I SPY A NASTY ATTACK

Russian spies who moved to the West have been targets of deadly attacks on several occasions in the UK in the past.

1978: Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov is killed on Waterloo Bridge in London by an unknown assassin with a specially adapted umbrella that fired a 1,7mm-wide pellet containing the poison ricin into Markov’s skin. 2006: Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer with the Russian spy agency FSB, dies in London after drinking a cup of tea laced with radioactive polonium given to him by a former KGB agent and another Soviet military-linked man.

2012: German Gorbuntsov, a Russian banker living in exile in the UK, survives after being shot in the chest four times with a submachine gun by an unknown assassin.

2012: Businessman and whistleblower Alexander Perepilichny collapses and dies while jogging near his home in Surrey, England. An ongoing inquest into his death finds traces of a chemical found in the poisonous plant gelsemium in his stomach.

2013: Billionaire Boris Berezovsky is found hanged at his ex-wife’s Berkshire, UK, mansion. While it appears he’s killed himself, pathologists say they can’t rule out murder. For several years Berezovsky was outspoken in the media against his former protégé, Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

2014: Scot Young, an associate of Berezovsky, is found impaled on railings after supposedly jumping from a fourth-floor flat in central London. Again, a coroner rules his death may not have been a suicide.