Russian diplomats are dying. From Griboedov to Karlov. ambassadors of Russia and the USSR who died at the hands of assassins. Where did all the deaths occur?

The shots in Ankara that ended the life of Andrey Karlov, our ambassador to Turkey on December 19, were fired at the moment when Putin was about to attend the performance of the Maly Theater "Woe from Wit", staged based on the great play by Alexander Griboyedov, a writer, musician and diplomat of the highest rank, who died in Persia. This happened on January 30, 1829, during an attack by Islamic fanatics on the Russian embassy in Tehran, where Ambassador Griboedov was hiding several Armenians, saving them from massacre.

Türkiye will pay compensation to the family of the Su-24 pilot with the condition

This story is quite widely known: the frightened Persian Shah, in order to avoid cruel retaliation from Russian Empire, sent along with fabulously expensive gifts to St. Petersburg his beloved grandson. The famous diamond "Shah", which once adorned the throne of the Great Moghuls, and now is one of the main relics of the Diamond Fund of Russia, turned out to be a sufficient expiatory argument for the tsar. Accepting, along with the humblest apologies, the expensive gifts sent by the Shah, Nicholas I told his grandson that he was consigning "the ill-fated Tehran incident to eternal oblivion." Thus, the blood of Griboedov, 37 Russian diplomats and Cossacks guarding the embassy was royally forgiven. The completely wild story of the attack on the Russian mission in Tehran remained for Persia without any serious consequences.

At the dawn of Soviet power, two more of our ambassadors were killed. In 1923, in Switzerland, Vaclav Vorovsky, head of the embassy in Italy, was shot dead by a White Guard. The court in Lausanne too easily and quickly acquitted the suspect and his accomplice, declaring the murder of a diplomat an act of retaliation, and the young soviet republic severed diplomatic relations with Switzerland for 23 years. Four years later, in 1927, the ambassador to Poland, Piotr Voikov, was killed (not so long ago, during the debate about renaming the Voykovskaya metro station, this case was described in some detail by our press).

So, for the death of Vorovsky and the acquittal of the killers, Switzerland paid with a break in relations, and for the death of Voikov Soviet Union responded with real internal terror: twenty representatives of Russian aristocratic families were arrested and shot without trial.

Of course, the gloomy symbolism of the cruel events with our ambassadors, the consequences of these murders, suggests some associations and parallels. But now the time has come when Russia no longer trades in the blood and lives of its diplomats and does not respond with terror for terror - and the Turks, presumably, are well aware of this. Almost immediately after the incident was reported to the Turkish leadership, President Erdogan called Putin, announced his personal control over the investigation and promised to strengthen the security of the Russian mission and diplomats.

But is this enough?

An atmosphere of incomplete trust, reservations and even outright suspicion has so far dominated Russian-Turkish relations in recent times, and the terrorist attack against Andrei Karlov will certainly aggravate all this. tragic event in Ankara also revealed huge security flaws protecting our diplomats in a warring state where terrorist attacks happen regularly. Experts in the field have noted bad job both Turkish and Russian special services.

Whatever the global goals of the killer named Mevlut Mert Altintash, a former policeman, Turkish official circles and the press immediately hurried to declare him a participant in a semi-mythical terrorist organization FETO. This is how Erdogan now calls almost all his internal and external enemies, without trial or investigation writing them down as accomplices of the notorious political opponent Fethullah Gülen, although the Istanbul court recognized back in the spring: there is no court decision confirming the existence of an armed terrorist organization called "FETO". But under the guise of fighting this semi-mythical structure, a real "witch hunt" has been going on in Turkey for the third year now: several thousand of Erdogan's opponents are now in Turkish prisons, who are accused of organizing an attempted coup or simply aiding Gulen.

All observers unanimously noted that the main goal of Altintash was a targeted and extremely painful infliction of a heavy blow on the slowly recovering Russian-Turkish relations. Of course, this goal has been achieved, and much will now depend on Erdogan's behavior. In the first seconds after the fatal shots, the killer clearly and unequivocally announced on camera that this was revenge for Russia's actions in Syria, but the Turkish president, without hesitation, immediately started his favorite song about the hand of Gülen hiding in America.

Of course, only an open and honest investigation can convince Russian authorities that it is really important for Turkey to maintain the barely emerging positive vector of movement in Russian-Turkish relations. But given the fact that Erdogan has recently let slip about his true goals of intervention in the intra-Syrian conflict (recall: the Turkish president unexpectedly declared the removal of Bashar al-Assad, his personal enemy, as his priority in the Syrian expansion), which are radically at odds with Russia’s goals, it will now be extremely difficult to regain Putin’s trust. difficult.

