Can anyone doubt that these recently defenestrated individuals were walking around fully cognizant of the potential of their being whacked at any moment?
They probably had Bulgarian security guards or something like that surrounding them. But the Russian Federal Security Service (successor to the GRU/NKVD) probably paid them off handsomely and they catapulted any target over the balcony.
As Harry Truman famously said, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know."
Stalin wiped out much of his officer corps with far reaching purges of just about half the officers of the rank major and above in the 1930's. He feared a coup by his military. When Hitler attacked Russia, the Red Army was in a shambles and it took a year or two to regenerate a competent officer corps.
Putin appears to be doing the same thing with many of his generals. I'm sure lower ranked officers are also being dispatched, but they don't make the headlines.
