The Britons who went walkabout to escape the Kremlin
After blowing the whistle on alleged corruption by one of Vladimir Putin’s associates, Southampton builder Nick Stride fled into the Australian outback with his young family to escape retribution. Thirteen years later, and still in hiding, he shares their
HIDING out in the remote Australian outback surrounded by sharkinfested waters, crocodiles, snakes and deadly spiders, British builder Nick Stride feared that life on the run with his wife and two young children would end in tragedy. “I really thought we might die out in the wild, where nobody would find us,” says the 56-year-old from Southampton, whose exhausted family dragged about in threadbare clothes, their bodies stained red with dust. “It was a living death.We were running for our lives, but I knew we couldn’t go on like that much longer,” he adds.
Stride was fleeing from the long arm of Vladimir Putin’s former deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov, one of Russia’s wealthiest oligarchs, after turning whistleblower and exposing alleged corruption.
“I was warned they would kill me,” says Stride, whose dramatic story is revealed in the book Run For Your Life, by Sue Williams, published tomorrow. “I was frightened for our lives, but trying to escape Russian assassins almost killed us.”
Stride’s voice chokes up frequently and he wipes tears from his eyes as he recounts his family’s ordeal. He first went to Russia in 1998, aged 30, to help build the current British Embassy in Moscow. “I fell in love with the country, and its people,” he recalls. “And then I fell in love with my wife.”
At a bar he met Ludmila, a beautiful slim brunette who worked as a Russian television censor.With the aid of a Russian-English dictionary they courted, and Stride quickly learned the language. They wed in 1999 and moved to the UK the following year. Son Michael was born in 2000 and daughter Anya the following year.
But Stride was lured back to Russia in 2005 for a £110million construction job, and returned with his family.
“They wanted me to manage the construction of Igor Shuvalov’s vast mansion just outside Moscow,” he recalls. “It was palatial, with an Olympic-size glass-enclosed swimming pool and a marble winter garden with four different climates under a glass dome.
“It was a five-year project, and I was travelling across Europe sourcing marble and stone.” Neighbours of the 18-acre estate included the billionaire oligarch Roman Abramovich.
“Shuvalov went everywhere with four armed bodyguards, and the construction site was cleared of workers whenever he visited,” says Stride. “I was one of the few allowed to remain, and he came to trust me. He was a tall, imposing man who always looked as if he had stepped off a movie set, immaculately dressed in an elegant suit, with make-up for a perfect complexion.
“As I became more trusted, I had access to his business finances, chasing down over-payments and seeing where the money came and went. I soon realised that it wasn’t entirely above board.”
RUSSIA’S elite are notorious for hiding, understating and laundering money, and Shuvalov, worth a reported £174million, allegedly used multiple companies to move funds around and hide materials imports from Europe to avoid Russian customs duty. Indeed, Shuvalov has been accused of corruption by Russian opposition figures. In March 2022, as part of its sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine, the British government announced a full asset freeze and travel ban on Shuvalov, stopping access to his two luxury central London apartments in Whitehall Court, estimated to be worth £11million.
“Russian business is often corrupt, with bribes and threats,” says Stride. “That’s just how things are done. It can be incredibly dangerous. You can hire an assassin to kill someone for just £160. One of Shuvalov’s men told me, ‘We have some big holes we can fill at the construction site.’ ”
But he became anxious when Shuvalov began freezing him out of business meetings, cutting off his access to financial transactions and files. “I was afraid that Shuvalov thought I knew too much and might be a threat,” says Stride, who claims the oligarch stopped his family from leaving Russia.
After six nail-biting months he gathered his family and flew to Britain, ostensibly to renew their visas and return. Instead, they fled the UK for Australia.
“I wanted to get as far from Russia as possible,” he says. “Shuvalov’s reach extended into Britain, so I thought we might be safer in the Australian outback.”
Stride knew the Russian security services had murdered Putin’s opponents across the globe. Former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko was killed by polonium poisoning in London in 2006, and ex-Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal survived an attack using the nerve agent Novichok in
Salisbury in 2018. More recently Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in prison in February, while Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash last year. As insurance, Stride took with him hard drives from his two computers which had details of Shuvalov’s finances and questionable business dealings.
“I knew there was incriminating evidence against Shuvalov on my computer,” says Stride, who claimed to have documentation showing the illegal laundering of money overseas, suspicious million-dollar cash
transfers and massive bribes to get his trucks through customs – allegations Shuvalov later denied. “What worried me more was not what I knew but what Shuvalov thought I knew,” says Stride.
“As soon as I landed in Australia in 2011 I received two phone calls from Russia threatening to kill me if we didn’t return. I tore up my SIM card and headed for the outback.”
Learning that an investigative journalist was writing about Shuvalov’s alleged corruption, Stride reached out offering his confidential information. The resulting article
shook Shuvalov, who months later quit Russian politics.
STRIDE explains: “I felt it was my duty. If you witness a crime, whether it’s a mugging in the street or corruption by the deputy prime minister of Russia, it’s your duty to say something. It put my family at risk but what Shuvalov did affected every single person in Russia.” Stride and his
family hid while applying for political asylum in Australia: a frustratingly quixotic quest that ultimately ended in failure, forcing them to remain as illegal immigrants.
“The hardest part of life on the run was the isolation, leaving friends and family behind,” he says. “It was especially hard on my daughter Anya, who saw it as a punishment.”
Stride almost died when bitten by a venomous insect. “Snakes were everywhere, and we were far from medical aid,” he says.
Exhausted and nearly broke, Stride and son Michael fled in desperation to Vietnam, and then to New Zealand but 18-yearold daughter Anya became stuck alone in Australia. “I was angry and upset and depressed all the time,” says Anya. “I was on the verge of suicide.” Stride’s voice cracks: “It took more than three years before she could join us. Ludmila suffered a nervous breakdown, and we divorced. It was just too hard for her.”
Today Stride and his children remain in hiding, now in New Zealand, where he fell in love with a Russian emigré ballerina, coincidentally also named Ludmila.
“I still fear for my life, but I can’t let that dictate how I live,” he says. “We’re always moving around. I think I’ll always live in fear. I’ll probably never feel safe again. I know Shuvalov can hold a grudge.”
Yet he has no regrets about blowing the whistle on the Russian oligarch. “I couldn’t face my kids if I hadn’t,” Stride adds.
“It was the right thing to do. I just wish I hadn’t been punished so much for telling the truth.”
●Run ForYour Life: The remarkable true story of a family forced into hiding after leaking Russian secrets, by Sue Williams (Simon & Schuster, £9.99) is published tomorrow. Visit expressbookshop.com or call 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on orders over £25