Today, December 20, a trilateral meeting of the heads of the ministries of foreign affairs and the defense ministries of Russia, Iran and Turkey is to be held to discuss the course of the Syrian conflict and ways to resolve it. Of course, Turkey's position on these issues will now be key. If the Turks do not find the courage to admit that all traces of the current terror in the Middle East lead to the Islamic quasi-state banned in Russia, and continue to refer to the activities of Gülen in this matter, there will be no further progress in trust between our countries.

Be that as it may, it can already be stated that yesterday Turkey, at the expense of Russia, placed another bloody sacrifice on the altar of Middle Eastern terror, with whose adherents it has been flirting for many years. Obviously, the Russian authorities will continue to try to find, in conjunction with Turkey, both ways to resolve the Syrian conflict and ways to restore multidirectional ties between our two countries, but the unwillingness of the Turkish leadership to admit obvious miscalculations in its internal and foreign policy, in the work of the special services, the ambivalent position in relations with Russia is unlikely to lead to anything constructive in the foreseeable future.

In any case, there is no hope that after two years of almost complete downtime, the rather rusted mechanism of Russian-Turkish relations, now drenched in the blood of our ambassador, will soon be restored and start working properly, one should not try. Erdogan now needs to try doubly - and you need to start right now.

Assassinations and assassination attempts on ambassadorsXXIcentury

03/28/03 in the capital of Ivory Coast, Abidjan, the ambassador was killed Saudi Arabia in Côte d'Ivoire Mohammed Ahmed Rashid.

29.12.03 Vatican ambassador Michael Courtney was mortally wounded in Burundi.

02.07.05 The Egyptian ambassador to Iraq, Ihab ash-Sherif, was kidnapped in Baghdad. The body has not yet been found.

27.07.05 Algerian ambassador Ali Belaroussi, taken hostage by Islamists, was executed in Iraq.

20.08.06. Russia's ambassador to Kenya, Valery Egoshkin, was attacked by bandits. After treatment for knife wound The ambassador returned to his diplomatic duties.

20.09.08 Czech Ambassador to Pakistan Ivo Zdarek was blown up during a terrorist attack in Islamabad.

11/29/11 Ambassador to Qatar Vladimir Titorenko was attacked. He was hit several times by Doha airport security personnel.

07/27/12 Venezuelan Ambassador to Kenya Olga Fonseca was strangled to death in Nairobi. The incident was filed as a domestic murder.

Andrey Karlov, who was killed by a terrorist in Ankara, is not the first Russian ambassador to be killed radical islamists. The first was Alexander Griboedov, brutally torn to pieces in Tehran by a crowd religious fanatics. Read the story of his murder in Life's material.

"I will lay down my head for my compatriots." Alexander Griboyedov left this entry in his diary on August 24, 1819, almost ten years before his death in Tehran. Even then, he foresaw the danger, which later turned into an attack by radicals on the Russian embassy in the capital of Persia.

The diplomatic career of Alexander Griboyedov began in 1817 in St. Petersburg. Leaving military service, 22-year-old Griboyedov took the post of provincial secretary, and then - an interpreter at the Collegium of Foreign Affairs. But then he was young and hot, led a rather riotous lifestyle. At the end of 1817, Griboyedov took part in the famous double duel over the dancer Avdotya Istomina. The cavalry guard Sheremetev, Istomina's lover, who was jealous of the dancer for Griboyedov's friend Zavodskoy, was shooting.

Griboyedov was Zavodsky's second, and Alexander Yakubovich was Sheremetev's. All four participants in the duel were supposed to shoot. But Zavodsky severely wounded Sheremetev in the stomach, because of which the seconds did not have time to fire their shots. Sheremetev eventually died from his wound. And Griboyedov was forced to leave Petersburg.

Russian Charge d'Affaires of Persia Semyon Mazarovich invited Griboyedov to go with him as secretary of the embassy. Griboedov refused the appointment for a long time, but eventually agreed. He received the rank of titular councilor on June 17, 1818 and became secretary under Mazarovich.

In October Griboedov was in Tiflis. And there he again became a participant in the duel, meeting with an old acquaintance Yakubovich. This time the duel took place. They were shooting. Yakubovich shot Griboyedov in the palm of his left hand, which caused the writer's little finger to cramp.

"The insidious policy that Persia continued to adhere to in relation to Russia, the patronage that it renders to the fugitive khans of Dagestan and our Transcaucasian possessions hostile to us, put our mission in a position far from enviable. There were a lot of cases, and all the time Griboyedov was absorbed by them. To In addition, due to the frequent absence of Mazarovich in Tabriz, all the affairs of the mission were concentrated in his hands, and on his own initiative, with the energy of an ardent patriot, he defended the interests of Russia "

Writing down the phrase “I will lay down my head for my compatriots,” Griboedov most likely pointed to his activities in freeing Russian prisoners and resettling them in Russia along with fugitives who had lived in Persia since the campaign of 1803, when Russian troops began to subdue the lands located to the north Araks river. This was supposed to help ensure the security of Georgia, which suffered from the raids of its Muslim neighbors.

