Putin’s Russia suspected of involvement asssasinations in UK and abroad for two decades

Moscow has been implicated in a string of deaths in Britain and elsewhere over the last 15 years. And, as the most recent cases demonstrate, there are suspicions that Russia continues to assassinate its enemies-in-exile.

Moscow’s alleged oversees assassinations came to public attention following the death of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.

The former KGB agent, MI6 employee and Kremlin critic died after drinking tea poisoned with radioactive polonium. An inquest found he had been murdered in an operation by the Russian security services.

A number of other deaths followed which aroused suspicions.

They include Badri Patarkatsishvili,

52, who was close to Putin enemy Boris Berezovsky, and who died in Surrey in 2008 from heart failure – but had claimed he was an assassination target – and oligarch

Berezovsky himself, 67, who opposed Putin, and was found hanged at his Berkshire home in 2013. But the most high-profile of Moscow’s assassination operations was one which failed.

Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia, were found seriously ill on a bench in Salisbury in March last year. They had been poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok in an attack “almost

certainly” approved by the Russian state. Both survived, thanks to British medical expertise, but local woman Dawn Sturgess, who along with her partner Charlie Rowley were exposed to Novichok after handling a contaminated perfume dispenser left by the would-be killers, later died in hospital.

The police investigation which followed lead to the naming of two suspects – both members of the Russian security services.

Dmitry Obretetskiy, 49, was hit by a car as he walked his dog last month. He passed away on Saturday. It was reported he had “intense financial disputes” with “enemies”. And Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, 40, a Chechen exile, was shot in the head in a Berlin park in August. The case is to be investigated by German prosecutors, which suggests a foreign intelligence service is suspected of involvement.