The Russian art of killing dissidents

Stratfor:

At 6:08 p.m. on Sept. 8, the cacophony of Kiev's Friday evening rush hour was pierced by an explosion under a black Toyota Camry in the middle of heavy traffic near Bessarabska Square in the heart of the capital. The car's driver, Timur Mahauri, a Chechen with Georgian citizenship, was killed instantly. His wife and their 10-year-old child who were riding with him were hurt, but they survived.

Mahauri was reportedly a member of a Chechen militant group fighting with Ukrainian troops against separatist and Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. Media reports suggested that Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov considered him an enemy. In addition to these two possible motives for his assassination, Kiev has recently become a hot spot for the assassination of Moscow's enemies, and opponents of the Chechen government are being killed in a worldwide campaign. Indeed, given Mahauri's enemies and location, it is surprising that he didn't check his car for bombs before he got into it. This case provides important lessons for others.

As I've discussed elsewhere, Russia's intelligence agencies have a long history of involvement in assassinations, refered to by its intelligence officers as "wetwork" or "wet affairs." Indeed, they have pursued the enemies of the Russian government around the globe: Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London in November 2006; and Mikhail Lesin died under mysterious circumstances in Washington, D.C., in November 2015. They are not the only examples. It should come as no surprise then that people considered to be enemies of the Kremlin — including opposition politician Boris Nemtsov — are being murdered in Russia itself as well as in adjacent countries.

However, there does seem to be a discernible difference in the tactics used in different geographies. For example, in Russia itself, targeted individuals tend to simply get shot. Although Russian agents will publicly deny any involvement in such activities, in domestic operations, they don't really take too much effort to cloak their hand. Indeed, they seem to relish flexing their muscle to intimidate opponents. But outside Russia, they attempt to be more discreet. Even though the Litvinenko case ended up becoming highly publicized because of sloppiness in the operation, the use of the rare and radioactive isotope polonium 210 to poison him was intended to create a slow and subtle decline so as to create an air of mystery around his death, like the shadowy fates met by Moscow opponents Badri Patarkatsishvili in 2008, and Boris Berezovsky in 2013, both also in the United Kingdom.
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"Wetwork" is a messy term for assassinations of those who displease the Russian government.  They are like internal decapitation strikes, that attempt to make people less likely to resist government policies.  They do not seem to have stamped out resistance to Moscow although they may impede it.