Title: A very expensive poison
Description: On November 1, 2006, journalist and Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London. He died twenty-two days later. The cause of death? Polonium — a rare, lethal, and highly radioactive substance. Here Luke Harding unspools a real-life political assassination story — complete with KGB, CIA, MI6, and Russian mobsters. He shows how Litvinenko’s murder foreshadowed the killings of other Kremlin critics, from Washington, DC, to Moscow, and how these are tied to Russia’s current misadventures in Ukraine and Syria. In doing so, he becomes a target himself and unearths a chain of corruption and death leading straight to Vladimir Putin. From his investigations of the downing of flight MH17 to the Panama Papers, Harding sheds a terrifying light on Russia’s fracturing relationship with the West.
Subjects: Murder, Dissenters, Assassination, Spies, Investigation, Poisoning, Political crimes and offenses, Biography, History, Murder, great britain, Political crimes and offenses, russia (federation), Russia (federation), politics and government, Crimes against, Intelligence officers, Radiation victims, Politics and government, Political aspects, HISTORY / Europe, HISTORY / Russia & the Former Soviet Union, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Intelligence & Espionage, TRUE CRIME / Espionage
Places: England, Russia (Federation), London
People: Alexander Litvinenko (1962-2006)
Time periods: 21st century