymnastics champion Alina Kabaeva. Putin clearly didn’t forgive him for that.’
When the story ran in April 2008, owner Alexander Lebedev – a former KGB spy turned banker and entrepreneur – was forced to shut the newspaper Moskovsky Korrespondent.
The key services interrogated Nekhoroshev with threats, and initially, he went abroad before returning.
Putin responded to the story on Kabaeva – three deuces his junior – by deploring ‘those that with their snotty noses and erotic fantasies prowl into others’ lives’.
He and Kabaeva ultimately denied the report – despite the fact that the very fact of their relationship, which continues to at the present time, is now known to be accurate.
Putin has still not publicly acknowledged his relationship with Kabaeva, now 43, but they’re known to have two children, Ivan, 11, and Vladimir, seven.
While there is no such thing as a hard evidence up to now of foul play, multiple Putin enemies have died in suspicious circumstances.
Amongst these were two cases in 2006: investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead in her Moscow apartment constructing and ex-FSB operative Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned in London with radioactive polonium-210.
Oligarch Boris Berezovsky was found hanged in Britain in 2013, while opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was shot near the Kremlin in 2015.
Former Putin ‘chef’ and head of Wagner private army Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash in 2023.
The next yr, opposition politician Alexei Navalny was poisoned in a jail within the Russian Arctic.
Last week, artist Semyon Skrepetsky, 44, known for portraying the Kremlin leader as an absurd, bloodthirsty dictator, was shot dead in Poland.
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