As Skobichevsky writes in his book, the prisoners who agreed to return to Russia were subjected to torture, bribed to stay in Persia, and intimidated with stories of punishments that were supposedly awaiting them in their homeland. But Griboyedov insisted on his own and personally escorted a detachment of Russian prisoners to Russian borders.

"Griboyedov spent exactly three years in Persia. Having studied perfectly, in addition to the Persian language, also Arabic, having learned to read in both of these languages, it was all the easier for him to get acquainted with the manners and customs of the Persians, to study the character of this people, cruel, treacherous and treacherous"

- Alexander Skobichevsky. "Griboedov. His life and literary activity"

Massacre in Tehran

In early 1823, Griboyedov left the service and returned to his homeland. He lived in Moscow, then - in St. Petersburg. He returned to diplomatic activity in September 1826, having gone to serve in Tiflis. He took part in the conclusion of the Turkmanchan peace treaty, beneficial for Russia, which ended the Russian-Persian war of 1826-1828. After that, Griboyedov was appointed ambassador to Tehran.

On October 7, Griboyedov arrived in Tabriz. As Skobichevsky writes, from the first days of the journey through Persian territory, "misunderstandings began, which did not promise anything good." In particular, Griboedov himself quarreled with the Shah and his ministers, and his servants had clashes with the Persians. For example, the servants of one Persian beat Griboedov's uncle, Alexander Gribov, and a bottle of vodka was broken at one Cossack, for which the perpetrator was severely punished.

"The drop that overflowed the cup was the clash with the Persian government over the Armenian Mirza-Yakub, who had already for a long time lived in Persia, in charge of the shah's harem as chief eunuch. A few days before the appointed date of departure, Mirza-Yakub appeared at the embassy and announced his desire to return to Russia. Griboyedov took part in it, but the Persian government opposed the return of Yakub to Russia all the more vigorously because the latter had been treasurer and chief eunuch for many years, knew all the secrets of the harem and family life Shah and could announce them"

- Alexander Skobichevsky. "Griboedov. His life and literary activity"

The Shah was angry. They tried to keep Yakub by all means: they said that the eunuch was almost the same as the shah's wife, they demanded huge money from Yakub, claiming that he had robbed the shah's treasury and therefore could not be released. Moreover, the head of the clergy of the mujtehid Messiah Mirza came to the attention that the eunuch allegedly scolds the Muslim faith.

"How?!" said the Mujtehid. - This man has been in our faith for twenty years, read our books and now he will go to Russia, outrages our faith; he is a traitor, unfaithful and guilty of death!"

- Alexander Skobichevsky. "Griboedov. His life and literary activity"

Griboyedov's colleague Maltsov wrote that on January 30, from the very morning, people gathered in the mosque, where they were told: "Go to the house of the Russian envoy, select the prisoners, kill Mirza-Yakub and Rustem!" - a Georgian who was in the service of the envoy.

"Thousands of people with naked daggers invaded our house and threw stones. I saw how at that time a collegiate assessor, Prince Solomon Melikov, sent to Griboedov by his uncle Manuchehr Khan, ran through the courtyard; the people threw stones at him and after him rushed to the second and third courtyards, where the prisoners and the messenger were. All the roofs were lined with raging mob, which expressed its joy and triumph with fierce cries. Our sentry sarbaz (soldiers) did not have charges with them, rushed after their guns, which were stored in the attic and already taken away by the people.

Our Cossacks fired back for an hour, then bloodshed began everywhere. The envoy, believing at first that the people only wanted to take away the prisoners, ordered the three Cossacks who stood at his watch to fire blank charges, and then only ordered to load the pistols with bullets when he saw that our people had begun to be cut in the yard. About 15 people from officials and servants gathered in the envoy's room and courageously defended themselves at the door. Those who tried to invade by force were cut down with sabers, but at that very time the ceiling of the room that served as the last refuge of the Russians caught fire: all those who were there were killed by stones thrown from above, rifle shots and dagger blows of the mob that burst into the room. The robbery began: I saw how the Persians brought the booty into the yard and, with a shout and a fight, divided it among themselves. Money, papers, mission logs - everything was looted..."

In the massacre, 37 Russians and 19 Tehrans were killed. On the second or third day after this massacre, the mutilated corpses of the dead were taken outside the city wall, thrown into one heap and covered with earth. A little later, among the pile of bodies, Griboyedov was found. His body was identified only by the same injury that was once received during a duel with Yakubovich.

Griboedov's body was sent to Tiflis, where he was buried, according to his wishes, on June 18, 1829. Griboedov's wife, Nina Alexandrovna, whom he married shortly before the tragedy, erected a chapel on the grave, and a monument in it. The monument was decorated with the inscription: "Your mind and deeds are immortal in Russian memory; but why did my love survive you?"

