Why I Believe Putin Wanted Me Dead... ; in a Dramatic Account Never Before Seen in the West, the Russian Dissident Reveals Howfighting Corruption-and His Sinister Encounterwith Vladimir Putin-Made Him a Marked Man

Summary

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IN THE mid-Nineties, Alexander Litvinenko was a security agent in the FSB. He had been stationed in Chechnya to spy on Chechen rebels after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but returned to Moscow to investigate corruption among the police and secret services.

It was then, as a lieutenantcolonel in the FSB, that he was to encounter the unknown Vladimir Putin. This dramatic account of what happened, in Litvinenko's own words, has never been published in the West. Now uncovered and translated by The Mail on Sunday, it casts disturbing new light on Litvinenko's death.

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Extract

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Why I Believe Putin Wanted Me Dead... ; in a Dramatic Account Never Before Seen in the West, the Russian Dissident Reveals Howfighting Corruption-and His Sinister Encounterwith Vladimir Putin-Made Him a Marked Man

IN THE summer of 1996, I returned to Moscow from Chechnya and was summoned to see my boss, General Vyacheslav Voloch, head of the Anti- Terrorist Directorate of the Federal Security Bureau (FSB).

'They are putting Khokholkov in charge of URPO,' he said. 'That man is a monster. We should do everything to stop him.' URPO was the acronym for a newly established top-secret unit at the FSB, and Evgeny Khokholkov was a colonel in the antiterrorist directorate. More than that, he was General Voloch's subordinateturned-rival.

The two men had fallen foul of each other ealier that year when Colonel Khokholkov masterminded the assassination of a Chechnyan separatist leader.

An air-to-ground missile was used to home in on a satellite phone signal there wasn't much left of him. It was a sophisticat...

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