The KGB's Poison Factory

From Lenin to Litvinenko

Boris Volodarsky

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781848325425
• eBook ISBN: 9781473815735
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

"A cracking good read" and a chilling true story of Russia's assassination program begun more than a century ago and which continues today (Tennent H. Bagley, former CIA chief of Soviet Bloc counterintelligence).
 
In late November 2006, Alexander Litvinenko—a former lieutenant colonel of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation—was ruthlessly assassinated in London by radiation poisoning. The shocking murder was the most notorious crime committed by the Russian intelligence on foreign soil in more than three decades.
 
Here, former Russian military intelligence officer and an international expert in special operations Boris Volodarsky—who was consulted by the Metropolitan Police during the Litvinenko investigation—offers readers a startling narrative of the Russian security services' history of covert assassination by poisoning.
 
Beginning in 1917 with Lenin and his dreaded Cheka secret police, Russian security services have committed killing after killing both in Russia and across the globe. In The KGB's Poison Factory, Volodarsky proves that the Litvinenko's poisoning—supposedly ordered by Russian strongman Vladimir Putin—is just one episode in a chain of murders going back decades. Some of these assassinations or attempted assassinations are already known, others are revealed here for the first time.
 
With keen insight, Volodarsky brings readers inside the assassinations of twenty individuals killed by order of the Kremlin in a revealing tell-all that "will fascinate students as well as general readers interested in international espionage" ( Library Journal).

Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

The Funeral

Georgi Markov, London, September 1978

The KGB’s Poison Factory

Those were the days

Litvinenko: Operation VLADIMIR, Part I

Victor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian Patient, Kiev, September 2004

Béla Lapusnyik, the victim, Vienna, May 1962

Nikolai Artamonov, the triple agent, Vienna, December 1975

Litvinenko: Operation VLADIMIR, Part II

Nikolai Khokhlov, the illegal, Germany, 1954–7

Bogdan Stashinsky, the assassin, Germany, 1957–9

Litvinenko: Operation VLADIMIR, Part III

Dead Souls: From Stalin to Putin

Epilogue

Notes

Appendix: Selected Soviet and Russian operations abroad: from Lenin to Litvinenko and beyond

Select Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to the many people who helped in this project. Some, in fact, were absolutely instrumental in bringing it to life. I am grateful to them all, but first of all, I thank my wife, Valentina. She was as always the first reader and gave daily support and encouragement as well as valuable ideas and comments.

Without William Green, a Washingtonian and an American in the very best sense of this word, this book would never have seen the light of the day.

My British publisher, Michael Leventhal, entrusted me this project and was patient and understanding as it progressed.

As often happens, there are people who, unfortunately, cannot be named, but whose opinion and friendly advice were important for the better understanding of many processes behind the scenes. Thank you, Jim and Richard, for kindly sharing your vast experience.

After Tennent H. (‘Pete’) Bagley published his Spy Wars, he agreed to spend time and effort reading and correcting the text. My gratitude to Pete is profound while any errors that remain are exclusively my fault.

I thank Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko for the many hours they have spent with me discussing the case.

Two journalists and authors, Steve LeVine and Pete Earley, helped a lot. And the outstanding historians (and good friends) Professor Paul Preston of the London School of Economics and Professor Angel Viñas of the University of Madrid (Complutense) provided great support and help.

Another good friend, Paolo Guzzanti, member of the Italian parliament and former President of the Mitrokhin Commission, helped unlock many doors to better understanding of the Italian part of the Litvinenko story and of the people and events involved. Pal Salamon of the Open Society Archives in Budapest sent me many documents pertinent to the Lapusnyik case. Alexandra Bajka kindly provided footage from the latest documentary filmed by her Polish TVN television channel that threw new light on the life and death of Nikolai Artamonov. Max Fisher of the Windfall Films, London, kindly gave video material covering the Markov case in its modern perspective. And many thanks to Michael Mann, a famous Hollywood film director, screenwriter and producer, and his assistant Maria Norman, for all they did.

I was buoyed up by the interest, encouragement and good humour these men and women showed me throughout the months of research and writing. Without them I could not have done it. Thank you!

Prologue

In February 1997 the then director of the Aeroflot office in Vienna, Konstantin Bushlanov called my wife to ask for a favour. A Very Important Person – Mr Bushlanov gave no name at that stage – was expected to arrive from Moscow and would Valentina be kind enough to use her knowledge and contacts to recommend a discreet luxury hotel in the Austrian Alps in order for the family of the VIP to have a great and so much deserved skiing holiday.

