London is a ‘danger zone’ for Putin’s Russian critics London has become one of the most dangerous cities in the world for critics of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, with “no one safe” from the reach of the Kremlin, according to one of Alexander Litvinenko’s closest confidants.
Yuri Felshtinsky, a historian who co-wrote the book Blowing Up Russia with the former secret agent, said the capital had gone from being a safe haven for Russian expatriates to being dangerous for opponents of Putin.
Speaking hours after the closing statements of the inquiry into the killing of Litvinenko on Friday, Felshtinsky said that a string of unsolved murders indicated that a culture of impunity existed in London for the murderers of Russian dissidents.
“The message is that no one is safe in London. I do not know if everybody is safe in the rest of the world, but the message at this point is that no one is safe in London,” he told the Observer. Felshtinsky’s book with Litvinenko accused the FSB, the contemporary name for the KGB, of blowing up Moscow apartment blocks – killing nearly 300 people – to justify a war against Chechnya.
On Wednesday, it emerged that MI6 had judged the book one of two “red lines” Litvinenko crossed that caused him to be murdered by the Russian state. The other was allegations published by Litvinenko online in July 2006, four months before he was murdered, in which he claimed that Putin was a paedophile.
The book itself was recently added to Russia’s list of “extremist materials”, which means that online access to the title for anyone in Russia is restricted, with those in possession of a digital copy facing being penalised.
On Friday, the closing statements of the six-month inquiry into the poisoning of Litvinenko alleged that Putin personally ordered the killing of the 43-year-old dissident. Ben Emmerson QC, for Litvinenko’s family, said that Russian state responsibility had been proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Litvinenko drank tea containing a fatal dose of radioactive polonium during a meeting on 16 October 2006 at the Millennium hotel in central London with chief suspects Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi. Detectives found 40 sites contaminated with polonium-210.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/01/no-one-in-london-is-safe-from-reach-of-kremlin-says-friend-of-litvinenko
