Free Republic

A presenter on Russian state television has issued an apparent threat to "traitors" living in Britain. Kirill Kleymenov warned of the dangers of spying on Russia and advised those who betrayed their country: "Don't choose Britain as a place to live." The comments, made on Channel One's Vremya news programme on Wednesday evening, came amid speculation over who was behind the attempted murder of a double agent on British soil. "I don't wish death on anyone, but, purely for educational purposes, I have a warning for anyone who dreams of such a career," he reportedly said. "The profession of a...

One of two men believed by British intelligence to have poisoned a Russian spy’s tea with a rare radioactive substance in London has died, according to a state-owned news agencyOne of the men accused of killing former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London has died of Covid-19 in Moscow, according to reports. Dmitri Kovtun was one of two men who a UK inquiry ruled had poisoned Litvinenko’s tea with a rare radioactive substance back in 2006. Reports from state-owned Russian news agency Tass said Kovtun contracted coronavirus before dying in a Moscow hospital. Kovtun, along with Andrei Lugovoi, was...

Dmitry Kovtun is dead, say reports. Mr Kovtun led an unusual life: from wannabe porn star, rubbish collector, waiter and alcoholic, to one of two Russian agents implicated in the radioactive poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. What dreams are made of.

A high-ranking Russian law official believed to be the authority behind attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, who took part in the notorious Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr during the presidential campaign, has been killed in a mysterious helicopter crash. Deputy prosecutor-general Saak Karapetyan - a long-time ally of President Vladimir Putin - died last night when his AS-350 came down in Kostroma region northeast of Moscow during an unauthorized flight. Karapetyan had been in charge of Russian criminal investigations into the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK, and the deaths of Putin critic...

US authorities are to examine Roman Abramovich’s ties to the Kremlin as part of a national security review of a $2.3bn (£1.18bn) bid for Oregon Steel by a company controlled by the Russian billionaire. Experts in Washington say the US government panel that reviews foreign deals will scrutinise the proposed takeover, announced last month, more closely if Mr Abramovich is found to be acting with the backing of the Russian government. Mr Abramovich is believed to be close to Vladimir Putin, Russian president. The Russian steel company, Evraz, is controlled by Mr Abramovich and Alexander Abramov, group director. Evraz and...

Nikolai Glushkov, a Russian exile who was a close friend of a noted critic of President Vladimir Putin, has died from an "unexplained" cause in London, police say. The Metropolitan Police says that its counterterrorism unit is handling the case "because of associations that the man is believed to have had." Glushkov, 68, was a close friend of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a prominent critic of the Kremlin who was found dead in 2013. At the time, an inquiry found he had hanged himself — but Glushkov publicly disputed the idea that his friend and former business ally would have...

A former British spy has vanished after being named as the author of a ‘dirty’ file smearing Donald Trump and fled his £1.5million mansion in fear telling his neighbour: ‘Look after my cat.’ Ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele has been named as the author of the salacious Russian dossier containing outlandish claims about Donald Trump’s sex life and bizarre footage allegedly held by the Kremlin’s blackmail unit. The 35-page briefing, which is littered with spelling mistakes, includes an unsubstantiated and far-fetched claim Trump watched prostitutes perform a ‘golden shower (urination) show’ in the Presidential Suite of a Moscow hotel. Mr Trump...

Read the article that may have gotten Alexander Litvinenko Killed

LONDON — A high-profile British inquiry into the poisoning of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer turned critic of the Kremlin, concluded in a report released on Thursday that his murder “was probably approved” by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the head of the country’s spy service. The finding by Robert Owen, a retired High Court judge, in a 328-page report, represented by far the most damning official link between Mr. Litvinenko’s death on Nov. 23, 2006, and the highest levels of the Kremlin.

Follow the hearing on the murder of Litvinenko

"The polonium trail started on 16 October 2006 when Litvinenko met Lugovoi and Kovtun in London. ..." "When Lugovoi and Kovtun's movements were mapped against the sites of polonium contamination, there was an exact match. The evidence of guilt was strong. In May 2007, the then Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald announced that Andrei Lugovoi was to be charged with murder and his extradition would be sought from Russia. Kovtun was charged in 2010. ..." Prof Norman Dombey, a physicist who has a deep knowledge of Russian nuclear sites, gave evidence at the public inquiry. Dombey says there is...