For the murder of Griboedov, the Persians gave Emperor Nicholas I a generous offering with an apology. Among the gifts was one of the greatest valuables of the Persian shahs - the "Shah" diamond.

The deliberate assassination of the ambassador of a state is always a demonstrative act of terror directed against the country represented by the ambassador. And the murder of the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, a person of the highest diplomatic rank in the Russian Federation, which was the career diplomat Andrei Karlov in Turkey, is a challenge to the state - the Russian Federation.

By a monstrous coincidence, on the eve of the newly opened Maly Theater, where Russian President Vladimir Putin was supposed to come, they gave the play "Woe from Wit" by Alexander Griboedov, the ambassador of the Russian Empire in Iran, who was killed by a crowd of religious fanatics who defeated the Russian diplomatic mission in Tehran. Because of the reported assassination in Ankara of the Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov, the president's plans were cancelled.

Assassination in Tehran of Ambassador Griboyedov

The murder on January 30 (February 11), 1829, of "the Russian Imperial Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Minister at the Persian Court Alexander Griboedov", better known as a playwright and poet, was extremely bloody and cruel. Griboyedov was hit on the head with a stone, and then was stoned and chopped to pieces. Together with the Russian ambassador, all the employees of the embassy (except for secretary Ivan Maltsev) and the Cossacks of the embassy convoy were killed - a total of 37 people. The massacre, according to historians, was provoked by dissatisfied with the Turkmenchay peace treaty concluded between Russia and Persia. And the reason for it was the accusations of members of the Russian mission of "insulting the feelings of believers" and that Griboedov sheltered two Christian women who had asked for asylum - a Georgian and an Armenian - within the walls of the embassy.

Griboyedov's body was so mutilated that he was identified only by a scar from a bullet wound on his left hand, received in a duel. The body was taken to Tiflis and buried on Mount Mtatsminda in a grotto at the Church of St. David.

Under other circumstances, the government of Nicholas I, in response to the assassination of the ambassador and almost the entire staff of the embassy, ​​would have declared war on Iran. But at that time Russia was at war with Turkey, and the tsarist government did not want to new war. As a result, as a sign of reconciliation, Nicholas I was forced to accept expensive gifts from Fath Ali Shah, including the Shah diamond. This is a stone of rare beauty that has walked the hands of many kings for more than a thousand years, as evidenced by the inscriptions on the faces. 18 grams in weight, three centimeters long, yellow in color, extraordinarily transparent, this 90 carat diamond once adorned the Mughal throne. Today, the precious nugget is kept in the collection of the Diamond Fund of the Moscow Kremlin.

Murder in Moscow of Ambassador Mirbach

On July 6, 1918, a glaring event took place in Moscow in the history of Russia's relations with other countries of the world. In the afternoon, in the mansion of the German embassy in the RSFSR at Denezhny Lane, house 5, the ambassador of Kaiser Wilhelm II in Soviet Russia Count Wilhelm von Mirbach-Harf. The assassins of the ambassador were official employees of the Cheka - Yakov Blyumkin and Nikolai Andreev.

For decades, this terrorist act was interpreted in the USSR as a provocation of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which since October 1917 was part of the government coalition with the Bolsheviks and set as its goal to violate the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Germans and seize power in the country. The Socialist-Revolutionaries Blyumkin and Andreev committed the crime on the decision of the Central Committee of their party, which hoped to provoke a resumption of war with Germany by murder.

The Chekists, who presented their documents, were taken through the lobby to the Red Drawing Room of the mansion and offered to wait. Count Mirbach went out to the representatives of the Cheka. Their conversation went on for about half an hour. And then Yakov Blyumkin presented Mirbach with papers that allegedly testified to the espionage activities of the "ambassador's relative" Robert Mirbach. The diplomat said that this was not his relative and he did not know him. Then Blumkin took out a revolver and fired three shots, but missed. The second Chekist Nikolai Andreev threw a bomb, but it did not explode. Mirbakh was mortally wounded only by Andreev's shot. Blumkin threw a failed bomb at the ambassador a second time, and it worked.

The murder of the ambassador of the German Empire under the government of the RSFSR in Moscow, Wilhelm Mirbach, is dedicated to the film of the Soviet Leniniana "Sixth of July".

Murder in Lausanne of the Plenipotentiary of the USSR Vorovsky

On May 10, 1923, the former White Guard officer Maurice Conradi killed in Lausanne the plenipotentiary of the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR in Italy, Vaclav Vorovsky, who arrived in Switzerland at the head of the Soviet delegation for international conference in the Middle East to sign and still existing convention on the mode of navigation in the Turkish-controlled Black Sea straits.

Vorovsky, who lived in exile with his family in Sweden since 1915, was the first plenipotentiary representative of the RSFSR in Scandinavia.

That evening he dined at the restaurant of the Cecil Hotel with two companions, and paid no attention to young man who approached him from a nearby table. He pulled out a Browning and shot the ambassador in the back of the head, killing him on the spot. The 19-year-old Divilkovsky, who was sitting next to Vorovsky, rushed at the terrorist and detained him.

