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Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky has never made any secret of his loathing for President Vladimir Putin, but in an interview in his London exile the controversial tycoon went one step further with a vow to mount a coup. "President Putin violates the constitution and any violent action on the opposition's part is justified today, and that includes taking power by force, which is exactly what I am working at," the oligarch, looking vibrant despite five years in self-imposed exile, told AFP at his Piccadilly office. For the past 18 months, "we have been preparing to take power by force in...

Oligarch Boris Berezovsky may have been killed by British spies from MI5 or MI6 to stop him leaking state secrets to the Russians, a leading supporter of Vladimir Putin argued today. Fears in the West that the tycoon was planning to make peace with the president and end his 13-year UK exile may have led to him being assassinated, Kremlin insider Sergei Markov has said. After falling out with Putin in 2000, the 67-year-old fled to Britain where he was later given political asylum.

Murder was not ruled out today after an inquest heard that exiled Russian Boris Berezovsky was found lying in his bathroom with a ligature around his neck. A piece of the same material around his throat was tied on to the shower rail above him, indicating he apparently hanged from the rail. But police told a coroner they still cannot rule out murder. Det Insp Mark Bissell said: “The results of the postmortem found that the cause of death was consistent with hanging. "The pathologist has found nothing to indicate a sign of struggle or third party involvement.” He added...

Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch found lying on his bathroom floor with a ligature around his neck, was in good spirits the night before his died and was looking forward to a holiday to Israel, according to his girlfriend. Katerina Sabirova, 23, said she did not believe he had killed himself and said that he sounded “better than usual” when she spoke to him. She said they were due to go to the Dead Sea three days later. A post-mortem conducted last month found that Mr Berezovsky's death was "consistent with hanging" and that there were no signs of violence...

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...

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...

A Russian deputy attorney general, who is thought to have directed Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya in her efforts abroad on behalf of Russia's government, reportedly died Wednesday night in a helicopter crash. The Daily Beast reported that Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was aboard an unauthorized helicopter flight, which crashed near the village of Vonyshevo, outside of Moscow. Karapetyan was reportedly behind Veselnitskaya's global efforts to lobby lawmakers to overturn anti-corruption acts such as the U.S. Magnitsky Act, which passed in 2012. The U.S. legislation is similar to others around the world which commemorate Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died while trying...

Recently we learned that President Putin is spending more time in bunkers and cracking down on internal security as he fears the possibility of a drone strike or a coup.In addition to seeking to preserve his own personal security, Putin has cracked down on people's personal freedoms by shutting off social media and private messaging accounts and pushing everyone toward Kremlin-monitored accounts.But there are signs that this repression is starting to backfire as people are increasingly willing to oppose Putin publicly. Case in point, Ilya Remeslo, a former Putin supporter who spent years harassing Putin's enemies.Remeslo was once part of...

Former vice-president of the Russian concern YUKOS Mikhail Rogachev has been found dead in Moscow . This was reported by the Russian propaganda Telegram channel Mash “One of the top YUKOS executives, Mikhail Rogachev, fell out of a window and died in the center of Moscow. He had previously committed suicide,” the report says. It is noted that Rogachev was 64 years old. According to Mash, he had a severe form of oncology. “He left a suicide note and committed suicide in the morning on Protopopovsky Lane,” the Telegram channel reported.

Somebody new going to fall out of a window in Moscow? Seems the czar of Russia is not well regarded by the boyars he holds in his closest circle, and now the entire world now knows about it. That's what we read in the Daily Mail:Moscow's high society has been rocked by a scandal after a pair of prominent Vladimir Putin cronies were allegedly heard insulting the Russian despot.Oligarch and former Russian senator Farkhad Akhmedov and high-profile Moscow music producer Iosif Prigozhin, both supposedly supporters of Putin, have been accused of calling him 'Satan' and a 'dwarf'.An audio recording of...

Former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Jessica Aber, who was found dead at the age of 43 by Virginia authorities on Saturday, was at the helm of high-profile investigations into intelligence leaks, allegations of war crimes against Russian-linked individuals and people suspected of providing sensitive U.S. technology to Moscow before she stepped down at the start of the year. Why It Matters Aber, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, resigned in January after President Donald Trump was inaugurated. She had risen to lead one of the most important federal prosecutor's offices and roughly 300 prosecutors, civil...

Some 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion began, Volodymyr Zelensky has said in a rare admission of the extent of the nation's casualties. In a post on social media, the Ukrainian president said 370,000 injuries had been reported, though this figure included soldiers who had been hurt more than once and some of the injuries were said to be minor. He also claimed that 198,000 Russian soldiers had been killed and a further 550,000 wounded. The BBC has not been able to verify either side's figures.

Russia has suffered its deadliest day of the war in Ukraine so far, with 1,950 soldiers killed in just 24 hours, according to the Ukrainian army. Vladimir Putin's losses in the war against Ukraine are piling up after thousands of Russian soldiers died in the last two days alone, with 1,770 soldiers being killed on Sunday and another 1,950 on Monday. The record number of 1,950 troops dying within a day serves as fresh humiliation for Putin after his two-day Kursk counter offensive on the weekend ended with 28 tanks blown up and 100 troops killed, according to reports. Footage...