美国国家公共电台 NPR The Curious Deaths Of Kremlin Critics

The Curious Deaths Of Kremlin Critics 

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And here's a mystery for you - a 44-year-old man died while jogging in suburban² England. Police pronounced it a heart attack, but the jogger was a Russian banker. He had fled Russia after helping³ expose tax fraud. And it turns out, there's more to it than just a heart attack. In his stomach were traces of a rare poisonous plant, so authorities decided⁴ they need to look into this. There will be a coroner's inquest into his death two weeks from now in England. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly has been curious about why opponents of the Kremlin seem to be dying at an unusual rate.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, BYLINE⁵: There is a long, dark history of people who cross the Kremlin, fall out of favor, then meet an untimely end. Trotsky - murdered with an ice ax in Mexico City. Georgi Markov - stabbed with a poison-tipped umbrella as he crossed London's Waterloo Bridge back in 1978. Fast forward to the Putin era, and the weapons grow stranger still, like the radioactive tea served to ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko at a London hotel in 2006.

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ROBERT OWEN: Mr. Litvinenko ingested the fatal dose whilst drinking tea from a teapot contaminated with polonium-210.

KELLY: That's Judge Robert Owen. He ran the official British inquiry⁶ into Litvinenko's murder, and he concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself probably approved the murder, a finding that was no surprise to Guardian⁷ newspaper correspondent Luke Harding.

LUKE HARDING: Vladimir Putin's enemies have this uncanny habit of being killed.

KELLY: Harding grew so intrigued⁸ by this uncanny habit that he wrote a book about Litvinenko and other cases, including the one now making headlines in Britain - the death of Alexander Parapilichny, Russian banker turned whistleblower found crumpled⁹ on the road outside his home in Surrey, England.

HARDING: The local police were called out. They couldn't find a cause of death. They decided that there was no foul¹⁰ play, and it was just a kind of unexplained case that sometimes happens.

KELLY: Now that was all four years ago. But here's where the story gets weird¹¹. A botanist¹² at the Royal Botanic Gardens was called in just last year to conduct more tests. What she found caused a sensation, says Luke Harding - traces of Gelsemium, a lethal¹³ fern favored by Chinese and Russian assassins.

HARDING: We're talking about suburban England, and a fern that comes from the Himalayas being used. It's not growing in your or my back garden. And I think - and the calculation was that it would never be discovered, that this would just be simply an unexplained murder and the whole thing would go away.

KELLY: The whole thing has not gone away. The long-delayed inquest opens next month with the botanist expected to appear as star witness. Now, there's no hard evidence connecting Perepilichny's death to Moscow; same with one more case worth mentioning, one that hits closer to home for Americans - Mikhail Lesin, 57 years old, Kremlin insider, close to Putin, until the two men fell out. Last fall, Lesin was found dead in a hotel here in Washington.

In fact, this hotel. I'm looking up at eight stories of gray brick right on Dupont Circle in the middle of D.C. This is where Lesin was found the morning of November 5 last year, and the initial reports were that he had died of a heart attack. But then, this spring, back in March, the chief medical examiner and D.C. police put out a statement, which I've got right here. Let me read it. It says (reading) cause of death - blunt force injuries of the head. Other contributing causes - blunt force injuries of the neck, torso, upper extremities¹⁴, lower extremities.

In other words, his entire body...

Which raises the question, who might have wanted Lesin dead? Evelyn Farkas, who served until recently as the top Russia official at the Pentagon, says she's never seen proof that the Kremlin is ordering hits on people, but...

EVELYN FARKAS: The fact that someone like Mikhail Lesin all of a sudden shows up dead in a Dupont Circle hotel to me is fishy¹⁵.

KELLY: And Farkas says there's no question the Kremlin has helped create a climate where such tactics are possible. This is a charge that Russia protests. The Kremlin denies links to any of the recent deaths. In Moscow this summer, I put the point to Vyacheslav Trubnikov. He's former director of the SVR, Russia's answer to the CIA. We met for drinks in a hotel near Red Square. And I asked...

Are assassinations¹⁷ being used as a tool by Russian security services?

VYACHESLAV TRUBNIKOV: No. I'm absolutely sure. First of all, it goes against the law. Russian intelligence, counterintelligence, to use such methods.

KELLY: What if...

I press Trubnikov. What if they were ordered to by Putin himself?

TRUBNIKOV: No, it's impossible. It's a criminal act.

MARK KELTON: Well, yes, it is against the law in a criminal act. But who's going to hold those who are responsible to the law?

KELLY: That's Mark Kelton, former CIA station chief in Moscow.

KELTON: The Russian services have a long history of eliminating or trying to hunt down people who are seen as traitors¹⁸.

KELLY: Kelton sat down with me for his first extended interview since retiring after 34 years at the CIA. Over coffee in his kitchen, we ticked through each of these cases - Litvinenko, Perepilichny, Lesin and others - from politicians to journalists who have died, as Kelton puts it, in more than questionable¹⁹ circumstances. Kelton concedes that in very few of them is there concrete evidence linking back to Moscow. But he argues, on a certain level, that's beside the point.

