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Comment by ProjectArcturis | Hacker News Reader

Russia has famously poisoned or otherwise assassinated countless dissidents and political opponents. But as far as I can tell, they have never openly killed a NATO citizen in a NATO country. That would be a substantial bridge to cross, and I expect there would need to be retribution for such an act.

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Two Czechs were killed when the Russians blew up a Czech ammunition depot in 2014. That's about as open as this is.

You could maybe argue it was incidental rather than intended, like the woman killed in the botched Salisbury poisoning, but it's a natural outcome of these kinds of plots.

Back when they were the USSR, their thinly-veiled proxies (such as [1]) murdered and blew things up in the West into the 1980s. The radical left and radical right were equal-opportunity puppets.

I have a pet conjecture that they might have actually murdered FDR too, though he was so frail that it probably only took a 'pat on the back' in Yalta [4] (unlike their first try on Navalny [2] and Yushchenko [3].) Unlucky for them, Truman ended up being a much tougher rival than FDR would have been, IMO.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexei_Navalny

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yushchenko

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference

I don’t know if this counts as “openly”, and he was naturalized, not native born, but Alexander Litvinenko was a British citizen poisoned in London.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko

Ah, I didn't realize Litvinenko had been naturalized.

Dawn Sturgess was a british civilian killed by russian nerve agent on british soil in a botched attempt to kill Sergei Skripal a russian/british dual national (spy/double agent).

Alexander Litvinenko was a russian/british citiizen and killed with polonium poisoning on british soil (journalist).

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