Dmitry Zapolsky, 63, a Russian journalist and political emigrant, died on vacation in Riga. The cause of death has not been yet established. A few years ago he presented his book Putinburg at the Free Russia Forum in Vilnius. The book depicts the origins of Putinism as a system of mafia-state synergy in St.Petersburg in the 1990s, that spread out to the whole country a decade later. At that time, Mr. Zapolsky was an elected member of the city assembly and later a prominent TV presenter and producer. He knew all of the city official and shadow elite, including major gang leaders and Putin himself. In 2012, he had to emigrate after receiving threats, he spent a few years in Thailand where he survived a few attempts on his life. Later, he moved to Finland. In recent years, he regularly commented on Putin’s rise to power and the establishment of the mafia state, which he called a mycelium, in Russia. He managed to publish two books on the topic, Putinburg and Kremlin’s Laundress, and was about to publish another one. Back in the 1990s, he witnessed a series of mysterious deaths which preceded Litvinenko and Skripal cases. I hope his sudden death will be thoroughly investigated.
RIP
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