In a world gone mad, the Russians are staying the course. “Go ahead radical Muslims,” the Russians say to themselves, “blow yourselves up in crowded markets. North Korea, threaten the world with your nuclear capabilities. But if anyone simply wants to kill a guy with a cup of tea, you all know our number.”
In a day and age when every regime on this planet is trying to think of the new, hip, chic way to kill their enemies, Russia is sticking to its long standing tradition of slipping their adversaries a poisonous roofie. And to be honest, in this deranged world we live in, that still means something to some people.
In the Russian governments most recent display of continuing to do the little things to get the job done, former Russian intelligence agent-turned-outspoken-Kremlin-critic Alexander Litvinenko died on Thursday evening in a London hospital after collapsing following lunch at a U.K. sushi restaurant. Hospital officials were first keyed off that Litvinenko may have been poisoned when he lost all his body hair, dropped seventeen pounds, and suffered two heart attacks following a half-cup of Miso soup. Hospital officials became more confident it was a poisoning when they learned their patient was Russian. At 11:30 p.m. London time, doctors finally declared with 100% certainty that the former Russian spy had in fact been poisoned to death. None of the toxicology reports had been returned yet, but at 11:25 p.m. someone told the doctors that he was a former Russian spy.
While outsiders around the world view this as a cruel and antiquated way of dealing with enemies of the state; the Russian government, Russian citizens and most notably the Russian dissidents, understand, and have even warmed up to the idea that this is the way things are handled. Most diners at Itsu Sushi last Wednesday recall Litvinenko calling his waiter over and saying, “This isn’t Miso soup, this tastes like polonium-210. Is that dog-ass Putin behind this? Oh he’s good. In my god-damned Miso soup? That’s classic. Son-of-a-bi….”
Its not just Russia, most of the Eastern European bloc countries have a weak spot for a nice poisoning. Who could forget the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, when opposition coalition party leader Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned mid-race only to go on and win the election. While the poison didn’t seriously threaten his life, he went from a handsome man in his young forties to a man covered in sores and blisters who appeared to have aged fifteen years in less than four days. And while the rest of the world looked on in horror, it was Yushchenko himself that brought humanity to the situation when he was quoted on the steps of the hospital following his release. “Hey man, this is just the way we do it around here. When I decided to run for president of Ukraine, I knew there was a solid chance of someone rubbing something on a piece of toast I was eating that would make my skin look like melting candle wax. It’s kind of funny when you think about it. I mean, look at my face, it looks crazy.” Yushchenko went on to say he was looking forward to a presidency in which he didn’t touch, eat or drink anything.
But what this story really allows us to do is applaud Russia, and all of its similar-minded brethren, on how far they have come in the poisoning game over the last few decades. Sure they look like the toast of the assassination world right now, but few can forget 1978, the year that became synonymous with the slap-stick debacle that was the Georgi Markov murder. Markov, a Bulgarian dissident, was one of the KGB’s top targets. So they devised a poison jelly that they would rub on the handle of his car door. Problem was he had a chauffeur that opened his car doors. Woooops. The KGB then decided they would take him out while he was vacationing on the coast of Italy. The plan was to have an agent “bump into Markov on the beach, smearing him with the poison jelly.” That got scrapped when it was discovered the old man hated the beach. Egg on Russian face. The KGB (or as the newspapers started calling them at that time, the Klowns who can’t Get this Bulgarian) finally got their man on their last ditch effort, shooting him with a ricin pellet as he crossed the Waterloo Bridge.
If you told the guys involved in the Markov hit that in 2006 Russia would be killing it’s challengers in sushi bars in international capital cities, they would most certainly have a good laugh. Except Markov. When he got hit with the ricin pellet, his tongue grew to four times its natural size and his eyes bled out of his head.
