Boris Berezovsky was one of the most influential people in the transition of Russia from what it was under communism to what it is now, in every respect, both good and bad. He helped Yeltsin win re-election over the communists. And he helped to stop the Chechen war which was a major accomplishment. But he then made the major mistake in his life: he brought in Putin. – Luke Harding
The broad details of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko read like a James Bond plot. But the truth was rather more mundane. And more littered with mistakes... When scientists later tested Lugovoi’s hotel room they walked into a scene from an atomic horror story. The door to Lugovoi’s room was highly contaminated. It showed a reading of more than 30,000 counts a second. Inside, there was further contamination. The situation in the bathroom was even worse. The inside of the pedal bin registered what scientists called “full-scale deflection”, a monster reading of 30,000-plus. There was radiation everywhere: on the wall under the sink, the floor and bath, plus another massive result from the bathroom door. – Luke Harding
Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with a cup of tea in a London hotel. Working with Scotland Yard detectives, as he lay dying, he traced the lethal substance to a former comrade in the Russian secret service... Two detectives from the Met’s specialist crime unit, interviewed Litvinenko in the critical care unit. He had been admitted as Edwin Redwald Carter, his British pseudonym. There are 18 interviews, lasting eight hours and 57 minutes in total. The transcripts were kept secret for eight-and-a-half years, hidden in Scotland Yard’s case file. They are, in effect, unique witness statements taken from a ghost. But Litvinenko is no ordinary ghost: he is a ghost who uses his final reserves of energy to solve a chilling murder mystery – his own. – Luke Harding
One of the most chilling episodes of the cold war... Georgi Markov, 49, felt a sharp prick in his leg as he waited for a bus in 1978 on Waterloo Bridge. An opposition activist and BBC broadcaster living in political exile since 1969, Markov was an acute irritant to the authoritarian communist government of Bulgaria. He had been receiving warnings that his life was in danger, but thought little of the pain in his thigh, and continued on his way to work. Yet amid the jostling commuter crowd was an assassin from the Bulgarian secret services with a specially adapted umbrella. He used it to push beneath Markov’s skin a deadly 1.7mm-wide pellet containing the poison ricin. – Nick Paton Walsh