The shooter was Maurice Conradi, a 26-year-old Swiss citizen and a native of Russia. His parents owned a chocolate factory in St. Petersburg. Maurice himself in 1916, without finishing his studies as an engineer in Petrogradsky Institute of Technology, volunteered for the front - to fight for Russia against Germany and Austria. For a year he rose to the rank of lieutenant, commanded a company, was wounded and awarded more than once.

After October 1917, the Konradi chocolate factory was nationalized. Uncle, aunt and older brother Maurice was shot by the Cheka, and his father died of starvation in a prison hospital. Maurice fled from Petrograd to the south and fought against the Bolsheviks in the White Army until its evacuation from the Crimea in the autumn of 1920.

After the assassination of the ambassador, Maurice Conradi appeared before a jury. The famous Swiss lawyers who defended him turned the trial into a "trial of Bolshevism." During the 10 days of hearings, about 70 witnesses came forward who, like the Konradi family, were forced to move to Switzerland from Soviet Russia. The stories they told about their experiences under Bolshevism predetermined the outcome of the process. Conradi was acquitted.

After Vorovsky's funeral in Moscow, the Soviet government issued a decree "On the Boycott of Switzerland", which broke off Soviet-Swiss trade relations and forbade "entry into the USSR of all Swiss citizens who do not belong to the working class."

The assassination of the Soviet plenipotentiary in Poland, Piotr Voikov

On June 7, 1927, the death from bullets of 20-year-old undergraduate schoolboy Boris Koverda overtook the Soviet plenipotentiary in Poland, Pyotr Voikov, one of the killers of the royal family.

Voikov Pyotr Lazarevich (party pseudonyms Petrus, Intelligent) was born on August 1, 1888 in Kerch. In 1903 he joined the RSDLP, its Menshevik organization. For anti-government activities, he was expelled from the Kerch, and then from the Yalta gymnasium. In 1907, he left for Switzerland, as he was threatened with arrest for participating in the assassination attempt on the Yalta mayor Dumbadze. Studied at the Universities of Geneva and Paris, studied chemistry. While in exile, Voikov met Lenin in Geneva, and together with the Bolsheviks opposed the "social chauvinists". After the February Revolution of 1917 he returned to Russia and joined the RSDLP(b).

In Yekaterinburg, he was the chairman of the city duma, the commissar of supplies for the Ural region, and a member of the military revolutionary committee. Most of all, he is noted in history for his role in organizing the execution of Nicholas II, his wife, children and those who accompanied the imperial family. It was Voikov who delivered the acid that was used to destroy the traces of the crime.

Voikov is one of the leaders of the operations of the Soviet government to sell to the West the unique treasures of the imperial family, the Armory and the Diamond Fund.

From October 1924 Voikov - authorized representative(Ambassador) of the USSR in Poland. The local diplomatic corps, which was in an aristocratic yacht club, appreciated the luxurious river picnics of the Soviet envoy, who had his own boat. In Warsaw, he plunged into the atmosphere of pleasure familiar from the time of emigration in a European manner.

Voikov, according to contemporaries, behaved in Warsaw as an active adventurer, to the point that he planned the assassination of the head of Poland, Pilsudski. But he did not receive permission from Moscow for this liquidation.

Voikov constantly held secret meetings with Polish communists, and after escaping from prison, he took one of them, Leshchinsky, out of Poland on his motor boat.

On June 7, 1927, Pyotr Voikov was shot dead on the platform of the railway station in Warsaw by Russian émigré Boris Koverda.

A Polish court sentenced Koverda to life imprisonment, but 10 years later, on June 15, 1937, he was released.

Voikov was solemnly buried at the Kremlin wall in Moscow.

Assassination of US Ambassador Adolph Dabbs in Kabul

On St. Valentine's Day, February 14 of the same year, he was abducted in Kabul and placed as a hostage in the Kabul Hotel in room 117 under the protection of terrorists.

Until now, there is a version that the ambassador was killed on the orders of President Hafizullah Amin. (This version was voiced by the new Kabul authorities after the introduction Soviet troops. She was one of the accusations against Amin.)

The kidnappers (members of the National Oppression militant group of the Maoist persuasion) demanded that the government release, in exchange for Dubbs, three of their militants in the Puli-Charkhi prison near Kabul. Their terms were not accepted.

Despite the appeals of the American and Soviet embassies, the Afghan security service, on the orders of Amin, stormed the hotel. In the skirmish, the American ambassador was mortally wounded, which served as a formal basis and an understandable reason for a sharp change in the US course towards the Afghan authorities.

American aid to Afghanistan has ceased. American employees and specialists were recalled from the country.

The murder of Adolf Dabbs served as a catalyst for a new round of tension in the country, which escalated into a long-term bloody war.

Assassination of US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens in Benghazi

In an attack on the American consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other American diplomats were killed. According to the initial version, the reason for the attack on the building of the diplomatic mission was a protest against the release of the film "Innocence of Muslims", in which Islam and the Prophet Muhammad are sharply criticized. However, in the course of the investigation, it became clear that the action was not associated with a resonant video and was planned in advance, on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

When a group of Libyan protesters attacked the American consulate in Benghazi, Stevens tried to escape to secure premises. underground bunker CIA.

By official version, the American ambassador died of asphyxiation caused by the inhalation of smoke from a fire that broke out. According to other sources, before his death, Christopher Stevens was bullied and raped. Stevens was taken to the hospital with no signs of life. Resuscitation attempts came to nothing.

On September 24, 2012, Stevens' diary was found. In these notes, the ambassador expressed the opinion that extremist movements are intensifying in Libya and further stay in this country is becoming unsafe. In addition, the ambassador considered himself included in the "hit list" of Al-Qaeda (the organization is banned in the Russian Federation).

Information that Stevens was concerned about his safety became the basis for criticism from Congress against the administration of Barack Obama: it was accused of not providing proper protection to American diplomats in Benghazi.

US Senator Rand Paul said that US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens oversaw the supply of weapons to the Syrian opposition. Referring to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the senator added that a week before the assassination of the American ambassador in Libya, a ship with a large cargo of weapons was sent from the country and the United States knew about it.

In October 2015, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to Congress at a hearing on the attack on the US embassy in Libya. She stated that she acknowledges responsibility for the death of American diplomats, including the country's ambassador, but made a reservation that she did not personally deal with their security issues. No new information The terrorist act itself was not mentioned at the hearings.

Assassination of Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov in Ankara

December 19, 2016 for the first time in history modern Russia its ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary was killed.

Andrey Karlov, 62, was shot dead at the Ankara Contemporary Art Center at the opening of the photo exhibition Russia Through the Eyes of a Traveler: From Kaliningrad to Kamchatka.

The perpetrator turned out to be 22-year-old Mevlut Mert Altintash, who went to the exhibition according to the documents of a police officer, who previously served as a policeman in the Ankara special police unit, but was off duty at the time of the attack.

According to eyewitness accounts and video footage, the killer shouted: "This is for you for Aleppo", "We are dying there, you will die here", "Allah Akbar!"

Approximately 25 minutes later, in a shootout with special forces soldiers, the terrorist was destroyed.

The murder of the Russian ambassador was filmed by a press camera, the recording got on the Internet.

There are different versions of the assassination attempt on Andrei Karlov. The consequences are also predicted, one more serious than the other. CEO Analytical Center "East-West Strategy" Dmitry Orlov suggests recalling why in different time resulted in the assassinations of diplomats.

Broken prohibitions

The famous battle of the Russian princes with the Mongols at Kalka in 1223 was also preceded by the murder of ambassadors. As is known, the commanders of Genghis Khan Jebe and Subudai, pursuing the retreating Khorezm Polovtsy, went to the Black Sea steppes. The Polovtsian Khan Kotyan tried to give them a fight, but the Mongols defeated him and drove him to the Dnieper. Then Kotyan turned to his son-in-law, Galician prince Mstislav Udatny, and other Russian princes for help, backing up his request with rich gifts. The Mongols sent ambassadors to the Russians, who informed the princes that they had nothing against Rus' - they only needed Kotyan. The Novgorod First Chronicle writes that the ambassadors said this: “We heard that you were going against us, having listened to the Polovtsy, but we did not touch your land, neither your cities, nor your villages. They did not come against you, but came by the will of God against the servants and grooms of your Polovtsy. You take peace with us; if they run to you, drive them away from you and take their property. We heard that they did a lot of harm to you too; we beat them for this."

However, the princes of the ambassadors were killed. After that, the Mongols sent a second embassy to the Russians with the following words: "You listened to the Polovtsy and killed our ambassadors. Now go to us, well, go on. We did not touch you: God is above all of us." The second ambassadors were not killed, but the peace proposals were rejected. After that, the Battle of Kalka took place, which ended in defeat for Kotyan and the Russian princes - out of 21 princes, only nine returned home alive. It is noteworthy that during the invasion of Rus' by Batu Khan, which some historians forget to mention, it was precisely those Russian cities whose princes participated in the murder of ambassadors that were raided ...

All those who defended the embassy were killed, and there were no direct witnesses left. Secretary Ivan Maltsov, the only one who survived, did not mention the death of Griboyedov. According to him, 15 people were defending at the door of the envoy's room. Returning to Russia, he wrote that 37 embassy employees (all except him) and 19 residents of Tehran were killed. He himself hid in another room and, in fact, could only describe what he heard. The grandson of the Persian Shah, Khozrev-Mirza, came to St. Petersburg to settle the scandal. The emperor allegedly said to Khozrev: "I consign the ill-fated Tehran incident to eternal oblivion."

