PUTIN'S GREATEST HITS!

Vlad the Mad assassinating moneymen to protect his cash

RUTHLESS Russian psycho Vladimir Putin has a way of dealing with people who cross or threaten him - they tend to wind up dead!

So far this year, at least SIX oligarchs who got on the wrong side of pitiless Putin have been slaughtered under suspicious circumstances. Experts say the deaths are professional hit jobs with the crazed Kremlin kingpin's fingerprints all over them!

"There is a cleaning-out going on," says Anders Aslund, author of Russia's Crony Capitalism. "But this looks like Kremlin murders to me. There's big money involved in all these killings!"

Indeed! All the dead were rich in their own right, but they weren't killed for money. Intelligence experts insist the victims all knew too much about Putin's own secret $200 BILLION fortune and were silenced before they could tip off Western investigators looking to seize his assets for invading Ukraine.

Here are the Russian oligarchs snuffed so far but experts insist the bloody purge has just begun!

INGEN LEONID SHULMAN, 60

WHO: Head of transport for government-controlled Gazprom Invest, which owns 60 percent of Russia's natural gas resources.

WHEN: Jan. 30

WHERE: Wrists slit in his cottage outside Leningrad. Note was left to stage assassination as a suicide.