Officers, people who identified themselves as police in any case, approached the target, the exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, and told him of a grave threat to his life. So not long after Atlangeriev arrived in London, Berezovsky was leaving, ever so discreetly, on a private jet to Israel.
After a couple of days watching their suspect, officers from Scotland Yard detained Atlangeriev and he was deported on a flight back to Russia.
On 16 July 2007 the UK announced the expulsion of four Russian intelligence officers. This was framed as a response to Russia’s refusal to hand over Andrei Lugovoi, the prime suspect in the fatal Litvinenko poisoning. Two months earlier, British police had charged Lugovoi (in his absence) with murder and it was becoming clear that the Kremlin had no intention of handing him over.
Although the expulsion of the four Russians was not linked (publicly at least) to the attempt on Berezovsky, news of it broke soon afterwards. Both the government and the tycoon himself (who had been fighting a battle with the Home Office about his right to asylum) had a motive in bringing the affair to light. For the authorities, already nettled by the Litvinenko affair, a threat to Berezovsky compounded the crisis with Russia.
Atlangeriev was not named in the 2007 reporting of the story and many details were unclear. Some papers suggested the would-be hitman had tried to buy a gun in London, others that he had been watched attempting to break into Berezovsky’s office one night. Since Berezovsky had made so many enemies in his business and political dealings the list of potential sponsors of a hit was, to put it mildly, extensive.
With Berezovsky, as with Litvinenko, there was talk of a possible Kremlin motive (both were ardent critics of Putin), but also of ‘rogue elements’ in the Russian intelligence services, criminality, or Chechen vendettas. Both men had had extensive dealings with the opposition in Russia’s war-torn southern region and when some journalists learned that the man allegedly sent to London to kill the businessman was a Chechen, it compounded an idea for some people that ‘it could have been anyone’.
In 1990s Russia it had become almost a cliché that ‘mafia’ from the restive region were the assassins of choice for those with any number of grievances. But of course the Russian state also had a motive to kill Berezovsky.
In an interview Nikolai Patrushev, the FSB boss, had castigated Britain for leading the charge in spying on Russia. ‘The special services of the NATO states continue to be extremely active with respect to Russia,’ he said, ‘in this category one should specially single out Britain, whose special organs not only conduct intelligence in all areas but also seek to influence the development of the domestic political situation in our country.’ He pointed the finger at Berezovsky and Litvinenko, having noted, ‘in order to achieve certain political objectives, the British have recently gambled on people accused of committing crimes who are hiding abroad from Russian justice’. People like the exiled oligarch were using the UK as a base for sedition that sat ill with the usual rules for political asylum.
Patrushev’s interview was published just a few weeks after MI5 frustrated the attempt on Berezovsky’s life. In it the FSB boss had blended the threat to Russia from conventional espionage (mentioning Skripal among others convicted) with political subversion and some new details of MI6 technical innovations being used in support of its spying in Russia. The 2006 revelation of the ‘spy rock’, a device used by SIS officers in Moscow as a sort of Bluetooth dead-letter box for agents, had been followed by leaks to the Russian press exposing several people described as MI6 officers operating against Russia. Undoubtedly he was venting about what he regarded as a series of unacceptable escalations by the UK. Particular hatred though, among his Kremlin bosses, was reserved for the oligarch stirring up opposition from Mayfair.
And indeed Berezovsky hardly held back from incitement in his critique of the president and his cronies. In 2006 he had told an interviewer, ‘President Putin violates the constitution and any violent action against him would be justified… the last year and a half we have been preparing to take power in Russia by force.’ These comments outraged the Kremlin – but they also nettled the UK immigration authorities, who warned the exiled tycoon that such remarks could jeopardize his continued asylum in the country. Berezovsky moderated his language a little after this, but was evidently a self-declared enemy of Russia’s leader.
Even in the Litvinenko case, where two prime suspects had clearly emerged from the investigation (Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun), the UK government held back from directly accusing Putin or the Russian state of ordering the assassination. Litvinenko’s death-bed interview with detectives in which he had explicitly blamed Putin for ordering the hit was kept secret for many years.
This was regarded by many in Whitehall as a way of limiting the damage caused by the polonium poisoning, and reserving one final escalatory option. There were also hopes, as so often in the post-Cold War Russian relationship, of a ‘re-set’, as Vladimir Putin’s second term was nearing its end, and under the constitution he could not run for a third.
Months later, in May 2008, several dozen invited ‘influencers’ made their way to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel overlooking Hyde Park for a power breakfast. The guests of Atlantic Partnership, an advocacy group, included politicians, bankers, captains of industry, and a handful of journalists. They consumed one of London’s pricier and most delicious cooked breakfasts as they took their places in the hotel’s banqueting suite. There was an atmosphere of anticipation in the room brought on by the prospect of a rare public talk by the Director General of the Security Service, Jonathan Evans.
A new Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, was nearly a fortnight into the job. The new man eschewed Putin’s tough-guy photo-ops and appeared to take a more moderate tone. Western advocates of a re-set were optimistic that a page could be turned, though Putin remained on the scene as Medvedev’s prime minister.
At the Mandarin Oriental that morning, guests devoured their bacon and eggs and prepared for the main event. The DG was a tough, bullet-headed operator who had reached the top of the service via G and T Branches, countering Irish and international terrorism. Many in the audience were expecting him to major on the threat from jihadists since his service had been so heavily committed operationally since the 2005 London atrocities. In his prepared remarks Evans did indeed start with counter-terrorism when signalling his three greatest concerns of the moment. But when he described the few months preceding this breakfast as ‘relatively quiet’ on the counter-terrorism front some listeners were surprised.
Number two on his list of worries was Iran and proliferation, though he didn’t spend too much time talking about it. It was when he got to his third that many paid closer attention. Russia, he believed, had ‘increased as a source of concern’. There was a growing assertiveness, he argued, and not only had Alexander Litvinenko been murdered, the anger in his voice becoming noticeable, that was ‘not the last attempt the Russians made to kill someone in London’. As for the withdrawal of cooperation on counter-terrorism announced by the Kremlin in the wake of the expulsions of ten months earlier, he noted scathingly, ‘We haven’t noticed because there wasn’t any going on anyway.’
When the besuited listeners got their chance for questions, the topic reverted to counter-terrorism, possible legislation, and the importance of the home-grown militant threat. But when he was asked about Russia and his apparent confidence that Russia had been behind the Litvinenko hit, Evans resumed an uncompromising tone, saying there were ‘very strong indications that it was a state action’. It was MI5’s strong ‘assessment’ – and that word has important meaning in the Whitehall intelligence game – that elements of the Russian state were behind the Litvinenko operation.