[subtitle: New law bans Soviet street names, statues and other reminders of communist past, as some question priorities.] In a country where at least 4,000 localities had a main thoroughfare named after Lenin, outlawing remnants of the Soviet era like street names and statues was bound to cause problems... The phenomenon is so common now that it has its own name -- "Leninopad" or "Lenin-fall," a phrase that echoes the Ukrainian word for snowfall...

Russian president Vladimir Putin and his long-time ally Victor Ivanov, who is currently head of Russia’s narcotics agency, have been implicated in helping run a drug smuggling and money laundering ring in St Petersburg in the 1990s. The allegations were made by ex-KGB officer Yuri Shvets who spoke at the inquiry into the death Alexander Litvinenko yesterday. Shvets testified in front of Ben Emmerson QC, expanding on a report he had compiled with fellow ex-Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, a few months prior to the latter’s death from polonium poisoning. According to Shvets’ sources, which include the late...

LONDON — It has consumed more than eight years of maneuvering, obstruction and a widow’s dogged legal campaign, fought often on a shoestring. But finally, on Tuesday, a public inquiry is set to begin its quest for an answer to the question that has driven the whole process: Why did Alexander V. Litvinenko have to die? On Nov. 1, 2006, Mr. Litvinenko, a former officer of the Soviet K.G.B. in self-exile in London and a vocal critic of President Vladimir V. Putin, sipped tea from a poisoned pot, took sick and died 22 days later. Only after his death did...

A tape apparently recorded by murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko a year before he was poisoned has revealed he was digging up links between Vladimir Putin and one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists. A Telegraph investigation uncovered the audio recording, in which the dissident claims from beyond the grave that Russia’s president had a “good relationship” with Semion Mogilevich - a Ukrainian crime boss who was on the FBI's most wanted list and whom Mr Litvinenko believed was selling weapons to al-Qaeda. The apparent recording of Mr Litvinenko is published for the first time ahead of a public inquiry...

LONDON — Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian oligarch and long-time opponent of the Kremlin, died at his home in Britain on Saturday aged 67 in unexplained circumstances, officials said. British police launched a full investigation into the death at the mansion in the well-heeled commuter town of Ascot, near London, saying it was "currently being treated as unexplained". Berezovsky's lawyer Alexander Dobrovinsky told Russian television the tycoon had committed suicide after suffering from weeks of depression over his huge debts, although another friend strongly denied this. Berezovsky was one of handful of businessmen who made a fortune out of the...

On New Year’s Day in 1988, Abdullah Ali, an Iraqi businessman who had been living in London for eight years, joined three compatriots for dinner at a restaurant called Cleopatra in Notting Hill.The next morning, he was taken ill with flu-like symptoms and was admitted to hospital. There his condition rapidly deteriorated — his hair fell out, he developed excruciating skin and joint pain, and paralysis and respiratory failure began to set in. Fifteen days later he was dead — but not before he had begun to wonder whether something had been added to his vodka. He was right: the...

The Polonium Diversion At least a dozen people have been contaminated by the rare radioactive isotope Polonium 210. The list includes Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB who died from a dose of Polonium 210 in London on November 23rd; Andrei Lugovoi, a former colleague of Litvinenko in the KGB, who met with Litvinenko at the Pine bar of the Millennium Hotel in London the day he became ill, November 1st; Dmitry Lugovoi, Lugovoi’s business associate, who also attended that November 1st meetings; 7 employees of the Millennium Hotel; Mario Scaramella, an Italian security consultant, who dined with...

The British government sought on Tuesday to limit the information it would disclose at a planned inquest into the death of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former officer in the K.G.B. who succumbed to radiation poisoning in London more than six years ago. The coroner hearing the case said that it may now be postponed. “Due to the complexity of the investigation which necessarily precedes the hearings,” the coroner, Sir Robert Owen, said, “it may not be possible to adhere” to the planned May 1 start date for the hearings. The inquest would be the first — and probably the only...

Recent tests conducted on Yasser Arafat's personal belongings at the time of his unexpected death in 2004 suggest his body contained abnormal levels of radioactive polonium, the same poisonous substance that killed Russian spy-turned-dissident Alexander Litvinenko, Al-Jazeera TV reports.