With Prigozhin likely being latest victim, here's list of Putin's dead critics: Who's next?

Before and during the Russia-Ukraine war, many political opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin have met their untimely deaths over the years in a variety of ways; including falls from windows, food poisoning, physically impossible self-strangulation, and bodies found with head injuries, and bullet wounds.

The latest instance of this pattern occurred on Wednesday when Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the private mercenary Wagner Group, was reportedly on an aircraft that crashed, according to the Russian state media network TASS.

Many of Putin's rivals have reportedly survived murderous plots. Alexei Navalny, the most prominent opposition figure in Russia, was assassinated in Siberia in 2020 with a nerve weapon. He managed to live but is now behind bars, reported Yahoo news.

Sergei Skripal, a former double agent for Russia who now resides in England, was infamously poisoned in 2018 by an agent of military grade. According to the British authorities, it is "highly likely" that the Russian government was to blame.

Here are a few of the other well-known Russians who appear to have suffered the same fate as Prigozhin.

Pavel Antov

Putin's opponents have a peculiar tendency to tumble out of windows. As per a BBC report, Russian businessman and politician Pavel Antov died in December after falling from a hotel window in Rayagada, India, after criticising the war with Ukraine on WhatsApp.

Ravil Maganov

Additionally last year, Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Lukoil and an opponent of the invasion of Ukraine, passed away after falling out of a Moscow hospital window. However, due to an official statement by Lukoil, Maganov passed away in September 2022 "following a severe illness".

Denis Voronenkov

Denis Voronenkov, a former member of the Russian parliament who was a vocal opponent of Vladimir Putin, fled to Ukraine and was shot dead in Kyiv in 2017. When he was killed, Russia was accused of committing an "act of state terrorism" by Ukraine's then-President Petro Poroshenko. The Kremlin denied all the accusations.

Mikhail Lesin

Former Kremlin press secretary Mikhail Lesin was discovered dead from "blunt force trauma to the head" in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., in 2015. According to the Daily Beast, analysts believe that Lesin was murdered because he was negotiating a plea agreement with the FBI that would have revealed corruption among the Russian elite at the time when he was being investigated by the FBI for possible money laundering.

Boris Nemtsov

Boris Nemtsov was a political reformer who organised large-scale demonstrations against the 2011 parliamentary election results for which he had been detained numerous times. He was shot and killed in 2015 close to the Kremlin. Although Putin promised to "personally control" the inquiry, the perpetrator was never found.

Natalia Estemirova

Natalia Estemirova was abducted outside her home and murdered in the woods in 2009 while studying how brutally Russia was waging its war in the separatist republic of Chechnya. The top human rights court in Europe found in 2021 that the murder case was not adequately investigated by Russian authorities.

Alexander Litvinenko

Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence agent, passed away in 2006, about three weeks after consuming tea that had been tainted with the rare and powerful radioactive isotope polonium-210. He had been meeting with two Russian operatives at a hotel in London. Litvinenko had charged Putin with corruption before his departure from Russia for the UK.

Anna Politkovskaya

Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who accused Putin of establishing a police state, was assassinated in 2006 in front of her flat. The judge determined that the five men who were convicted of her murder had been hired to kill her for $150,000 by "a person unknown."

Viktor Yushchenko

Viktor Yushchenko, the head of the Ukrainian opposition, was poisoned with dioxin while running for president of Ukraine in 2004 against pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich. He underwent dozens of operations as a result of his face and body being disfigured.

Sergei Yushenkov

Sergei Yushenkov, a member of the Russian parliament, was fatally shot outside his residence in Moscow in 2003 just after he registered his Liberal Russia Organisation as a political party. According to reports, Yushenkov, a human rights activist, was compiling evidence to show that Putin's administration was responsible for the tragic apartment block explosion in 1999.