They live in a country where prominent people (journalists, politicians, businessman) who uncover 'too much information' - just 'disappear'.
Could you provide more specific information on this? Even if you could simply give a link to something like a wikipedia list of prominent people that just 'disappeared', it would be helpful.
Thank you. Although I have not had a chance to study this regrettable list as closely as I presume you did, a perfunctory search finds only two disappearances, both of them in 1995-1996 during the first Chechen war:
1995 27 February – Maxim Shabalin, politics editor of Nevskoe Vremya newspaper (St Petersburg).[62] and Felix Titov, the paper's photographer, disappeared on an assignment to Chechnya. Despite numerous expeditions, from 1995 to 1999, no trace was found of the two men's remains. Missing [J].
20 March 1996 Chaikova, correspondent for the Obshchaya gazeta (Moscow) weekly newspaper disappeared while on assignment. Her body was found buried in the Chechen village of Gekhi on 11 April, blindfolded and bearing signs of mistreatment. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the back of the head. The identity of her executioners remains disputed. According to documents from Dudaev's archive, that came into hands of Russian special services in 2002, she was killed by people from so called "Department of state security of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria" (Russian: Департамент государственной безопасности ЧРИ).[152][153] At the time there were strong suspicions that Russian security services were involved.
So far we have a list of two, not very prominent, journalists, who disappeared twenty years ago while reporting on a war with well-documented atrocities on both sides. I don't believe this is what the GP had in mind, writing that "prominent people (journalists, politicians, businessman) who uncover 'too much information' - just 'disappear'".
As an unrelated aside, this happened during the good Russian administration -- dynamic, democratic, West-approved Yetsin, who was so popular in his own country, that Bill Clinton himself came to Russia to support his election campaign:
President Clinton arrives in Russia today facing issues that will severely test his diplomatic mettle. Mr. Clinton's primary purpose is to join other world leaders in a weekend summit meeting on nuclear safety and security that seems primarily designed to burnish Boris Yeltsin's prestige as he campaigns for re-election as Russian President.
Prominent journalists or opposition members are killed in broad daylight and/or in public. They may be 'blessed' with a jail sentence, or if they are very lucky and will "smell the assassins breath" - they will escape the country.
Oligarchs who were opposing Putin in 2000s are either dead, in jail or left the country (and left their businesses to the government).
Boris Nemtsov - was killed in the middle of Moscow, was well known opponent of current Russian political system, after his death practically all opposition is oppressed, because not any opponent wants to die anymore (knowing that there are not many prominent opposition leaders left in Russia).
If you criticize Putin or government too hard you will "magically" earn few criminal cases and it's highly likely you will be convicted (e.g. Alexei Nemtsov, M. Khodorkovsky). You could be in jail as long as they wish, because they "may find extra details" about your case just before you need to be released (Khodorkovsky's case).
If you "speak too much" they will make you "dissapear" from public eye, either by death, jail, making you leave the country or just making sure that you never appear publicly again.
Chechnya was squirming with journalists through whole nineties.
Most likely killers were KGB remnants. KGB conceded the media battle over Chechnya in English speaking world very early. But what they didn't like was that these journalists were revealing Russians and Russian speakers what has really happened in Chechnya.
None of murdered journalists were critical of Chechens. Why would Chechens kill them?
"There's no evidence that Kamaev's death was unnatural, but the well-known poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service and KGB, and a laundry list of journalists who've died during Vladimir Putin’s regime, could leave an observer forgivably suspicious. It’s hard to avoid thinking about it, as the 2016 Rio Summer Games kick off under the cloud of Russia’s doping scandal, which in scope exceeds anything enacted during the Soviet era."
Yes, I suppose Litvinenko did disappear in one sense of the word, i.e. ceased to exist.
However, the sense in which this word is usually used in this context, is different. It usually denotes a forced disappearance, when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's fate and whereabouts, with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law.[1].
For instance, the following can be validly said about Pinochet's regime and government in Chile:
"He shut down parliament, suffocated political life, banned trade unions, and made Chile his sultanate. His government disappeared 3,000 opponents, arrested 30,000 (torturing thousands of them) ... Pinochet's name will forever be linked to the Desaparecidos, the Caravan of Death, and the institutionalized torture that took place in the Villa Grimaldi complex.”
— Thor Halvorssen, president of the Human Rights Foundation, National Review
I'll take doping scandal over institutionalized torture any time.
Could you provide more specific information on this? Even if you could simply give a link to something like a wikipedia list of prominent people that just 'disappeared', it would be helpful.