Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, has dropped dead in New York of an apparent heart attack. That may not stand out as suspicious on its own, until one considers that he’s the third Russian diplomat to drop dead in the U.S. since the election season began – and the last two were also said to have died of heart attacks despite their skulls both being bashed in. Even more bizarrely, since Russia’s rigging of the election for Donald Trump exploded in scandal, a whopping nine Russian diplomats, businessmen and operatives have mysteriously dropped dead.

Back in January, a thirty-page dossier was leaked to the public which detailed all the supposed ways in which Russia was blackmailing Trump. Two weeks later Oleg Erovinkin, a former KGB General who had helped a former MI6 agent to assemble the dossier, turned up dead in the back of a car in Russia. While it hasn’t been proven, many have suspected that Vladimir Putin had Erovinkin taken out in revenge for Erovinkin’s complicity in exposing Putin’s blackmail scheme. But even more Russian bodies have been dropping.

Sergei Mikhailov, who was believed to have been a U.S. intelligence asset within the Russian government, was dragged out of a meeting in Russia with a bag over his head and is now almost certainly dead as well.

Back in January a Ukrainian businessman named Alex Oronov (who was not a Russian but who was born in the Soviet Union) arranged a meeting between Donald Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen and Russian mafia connected former Trump business associate Felix Sater, at the behest of Kremlin-controlled Ukrainian politician Andrey Artemenko. That meeting led to a Ukraine blackmail plan being delivered to Michael Flynn’s office just before he resigned. Shortly after the plot was outed in the New York Times, Oronov died. Artemenko went on to assert that Oronov died as a direct result of the plot being exposed in the media. And as it turned out, Oronov lived in one of Donald Trump’s buildings at the time of his death.

Mikhail Lesin, a former aide to Vladimir Putin, dropped dead in a Washington DC hotel room. Russia initially floated the claim that he died of a heart attack, but the coroner’s report revealed that his head had been bashed in. Sergey Krivov, an apparent Russian intel agent, was later found dead inside the Russian consulate in New York. Russia also claimed he’d had a heart attack. But in a familiar tune, the coroner later found evidence that his head had been bashed in.

Back in January, Russian diplomat Andrey Malanin was found dead in his Athens apartment. And we all recall the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, being murdered on live television. Additionally, Russian diplomat Petr Polshikov was found shot to death in Moscow. That adds up to nine bodies now having dropped since the Trump-Russia scandal exploded.

How many of these nine deaths of Russian diplomats and Russian operatives are connected to the Donald Trump-Russia scandal? That’s not yet clear. Some of the deaths, such as Erovinkin and Mikhailov, have much more strongly demonstrated connections to Trump-Russia than others. But bodies don’t generally drop like this without a reason. How many of his own people has Vladimir Putin now eliminated while trying to cover up the Trump-Russia scandal? Contribute to Palmer Report