Met Police hunt Putin critic's killer 4 years after he was strangled

Detectives are still without a clear suspect for the murder of a Russian businessman strangled to death just weeks after the Salisbury poisonings.

Nikolai Glushkov, 68, was living in exile in Britain having served time in Russia for blowing the whistle on corruption at state run airline Aeroflot, where he was deputy director.

He was given asylum here and feared being on Putin's hit list as a string of dissident associates dropped dead.

Britain refused to extradite him to face further allegations, but he was found dead in a staged suicide scene in 2018.

Glushkov's death was made to look like a hanging but he suffered wounds consistent with manual strangulation.

It took place a week after the Novichok poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury.

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A public inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, who was poisoned as a result of the attack, is currently taking place.

Mr Skripal told it through a new witness statement that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hit on his life.

The Metropolitan Police was asked for an update on the Glushkov probe this week.

A Met spokesman said: 'The investigation remains open.

'No-one has been arrested, and anyone with information that might assist the investigation is urged to contact police.'

When asked if they had a suspect or ever had a suspect, the force declined to say anymore.

Terrorism expert Colonel Richard Kemp - the former commander of UK forces in Afghanistan - said the crime had been a 'professional' killing.

He said: 'The timing of the murder is extremely suspicious, when you consider what Russia was doing in Britain with the Salisbury attack just days apart.

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'That was a brazen and outrageous attack on British soil. 

'The hallmarks of something state sponsored are clearly there.

'It is a shocking situation.

'There is a fear nobody will be brought to justice for this.'

Alongside his role at Aeroflot, Glushkov was a major shareholder in a firm with fellow exile Boris Berezovsky, who also died in mysterious circumstances in 2013.

When Glushkov was first arrested in 2000, Berezovsky gave up ownership of the ORT TV channel, which was transferred to Roman Abramovich's Sibneft, in exchange for the promise to release Glushkov, which was not kept.

He served three years before being released and fleeing to Britain.

In 2017, during a further trial in absentia in Russia, Glushkov was sentenced to another eight years for allegedly stealing $123 million.

But on March 12, 2018, Glushkov was found dead in his terraced home in New Malden, London.

His death was initially treated as unexplained, but as it came just a week after the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, anti terror cops were called in.

During the post-mortem, Glushkov's body was found to have marks consistent with strangulation and the Met launched a murder probe, stating there were no obvious links to the Salisbury attack.

In April 2021, the West London Coroner's Court ruled Glushkov was unlawfully killed.

Glushkov's daughter Natalia Glushkova later described her father as a 'charismatic and vibrant energy ball'.

Speaking a year after his death, she said Glushkov was due to appear at the High Court to defend himself in a civil Aeroflot the next day.

She said: 'I asked him how he was feeling. He said: 'I'm prepared. I'm fired up and I'm winning.' I said: 'Stay brave. Best of luck. Love you.'

But when she called the following evening there was no reply.

She said: 'I had a key. I opened the door. I knew [immediately] he was dead.

'I could see some traces of physical harm done to him. The picture was so trashy. It looked like a cheap set up of a suicide. My father was a kind soul, always positive, and a very refined person. I had never seen any sort of depression in him.'

Whoever killed Glushkov entered the terraced house without causing damage or setting off his beloved ridgeback dog.

Glushkova was tested for exposure to radiation, as her father had also been a friend of Alexander Litvinenko, the former FSB officer poisoned with polonium in 2006.

It later emerged that Glushkov himself might have been poisoned by two Russian men five years before his death.

A paramedic came forward to say that he treated Glushkov in Bristol in 2013 after he had collapsed in his room, having earlier shared drinks with two men from Moscow at the Grand Hotel.

Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism unit has carried out a major investigation into Glushkov's murder dubbed Operation Bulblet.

A year after his death, police released footage of a mysterious black Volkswagen van with tinted windows spotted near his home, but it led to nothing.