Death riddle of another critic

Strangled at UK home, the Russian exile linked to Putin ‘enemy No.1’

COUNTER-TERRORISM police are probing the unexplained death of a friend of an enemy of Vladimir Putin.

The body of Nikolai Glushkov, 69, was found by his daughter at his home in south London on Monday night.

The new twist in the investigation into the Salisbury poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia came as Russia last night issued a chilling warning to Britain not to threaten a nuclear power.

As Prime Minister Theresa May prepared to unveil retaliatory measures against Moscow, the Kremlin refused to explain how its former spy Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in Britain.

And – in a coded reference to Vladimir Putin’s boasts about his nuclear arsenal – Russian officials warned: ‘Any threat to take punitive measures against Russia will meet with a response. The British side should be aware of that.’

Mr Glushkov, a businessman, had ‘strangulation’ marks around his neck and may have killed himself, a Russian newspaper reported.

He worked for Boris Berezovsky until the billionaire fell out with Mr Putin and fled to Britain. Mr Glushkov was held at the notorious Lefortovo Prison for five years until being cleared of fraud and money laundering while working for Aeroflot.

He was instead convicted of ‘abuse of authority’ in a plot supposedly orchestrated by Andrei Lugovoi. Now a Russian MP, Mr Lugovoi is the prime suspect for the polonium-210 murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London.

Mr Glushkov was one of the last survivors from a circle of exiles led by Mr Berezovsky, who was described as President Putin’s ‘personal enemy number one’.

Mr Berezovsky was found dead at his Surrey mansion in 2013. A coroner recorded an open verdict and Mr Glushkov had insisted the oligarch was assassinated.

Another of Mr Glushkov’s close acquaintances, Georgian billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili, 52, also died in mysterious circumstances.

Scotland Yard said yesterday that there was, as yet, no evidence to link Mr Glushkov’s death to the nerve agent poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury last week. But it sent officers from its Counter Terrorism Command, overseen by the MI5 and MI6 teams. Last night, uniformed police officers expanded the cordon around the house as colleagues in forensic outfits undertook a fingertip search.

Mr Berezovsky’s son-in-law Yegor Shuppe said the death was suspicious, adding: ‘In my opinion the cause is not any disease. It does not correlate. He did not have a sickness to die from. We helped him get good surgery, I often visited him.

‘It was not the disease that prevented him from living. I’m not an investigator, but it looks strange.’

Alexander Goldfarb, one of Mr Berezovsky’s closest confidants, said the timing rang alarm bells.

He said: ‘This looks very suspicious because of the recent attack on double agent Skripal.’

Last night, Mr Glushkov’s neighbours in New Malden described being roused from their beds by detectives in the early hours. They woke up to discover similar scenes to those in Salisbury with forensic

‘Forensic tents outside home’