Russian President Vladimir Putin’s opponents continue to disappear in a pattern of strange and sudden deaths, and his greatest domestic opponent, Alexei Navalny, died after a sudden collapse, according to Russian authorities.       

“Generally, as a culture, the Russians don’t believe in coincidences. But, in this particular case, there’s a reason why, although we are unlikely to determine conclusively exactly how Navalny died, many analysts agree that Russian intelligence services are likely behind his death,” Rebekah Koffler, a strategic military intelligence analyst and the author of “Putin’s Playbook,” told Fox News Digital. 

“There’s a specific intelligence tradecraft that dates back to 1920 that the Soviets used to eliminate the so-called enemies of the state,” Koffler said. “The Soviets and now the Russians are also masters of covering their tracks and making the assassination look like it’s a natural or accidental death.

“Wet affairs, which connotes the spilling of blood is a doctrine of targeted assassinations, includes poisonings, executions with a shot in the back of the head, forced suicides — such as throwing yourself out of a window — explosions of a mini-bomb hidden in a box of chocolates … and other contrived methods,” Koffler explained. 

Anna Politkovskaya, an American Russian journalist and human rights activist, was gunned down in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building in 2006. She regularly criticized the Kremlin, particularly regarding policies related to Chechnya. A probe into her death failed to determine who ordered her death, and investigators dismissed the involvement of a Moscow-backed Ramzan Kadyrov, who eventually took power as the head of the Chechen Republic.

Kadyrov also denied any involvement in the death of journalist Natalya Estemirova, who was abducted and killed in 2008 outside her home in Grozny. Chechnya reinstated Russian federal rule in 2009 and has remained a staunch ally of Russia, speaking out in favor of Putin’s war against Ukraine and supplying troops. 

People gather at a memorial for late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny organized at the monument to the victims of political repression in Saint Petersburg Feb. 16, 2024. (Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images)

More recently, a number of high-profile Russian businessmen died in a series of bizarre accidents after speaking out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including oil giant Lukoil’s Chairman Ravil Maganov, who fell out a hospital window. Lukoil said Maganov died from an illness, but Russian media and investigators determined he had fallen out of a sixth-story window. 

Pavel Antov, known as the “sausage king” of Russia and a local politician, also fell from a window in late 2022. Authorities found him dead outside the Hotel Sai International in Rayagada, India, after celebrating his 65th birthday only days earlier. One of Antov’s traveling companions also died at the hotel. 

At least eight other Russian oligarchs died under strange circumstances over the first year of the invasion, and international investigators suggested the deaths could have been staged suicides or assassinations as retaliation for their opposition to the invasion or links to corruption in Russian gas company Gazprom.  

Koffler explained to Fox News Digital that the deaths, if carried out by intelligence, will always be designed “deliberately to be stealthy so no investigator could identify foul play.

“They are usually deemed ‘tragic accidents,’ [which is] also part of the doctrine,” she added.