not saying no one has ever had their family threatened or harmed for leaving, but it should be acknowledged that the mortality rate in general in Russia for adult men is shockingly high. Just given the rates of alcoholism endemic to that country (and attendant health issues), and the much lower safety standards for vehicles and roads, the law of averages suggests there will be many more premature deaths within a given population in the former Soviet Republixs than compared to a similar sample drawn from Western countries like US, Canada, and Sweden.
Among the deaths which can legitimately be considered ‘suspicious’ my guess is that they can be more plausibly attributed to persons with criminal/economic motives, than to state-sponsored repression.
Of course, if a person’s desperate life circumstances were the result of their losing their job/being blackballed after a family member’s defection, then it would not be controversial IMO to acknowledge that government persecution/retaliation played a role in their subsequent early death.
But to say straight up that ppl have been killed for defecting, or for their family member’s defection, to play hockey in NA — while I’m not saying it never happened, I would be careful about alleging that without specific examples in mind, otherwise you run the risk of undermining the credibility of legitimate criticisms