12 March 2024 , 12:47
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A gang of Vladimir Putin's hitmen are accused of attempting to assassinate an exiled Russian dissident who survived a previous attempt to kill him 18 months ago.
Vladimir Osechkin revealed he was evacuated from his home by French police overnight, following a tip-off an execution squad had been dispatched by Russian secret services. They are said to have saved his life by transferring him to a safe house out of the reach of the professional assassins.
Osechkin, who is based in the French city of Biarritz, claimed he had cheated death days before Russian helicopter pilot Maxim Kuzminov was shot dead at a flat near Benidorm where he was living under a false identity after defecting.
Kuzminov, 28, was found riddled with bullets on February 13 after allegedly being tracked down by Chechen hitmen working for despot Putin to the residential complex where he was pretending to be a Ukrainian national called Igor Shevchenko.
Russian exiled dissident Vladimir Osechkin (AFP via Getty Images)Osechkin, founder of the human rights group Gulagu.net, told Spanish news website El Espanol: “The French authorities received information last month a group that had the mission of assassinating me had landed and they transferred me to a safe house for three weeks.
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“A few days afterwards Kuzminov was killed in Spain and they did away with Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison. I’ve decided to return to my home in Biarritz because I need to continue with my work and my mission.”
Osechkin was said to have been moved several hundred miles from Biarritz where he has been based since 2015 after French secret services received “credible information” his life was in danger. The exiled Russian dissident has pointed the finger at a shadowy Georgian mafia chief called Badri Koguashvili, known as Kutaissy, for the previous attempt on his life.
Captain Maksim Kuzminov, Pilot of a Russian military Mi-8 helicopter (NurPhoto via Getty Images)The 59-year-old professional criminal is said to have been flown to France from Athens in August 2022 before travelling to Spain to recruit the gang he allegedly hired to assassinate Osechkin. He said: “Russia’s Federal Security Service gained control of mafia bosses like Badri.
“If they refused to work for the Kremlin they were killed or arrested and jailed. In prison they were sodomised and the rapes filmed. Afterwards a prison officer would approach them and say ‘Hello, I’m your friend. I’ve got a pen drive here you might be interested in.’
“The mafia bosses ended up giving in to this blackmail because they lose their top dog spot if the images are published.” He added in an interview with the Spanish newspaper: “When I was leaked the information in 2022 that Badri planned to kill me, they told me he had arranged with other Russian crime bosses in Spain to end my life in France.
A view of Biarritz (Getty Images)“The idea was to come to Europe, organise my execution and return immediately to Russia through Montenegro or Istanbul.” At the time of the last alleged assassination attempt 18 months ago, Osechkin revealed he had been preparing dinner for his wife and children and fell to the floor with his loved ones before hiding in a safe room when he realised an assassin was outside.
He said: “I was carrying plates to set for the children and in my peripheral vision, on one of the terraces, I saw a red dot moving in my direction over the terrace railing. It was the most risky situation in my life.” Last month Osechkin said he believed Alexei Navalny was likely to have been killed with a punch to the heart after being exposed to freezing conditions for several hours to weaken him.
The 47-year-old opposition leader was buried on March 1, two weeks after his unexplained death, in Polar Wolf jail in the Russian Artic. Large crowds chanted ‘Russia without Putin’ ‘Putin is a killer’ and ‘Freedom for Political Prisoners’ as his coffin was lowered into a grave to the song My Way by Frank Sinatra at a moving open-casket funeral in Moscow.