KELTON: Whether people are dying, all of them, at the hands of the Russian state or not, the belief, I think, amongst the opposition²⁰ is that they could be dying at the hands of the Russian state. So the guy falling dead of a attack, maybe it's just a heart attack. Maybe it isn't.

KELLY: Mark Kelton points to a line from the 1939 espionage²¹ novel - "A Coffin²² For Dimitrios." The line goes like this (reading) the important thing to know about an assassination¹⁶ is not who fired the shot but who paid for the bullet.

Mary Louise Kelly, NPR News.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 suburban   

adj.城郊的，在郊区的

参考例句：

• Suburban shopping centers were springing up all over America. 效区的商业中心在美国如雨后春笋般地兴起。
• There's a lot of good things about suburban living.郊区生活是有许多优点。

3 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

4 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 inquiry   

n.打听，询问，调查，查问

参考例句：

• Many parents have been pressing for an inquiry into the problem.许多家长迫切要求调查这个问题。
• The field of inquiry has narrowed down to five persons.调查的范围已经缩小到只剩5个人了。

7 guardian   

n.监护人；守卫者，保护者

参考例句：

• The form must be signed by the child's parents or guardian. 这张表格须由孩子的家长或监护人签字。
• The press is a guardian of the public weal. 报刊是公共福利的卫护者。

8 intrigued   

adj.好奇的，被迷住了的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的过去式)；激起…的兴趣或好奇心；“intrigue”的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• You've really intrigued me—tell me more! 你说的真有意思—再给我讲一些吧！
• He was intrigued by her story. 他被她的故事迷住了。

9 crumpled   

adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• She crumpled the letter up into a ball and threw it on the fire. 她把那封信揉成一团扔进了火里。
• She flattened out the crumpled letter on the desk. 她在写字台上把皱巴巴的信展平。

10 foul   

adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规

参考例句：

• Take off those foul clothes and let me wash them.脱下那些脏衣服让我洗一洗。
• What a foul day it is!多么恶劣的天气！

11 weird   

adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的

参考例句：

• From his weird behaviour,he seems a bit of an oddity.从他不寻常的行为看来，他好像有点怪。
• His weird clothes really gas me.他的怪衣裳简直笑死人。

12 botanist   

n.植物学家

参考例句：

• The botanist introduced a new species of plant to the region.那位植物学家向该地区引入了一种新植物。
• I had never talked with a botanist before,and I found him fascinating.我从没有接触过植物学那一类的学者，我觉得他说话极有吸引力。

13 lethal   

adj.致死的；毁灭性的

参考例句：

• A hammer can be a lethal weapon.铁锤可以是致命的武器。
• She took a lethal amount of poison and died.她服了致命剂量的毒药死了。

14 extremities   

n.端点( extremity的名词复数 )；尽头；手和足；极窘迫的境地

参考例句：

• She was most noticeable, I thought, in respect of her extremities. 我觉得她那副穷极可怜的样子实在太惹人注目。 来自辞典例句
• Winters may be quite cool at the northwestern extremities. 西北边区的冬天也可能会相当凉。 来自辞典例句

15 fishy   

adj. 值得怀疑的

参考例句：

• It all sounds very fishy to me.所有这些在我听起来都很可疑。
• There was definitely something fishy going on.肯定当时有可疑的事情在进行中。

16 assassination   

n.暗杀；暗杀事件

参考例句：

• The assassination of the president brought matters to a head.总统遭暗杀使事态到了严重关头。
• Lincoln's assassination in 1865 shocked the whole nation.1865年，林肯遇刺事件震惊全美国。

17 assassinations   

n.暗杀( assassination的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Most anarchist assassinations were bungled because of haste or spontaneity, in his view. 在他看来，无政府主义者搞的许多刺杀都没成功就是因为匆忙和自发行动。 来自辞典例句
• Assassinations by Israelis of alleged terrorists habitually kill nearby women and children. 在以色列，自称恐怖分子的炸弹自杀者杀害靠近自己的以色列妇女和儿童。 来自互联网

18 traitors   

卖国贼( traitor的名词复数 )； 叛徒； 背叛者； 背信弃义的人

参考例句：

• Traitors are held in infamy. 叛徒为人所不齿。
• Traitors have always been treated with contempt. 叛徒永被人们唾弃。

19 questionable   

adj.可疑的，有问题的

参考例句：

• There are still a few questionable points in the case.这个案件还有几个疑点。
• Your argument is based on a set of questionable assumptions.你的论证建立在一套有问题的假设上。

20 opposition   

n.反对，敌对

参考例句：

• The party leader is facing opposition in his own backyard.该党领袖在自己的党內遇到了反对。
• The police tried to break down the prisoner's opposition.警察设法制住了那个囚犯的反抗。

21 espionage   

n.间谍行为，谍报活动

参考例句：

• The authorities have arrested several people suspected of espionage.官方已经逮捕了几个涉嫌从事间谍活动的人。
• Neither was there any hint of espionage in Hanley's early life.汉利的早期生活也毫无进行间谍活动的迹象。

22 coffin   

n.棺材，灵柩

参考例句：

• When one's coffin is covered,all discussion about him can be settled.盖棺论定。
• The coffin was placed in the grave.那口棺材已安放到坟墓里去了。