From conspiracy to conspiracy

July 6, 1918 employees of the Cheka, the Left SRs Yakov Blyumkin and Nikolai Andreev, arrived at the German embassy in Moscow. They were received by the ambassador, Count Wilhelm Mirbach. During the conversation, Andreev pulled out a revolver and fired at the diplomat, then throwing a grenade. Mirbach was killed by the last bullet. Blumkin and Andreev ran out of the embassy and left by car to the headquarters of the Cheka detachment under the command of the Left Social Revolutionary Dmitry Popov, which was located in the center of Moscow - in Trekhsvyatitelsky Lane. For Blyumkin and Andreev, the chairman of the Cheka Felix Dzerzhinsky himself came there, who was taken hostage. Thus began the Left SR rebellion on July 6, which, however, the Bolsheviks quickly liquidated. By killing Mirbach, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries hoped to provoke a war between Germany and Soviet Russia, but they did not succeed.

Tellingly, a month later, the KGB uncovered the so-called "conspiracy of ambassadors", which involved the diplomats of England, France and the United States - Robert Bruce Lockhart, Joseph Nulans and David Rowland Francis. Lockhart tried to bribe the Latvian Riflemen in Moscow, who were guarding the Kremlin, to carry out a military coup by arresting a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee along with Lenin and occupying key points. The plot was exposed. Without going into details, let's say that on August 30, 1918 - after the assassination in Petrograd of the chairman of the local Cheka, Moses Uritsky, and the Moscow assassination attempt on Lenin, the Chekists detained all the conspirators in the British embassy. Only naval attache Francis Allen Cromie was killed.

May 10, 1923 In the restaurant of the Cecile Hotel in Lausanne, Switzerland, Vaclav Vorovsky, the USSR envoy to Italy, was killed, who arrived in Switzerland as a delegate to the Lausanne Conference to prepare a peace treaty with Turkey and establish a regime for the Black Sea straits. The participants in this murder - former White Guards Maurice Konradi (direct perpetrator) and Arkady Polunin - were acquitted by the jury. In response, the USSR severed diplomatic relations with Switzerland.

February 5, 1926 on the stretch between the Ikskile and Salaspils stations on the Moscow-Riga train, Soviet diplomatic couriers Theodor Nette and Johann Makhmastal were shot at. Nette was killed, Mahmastal was wounded. Two of the attackers were also wounded and retreated. Later they were found dead and identified as the citizens of Lithuania, the Gavrilovich brothers. Police investigation yielded no results...

June 7, 1927 At the station in Warsaw, the former White Guard Boris Koverda shot dead the USSR plenipotentiary in Poland, Pyotr Voikov. For this murder, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, but after 10 years he was released under an amnesty.

In October 1933 in Lvov, which was then part of Poland, a militant of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists Nikolai Lemik shot the secretary of the Consulate General of the USSR Alexei Mailov. Later it became known that Mailov turned out to be an accidental victim - Lemik was supposed to kill the Consul General himself, but he was not there that day, so Mailov, who was part-time a legal resident of the Foreign Department of the OGPU, led the reception of visitors.

Having received the news of Maylov's death, the chairman of the OGPU, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, ordered the development of a plan to combat Ukrainian nationalists. It was according to this plan that in 1938 the NKVD officer Pavel Sudoplatov liquidated the leader of the OUN, Yevgeny Konovalets, by handing him a mine in a box from under chocolates at the Atlant Hotel in Rotterdam.

History knows 13 more especially serious crimes against Soviet and Russian diplomats different levels. Of course, murder is one of them. In general, practice shows that diplomats are killed not just like that, but for certain purposes. The short-term goal of the murder in Ankara is obvious - to quarrel Russia and Turkey. As for long-term goals, they are in the light of " big game"can be anything...

Today, Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov was killed in Ankara. The murder took place in the Gallery of Modern Art, where a photo exhibition was opened (in the first reports, the name of the exhibition was referred to as "Russia through the eyes of the Turks", then it was clarified that it was called "Russia through the eyes of a traveler: from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka"). AP, citing its photographer, reports that the perpetrator of the assassination, dressed in a suit and tie, shouted: "Allahu Akbar" before the attack. He shot the ambassador from behind as he was finishing his speech. The Guardian writes that the first bullet hit Karlov in the back, and then, when he fell, the criminal shot him again.

The terrorist who attacked the Russian ambassador in Ankara Andrey Karlov. Photo: Burhan Ozbilici/AP

In the friend feed, many people compare this murder with a shot in Sarajevo and write about a premonition of a big war. And I remembered Nassim Taleb, who wrote in the book "The Black Swan. Under the sign of unpredictability" the following: "Think about what a surprise the First World War. After the Napoleonic conflicts, the world was at peace for so long that any observer was ready to believe in the irrelevance of major destructive conflicts. But what a surprise! - the next conflict turned out to be the deadliest (at that time) in the history of mankind.<...>
Wars are fractal in nature. A war that will kill more people than the devastating World War II is possible. It is unlikely, but not out of the question, although such a war has never happened in the past."

Be that as it may, the assassination of the Russian ambassador will certainly complicate the already difficult relations between our country and Turkey, or at least slow down their normalization. In the meantime, I propose to recall other cases of assassination attempts on our diplomats abroad.

(c) AP

February 11, 1829 in Tehran, as a result of an attack on the Russian embassy, ​​37 people who were in the embassy were killed. Among the dead was the head of the Russian diplomatic mission in Tehran, Alexander Griboyedov.

May 10, 1923 in Lausanne /Switzerland/ the Soviet plenipotentiary Vaclav Vorovsky was killed by the former White Guard Maurice Konradi. Conradi and his accomplice Arkady Polunin were acquitted by the jury. Diplomatic relations between the USSR and Switzerland were severed.

February 5, 1926 in Latvia, on the Moscow-Riga train, Soviet diplomatic couriers Theodor Nette and Johann Makhmastal were attacked. In the shootout, Theodore Nette was killed. Two attackers, citizens of Lithuania, brothers Gavrilovichi, were wounded, later they were found dead.

June 7, 1927 in Warsaw, the Soviet plenipotentiary in Poland P. Voikov was mortally wounded by the Polish citizen B. Koverda / he was sentenced to life imprisonment, but on June 15, 1937 he was amnestied and released /.

December 13, 1927 during civil war in China, the Soviet consulate in Canton / Guangzhou / was destroyed, consular workers and their families were arrested. On December 14, five Soviet diplomats - Vice-Consul A.Hassis, P.Makarov, V.Ukolov, K.Ivanov and F.Popov - were shot. On December 14, 1927, the USSR severed diplomatic relations with China.

October 24, 1933 in Lvov / the city was part of Poland / in the building of the Consulate General of the USSR, employee Alexei Maylov was killed. The militant, a member of an organization of Ukrainian nationalists, was sentenced to a long prison term.

In October 1976 in Washington, an employee of the Soviet embassy in the United States, S. Stepanov, was attacked, who died on October 25.

September 30, 1985 in Beirut (Lebanon) embassy attaché Oleg Spirin, consular officer Arkady Katkov, trade mission officer Valery Myrikov and embassy doctor Nikolai Svirsky were kidnapped. The Islamic Liberation Organization - Forces of Khaled Ben-Walid claimed responsibility for the capture of Soviet citizens. Members of the group put forward a number of political demands. Consulate employee Arkady Katkov was killed.

September 16, 1986 in Islamabad killed acting. military attache at the USSR Embassy in Pakistan, Colonel F. Gorenkov. Pakistani citizen Zafar Ahmad was found guilty of the murder. By a court decision, he was sentenced to death.

March 28, 1994 in the suburbs of the city of Algiers, an employee of the Russian embassy, ​​a driver K. Kukushkin, was killed by unknown persons. The "Armed Islamic Group" was blamed for the murder.

May 1, 1996 in Guatemala, an attack was made on the second secretary of the Russian Embassy in Nicaragua, Yu. Trushkin, who was in Guatemala on a study tour. On May 13 he died.

April 6, 2003 Russian Ambassador to Iraq Vladimir Titorenko came under fire from an American armored column during the evacuation of the embassy.

June 3, 2006 in Baghdad / Iraq / the car of the Russian embassy, ​​in which there were five people, was blocked and attacked by militants in the El-Mansour area not far from the diplomatic mission building. Vitaly Titov, an embassy security guard, was killed during the attack. Four Russians - third secretary Fyodor Zaitsev and embassy employees Rinat Agliulin, Anatoly Smirnov and Oleg Fedoseev - were taken away by the extremists in an unknown direction. On June 26, 2006, it became known about the death of four Russian diplomats.

August 20, 2006 Russian Ambassador to Kenya Vladimir Egoshkin was attacked. Robbers attacked the car when the ambassador stopped to avoid hitting the child. Egoshkin received several blows with a machete. The robbers were soon arrested.

June 23, 2007 Russian diplomat Vladimir Rashitko died near the capital of Burundi Bujumbura as a result of the shelling of his car by soldiers guarding a checkpoint on the road.

November 29, 2011 Russian Ambassador to Qatar Vladimir Titorenko was beaten by the local security service at Doha airport. The ambassador received damage to the retina. As a result of the incident, diplomatic relations between Russia and Qatar were downgraded.

September 9, 2013 in Sukhum, the first secretary of the Russian embassy in Abkhazia, Vice-Consul Dmitry Vishernev, was killed. His wife, an employee of the Russian embassy, ​​was seriously injured.

TASS and RBC materials used