MURDER PROBE OF ANOTHER RUSSIAN

POLICE launched a murder probe last night after a postmortem showed Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov’s death was due to “compression to the neck”. The 68-year-old businessman’s body was found at his home in New Malden, south-west London, on Monday night – eight days after double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia collapsed from nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury, Wilts. Though police said no evidence had been found to link the two incidents, counter-terrorism officers launched a probe into Mr Glushkov’s death “as a precaution because of associations that the man is believed to have had”. He fled to the UK in 2006 to escape jail for defrauding Russian airline Aeroflot. Mr Glushkov was a close pal of 67-year-old oligarch Boris Berezovsky who was found dead with a scarf round his neck on his bathroom floor in 2013 after fleeing Moscow for Britain following a fall-out with Vladimir Putin.

Prime Minister Theresa May invited officials from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to come to Britain to take a sample of the novichok used to poison the Skripals for independent analysis.

The organisation said Russia had not declared it possessed such a nerve agent when it was presented with a certificate last year for destroying chemical weapons.

Whistleblowing scientist Dr Vil Mirzayanov, who made novichok before defecting to the West, said it could only have come from “the Russians”.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson – who yesterday visited a Battle of Britain bunker in Uxbridge, west London, with his Polish counterpart Jacek Czaputowicz – said it was “overwhelmingly likely” that Mr Putin directly authorised its use in the attack.

But a Kremlin spokesman described the allegation as “shocking and unforgivable”.