The reason for the call to this particular number was simple. Several months before my wife and I had started publishing a magazine that we called Business Lunch that purported to give guidance and advice to the new breed of the Russian millionaires who had started to spend their money abroad without any particular knowledge of what was commonly understood in the West as ‘quality’: fine wines, excellent food, top-class hotels ‘with understatement’ and bespoke tailoring. Their usual choice of accommodation was the Ritz in London and Paris (not that I have anything against the Ritz) and typical must-have objects were Versace clothes, leathers and furniture. For jewellery many of the Russian nouveaux riches preferred either the Chopard or Chanel brands that proudly called themselves haut joaillerie. Such places as Savile Row in London or the Widder Hotel in Zürich were not yet on their map, while the new Ralph Lauren flagship store on Old Bond Street was still under construction. So we thought it might be a good idea to earn a little money from advertisers while at the same time giving good advice to the readers. Our Business Lunch became quite popular and, what was more important, Konstantin Bushlanov arranged for its free distribution on board Aeroflot flights going to and from Vienna. Besides, he was a nice, friendly guy, almost certainly not one of those GRU (Russian military intelligence) members who occupied most of the slots in the Aeroflot offices around the world.

Obviously, it was our duty to help: my wife immediately answered that we indeed had contacts in a very suitable venue just outside Salzburg. The offer was quickly accepted and we rushed off to have a discreet talk with Frau Herzog, the owner.

Standing high on the Gaisberg hill, the Vital Hotel Kobenzl is an oasis of tranquillity and relaxation. But what distinguished it from another true luxury hotel, a long-time favourite of ours, the Schloss Fuschl situated only about ten minutes away, was Frau Herzog herself. As a prominent member of the hospitality industry in the Salzburg area, she could ‘smell’ the right customer, and apart from offering all the appropriate amenities and breathtaking views from most of the rooms and the restaurant, she offered her very personal attention to those who could pay for it – well, but not over the top. With all-understanding Frau Herzog every detail was discussed and agreed upon and several days later we went to the Salzburg airport to pick up the guests.

They were a family of four and they arrived from Moscow by private jet. They introduced themselves as Badri, Olga, Roman and the 3-year-old David. We soon became quite friendly and visited Olga and her sons often, especially because Badri had from time to time to leave for Switzerland to meet a business partner. I sometimes played with David and remember well an odd Russian phrase that he used once when I showed him a simple magic trick. Observing my bare hand that a second ago had held a banknote, he said pensively: ‘Hmm, what a naughty child you are, man!’

Olga Safonova and her children enjoyed their skiing amid the tranquillity and splendour of the Austrian Alps tremendously. Badri, a black-haired Georgian in his early forties, was very generous to Frau Herzog and, to her great satisfaction, her wine cellar’s stock of great French vintages was regularly required.

At that time we did not know that Badri was actually the chief executive of the ORT, the leading Russian television channel which then belonged to the famed business tycoon Boris Berezovsky. Or that he made his regular shuttles to Lausanne to discuss the Aeroflot privatisation scheme with Berezovsky, who was his closest business associate. Or that his name was in fact Arkady Patarkatsyshvili, and that he would soon become the richest Georgian in the world. In 1997, after eight years away from Russia, there were quite a few things we were not aware of.

The Funeral

7 December 2006 was a lousy day. Only hours before the event a secret message was delivered to a narrow circle of people who were invited to attend the burial ceremony of Alexander ‘Sasha’ Litvinenko in London’s Highgate Cemetery. Oleg Gordievsky, a famous British spy within the KGB’s First Chief Directorate (foreign intelligence), his companion Maureen and myself arrived in London from our homes in Surrey and took a tube that brought us most of the way to our destination. Then we walked up the hill into the nearest pub where Oleg ordered three double gin-and-tonics and a cab that arrived promptly. The weather was bad but not rainy yet – a real storm would begin later.

At that time I was working for BBC Panorama on a documentary about Sasha’s murder. The BBC often does not produce its own programmes directly and in the Litvinenko case the job had been given to a private company named Blakeway/3BM located at a nice house at 32 Woodstock Grove a short walk away from the Shepherd’s Bush underground station. John O’Mahony, the company’s producer, got hold of my mobile number and called me on 23 November, just hours before Litvinenko passed away, to discuss a business proposal. He had seen my article ‘Russian Venom’ in the Wall Street Journal the day before and invited me to join the team of himself, Fiona Stourton (executive producer), Piers Vellacott (executive manager), Peter Norrey (second producer) and John Sweeney representing Panorama itself in an attempt to pitch a programme to the BBC. If the commission were granted, I was to become the film’s chief consultant. I immediately agreed and Fiona, John O’Mahony and I met at the cigar bar of the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair to discuss the plot.

All that happened three days after Sasha died in terrible torments in University College London Hospital (UCLH). The world’s media had gone crazy trying to learn any tiny detail that could be reported on the front pages or in the prime-time news. So my interlocutors took the bull by the horns at once.

‘Who and why?’ were their first queries.

Had I then suspected that the whole setup could be a trap carefully organised by the Russian intelligence, I might have acted differently. But the suspicion came later, so during that evening in the Con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents