The phrase “Putin’s murderers” has two meanings. One is to label people who want to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin and haven’t yet undertaken that task. The second is to label the people that Putin sends to kill his opponents, real or imagined. Mr. Putin’s killers are sent abroad to kill people important enough — or sufficiently symbolic to Putin — whenever he likes. Putin was a colonel in the KGB, one of the Soviets’ most aggressive tools to suppress any political opposition to the Soviet regime. The KGB had an entire department — Department V — which was dedicated to assassinations. Now Trump has picked Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate. Vance has opposed further aid to Ukraine. Putin, whose uncompromising aggressiveness is displayed daily in Ukraine, hasn’t lost touch with his KGB roots. An attempted assassination by Russian agents of one of Germany’s most important industry CEOs, Armin Papperger, was reportedly foiled by U.S. and German intelligence. Before we get to the attempt on Papperger’s life, a little history is in order. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Trump Is Lucky, but The Secret Service Blew It) It’s not easy to oppose Putin, especially within Russia’s borders. He has the ability to imprison political opponents and few have the courage to take him on. Those who do — e.g. Alexei Navalny — are usually imprisoned before they can accomplish much. Navalny was an international figure, recognized for his bravery in arguing that Putin’s government was entirely corrupt. Navalny, having fled Russia and then returned, died in a Russian prison camp a few months ago. We remember, too, Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian officer in the FSB, the domestic arm of Russia’s secret police, who managed to escape Russia. (The FSB and its international counterpart, the SVR, were created from the remnants of the old Soviet KGB.) Litvinenko was murdered by two Russian SVR agents in London in November 2016 in a very imaginative and agonizing way. He was poisoned with Polonium 210, a radioactive substance that killed him in a few days. And then there was the failed attempt, again in London, to kill former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in March 2018. They survived an attack with Novichok, a nerve agent produced in Russia. A policewoman barely survived exposure to Novichok in her investigation of the case. (And, please remember, that Navalny was also poisoned with Novichok but it isn’t clear that the nerve agent was the proximate cause of his death.) And now there is the case of the attempted assassination of Papperger. Why did he attract Putin’s attention? Because he is the CEO of Rhinemetall, the company that produces German tanks, armored vehicles, and ammunition some of which are employed by Ukraine’s army. It is quite evident that the attempt on Papperger’s life was intended to send a message to every manufacturer of Western weapons used in Ukraine that their executives’ lives are under threat. Had it succeeded, it could have caused an end to Germany’s support of Ukraine. Putin’s agents haven’t yet — as far as we know — attempted to kill anyone in America. But the key executives of U.S. weapons manufacturers will have to spend a lot of their companies’ money to protect themselves. They may become reluctant to support Biden’s continuing efforts to send U.S. weapons to Ukraine. And that is what it is all about. It is an attempt to put indirect pressure on Biden to stop aiding Ukraine. As the late Donald Rumsfeld was fond of saying, weakness is provocative. And Biden is terribly weak. At the NATO summit this week, he was sufficiently confused to introduce Ukrainian President Zelensky as Putin, though he corrected himself almost immediately. Biden’s weakness — and his lack of mental capacity to handle the job of the presidency — is on display for the world every day. Putin’s desire to conquer Ukraine is of existential importance to him as is NATO’s weakness. As this column has pointed out before, Putin believes that the fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest disaster of the 20th Century. He is a follower of Alexander Dugin, who has been called “Putin’s philosopher.” Dugin, in his book, The Foundations of Geopolitics wrote that if Ukraine is not made a part of Russia, Putin may as well not bother to restore the rest of what Dugin calls the great Russian empire. Russia’s economy has been put on a war footing. It is relatively clear that the NATO nations, including the US, are not prepared to support Ukraine indefinitely. Putin is a patient conqueror though it’s not clear that Russia’s economy can sustain its total support for his war in Ukraine. But the NATO nations’ weaknesses are also clear. How long will they support Ukraine no one knows. Former president Trump has been on both sides of the Ukraine issue. His son, Donald Jr., said a few days ago that his father will end the war in Ukraine but didn’t explain how he would do it. Now Trump has picked Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate. Vance has opposed further aid to Ukraine. In April, he whipped votes against Speaker Johnson’s bill for aid to Ukraine. (READ MORE: Biden’s Conspicuous Decline is a Joke — On Us) Will Vance move Trump to firmly oppose further aid to Ukraine? It’s not out of the question for Trump, if he’s reelected, to tell Europe that Ukraine is its problem, not ours. That would have enormous consequences in Europe, in NATO, and give Putin the means to do what Dugin has told him to do. The post Putin’s Audacious Murderers appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.