Inside twisted Putin’s bloody rise to power after the tyrant “had 3 Russian MPs killed” when they suspected him of a bombing

Vladimir Putin’s nearly quarter-century in power in Russia was marked by brutality, subterfuge and ruthlessness.

And Vlad’s evil began before he was even in charge when he allegedly played a role in the deaths of three MPs who were investigating him.

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In 1999, a shocking series of terrorist attacks shook Russia.

Between September 4 and 16, explosions hit four blocks of flats in the cities of Moscow, Buynaksk and Volgodonsk.

A total of 307 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured as panic spread across the country.

The attacks were blamed on terrorists from the breakaway region of Chechnya, which combined with the invasion of Dagestan triggered the Second Chechen War.

Putin, who was Russia’s prime minister at the time, was praised for his handling of the crisis, which boosted his popularity in the crucial months leading up to the presidential election that put him in power.

But a number of experts who have studied the attacks believe they were in fact coordinated by Russian state security services intent on putting Putin in power.

Independent investigations into the bombings were almost impossible due to obstruction by the Russian government.

One insider who believed Putin was at least independently behind the attacks was Alexander Litvinenko.

The former FSB agent defected to Britain and made a report on the bombings.

Speaking to The Sun Online, Yuri Felshtinsky, a friend of the late Alexander Litvinenko, explained how they dug into Putin’s shadowy FSB connections.

Yuri, co-author of Blowing up Russia’s Litvinenko, said that following their investigation, they were pressured by Russian authorities.

He said: “As a result, Litvinenko had to flee Russia, technically he was a defector. We finished our work in London, it was published in 2001 and became a huge hit.”

Yuri continued: “It was published by the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, for which Anna Politkovskaya worked.

“When we tried to publish the book in Russia, a court order was issued that prohibited the publication of the book.

“It was the first assignment of this kind since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago in the 1970s.”

Both [Yushenkov and Golovyov] were gunned down. After that, no one investigated the attacks

Yuri FelshtinskyCo-authored with Blowing up Russia’s Alexander Litvinenko

The couple later produced a documentary based on the book.

That was before Putin curtailed freedom of speech and the free press to the extent that he would in later years.

“The Russian parliament tried to investigate the terrorist attacks,” Yuri added. “It was the Russian security services that were behind the attacks that sparked the Second Chechen War.”

Even an official investigation found no guilt that could be attributed to the Chechen terrorists.

“After the Russian government and even the FSB conducted an official investigation, not a single Chechen was found involved,” Yuri said.

Several Russian lawmakers have shown special interest in investigating the attacks, Yuri said.

One of them was Yuri Shchekochikhin, who was in charge of the security committee and was also deputy head of the independent media company Novaya Gazeta.

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Yuri described his meeting with Mr. Shchekochikhin.

He said: “I gave him the manuscript of the book in the summer of 2001 in Zagreb, Croatia.

Shchekochikhin died suddenly on July 3, 2003 from a mysterious illness.

The time of his death came just days before he was due to fly to America to meet with FBI investigators.

An investigation by Novaya Gazeta found that his medical documents were either “lost” or intentionally destroyed by Russian authorities.

The suspected cause of death was radiation poisoning, a nearly identical method of attack as that used on Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.

As Yuri said: “He was poisoned with something similar to what was done against Litvinenko.

“It happened in Russia, so there was a lot less investigation than into Litvinenko’s death.”

He added: “He died after two weeks in a coma, it was a horrible death.”

Around the same time, two other MPs were killed.

Sergei Yushenkov and Vladimir Golovlev were both investigating the terrorist attacks at the time of their deaths.

Yushenkov was assassinated on April 17, 2003, just hours after registering his political party to contest the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Shortly before his death, he reportedly received threats from Aleksander Mikhailov, a senior FSB general.

He was linked to exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who provided much of the funding for his political party before the two fell out.

After his death, Berezovsky told the Kommersant newspaper: “Whatever my disagreements with Sergei may have been, he is still my comrade. I’m lost for words.”

Golovlev was found shot dead in a wooded area near his home in Moscow in August 2002 while walking his dog.

At the time, he was being investigated for corruption.

Some suspected he was killed because of his dealings, but Yuri believes he knows where to blame for the death.

He said: “Both [Yushenkov and Golovyov] were gunned down. After that, no one investigated the attacks.”

Putin won a landslide victory in Russia’s presidential election in 2000, just eight months after he was thrust into the national limelight by his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.

At 47, he was the youngest person to rule Russia since Stalin came to power in the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

Despite his controversial past as an officer in the feared Soviet secret police, the KGB, he won over most Russians with his tough stance on law and order.

The collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s resulted in nearly a decade of chaos and economic instability, and many Russians yearned for a strong leader.

But even then he was denounced by his critics as a warmonger because of his brutal warfare in Chechnya.

Yuri says the bloody war in Ukraine has shattered all illusions about Putin’s ability to kill his own citizens.

“The war destroyed the last people who, when in doubt, agreed with Putin [over coordinating the apartment bombings]”, he said. “This shows that the 1999 attacks were definitely carried out by the FSB.”

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