time. by 11:30 this morning local time he was shot dead in the street. again, denis voronenkov was not some life long dissident and opposition figure. some of these pictures are intense, i know. but he was a he was a kremlin insider, basically. he was happy to be part of vladimir putin s rubber stamp parliament. he was close to power. he was a favor ed member of the russian elite in pro-putin circles. he was apparently involved in, a beneficiary of the corruption that involved putin that helped him keep his power all these years. but something curdled and he flipped on them and they came after him and he went into exile. he was planning to start a non-government organization focusing on corruption. no he was not just a regular dissident. he was a guy who had been very recently on the inside. he was in a position to know what he was talking about in that regard, including giving legal testimony which he d already done and planned to do more.
they just took it. they took part of another country. a and here s an interesting totalitarian part of that. russia likes to appear as if it is a constitutional democracy. on paper it is. there s not just authoritarian leader vladimir putin now in the 17th year of his reign. there is technically a russian parliament, the duma. the putin used to behave like a parliament but now it does whatever putin wants. and putin does go through the moments,t s like a pageant. so part of h invading and seizing ukraine and saying it s part of russia now, part of that process is he had a russian parliament hold a vote on that. march 20, 2014, they held a vote and surprise the russian parliament voted overwhelmingly to say yes to putin, yes, president putin, yes, take it, take that part of ukraine, annex it, call it russia now. but check this out, look at the
vote count. the vote was 443 in favor to 1 against. one. one member of parliament looked at putin, looked at the 443 other members of parliament all voting sir, yes, sir and he voted no. his name is ilia ponamoryev. he voted against the big anti-gay bill in russia before that ch that. the thing i m happy to tell you about ilia ponomarev is he s alive. but he can t be in russia anymore. a few months after that one vote he was traveling in the united states and found that his bank accounts and all of his assets at home had been frozen. taken by the state. then they stripped him of his
a few yards apart, leaving blood and shell casings scattered around the sidewalk. the bodyguard was shot in the chest, the assassin was captured after sustaining a head wound but he died. and mr. voronenkov was shot four times and died at the scene. hours later the body of mr. voronenkov, his tan dress shoes still protruing from a black tarp, hours later his body remained on the spot as police investigated. we don t yet know anything about the character of this assassination. denis voronenkov until very recently was nobody s idea of a he was not an opposition figure until recently. he and his wife were members of parliament. his wife was in putin s party. they had been accused of the same garden-variety corruption and inexplicable wealth on government salaries that s a hallmark of the putin dictatorship but something soured for denis voronenkov and
insider, basically. he was happy to be part of vladimir putin s rubber stamp parliament. he was close to power. he was a favored member of the russian elite in pro-putin circles. he was apparently involved in, a beneficiary of the corruption that involved putin that helped him keep his power all these years. but something curdled and he flipped on them and they came after him and he went into exile. he was planning to start a non-government organization focusing on corruption. no he was not just a regular dissident. he was a guy who had been very recently on the inside. he was in a position to know what he was talking about in that regard, including giving legal testimony which he d already done and planned to do more. but he won t be able to do that now. his assassination today ends all of that. his assassination today comes two days after another russian figure who was due to testify in u.s. federal court in may in a case run out of the office of preet bharara, the u.s. attorney fire