Photo Credit: Boris Vishnevsky (Facebook)

According to a new report...

Russian opposition activist Konstantin Sinitsyn has been found dead of head injuries in the entranceway to his St. Petersburg apartment building. St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly lawmaker Boris Vishnevsky posted the news on February 2, although the incident apparently happened on January 26. Vishnevsky said Sinitsyn died of trauma to the head and that police had detained one suspect.

As has been widely reported, Putin opponents have a strange habit of finding themselves at the wrong place (like their own doorstep) at the wrong time and ending up being murdered. And your death may not even be reported by the Russian press until your body’s already six feet under or reduced to ash. Funny how that works out.

Authorities say they believe the motive was robbery.

Of course they do.

According to a tally by USA Today and British journalist Sarah Hurst, as of May 2017, “38 prominent Russians” were “victims of unsolved murders or suspicious deaths since the beginning of 2014.”

The list contains 10 high-profile critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin, seven diplomats, six associates of Kremlin power brokers who had a falling out — often over corruption — and 13 military or political leaders involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, including commanders of Russian-backed separatist forces. Two are possibly connected to a dossier alleging connections between President Trump's campaign staff and Kremlin officials that was produced by a former British spy and shared with the FBI. Twelve were shot, stabbed or beaten to death. Six were blown up. Ten died allegedly of natural causes. One died of mysterious head injuries, one reportedly slipped and hit his head in a public bath, one was hanged in his jail cell, and one died after drinking coffee. The cause of six deaths was reported as unknown.

Yet the list of fatalities — 36 men and two women — suggests that Putin’s alleged attacks on his critics and whistle-blowers are more extensive and lethal than previously known. It also raises new concerns about contacts Putin and his lieutenants had with Trump’s campaign staff. Trump praised Putin in March 2016 as a "strong leader," and in 2015 said “I’d get along great with” the Russian leader. On Feb 6, Trump defended Putin when Bill O’Reilly, then of Fox News, called Putin a killer. "There are a lot of killers," Trump replied. "Do you think our country is so innocent?"

Prior to 2014, the list of mysterious deaths of Putin critics / investigators / Russian government opposition is even more extensive, including those of former intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko (polonium poisoning), human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov (gunned down by masked gunman), business tycoon Boris Berezovsky (hung in bathroom), journalist Natalia Estemirova (kidnapped, shot dead and body dumped in the woods) and perhaps, most notably, Sergei Magnitsky, who was brutally beaten and denied medical care while in police custody in 2009 and whose name lives on in the form of a sanctions act bearing his name that Trump seems to have absolutely no interest in.