Nikolai Glushkov, aged 68, who was close friends with the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky, was found dead today in his London home. The Russian exile said he was a "prisoner in his own country" and even went to prison for a few years before being released, the cause of death is still unknown but it raises worrying thoughts if his circumstance of death is found to be unnatural.
Glushkov spoke of the unnatural cause of his friend Berezovsky's suicide as Berezovsky was known to have fallen out with Putin. The Met also released a statement calling Glushkov's death unexplained and said that the counter-terrorism unit is leading the investigation.
This comes right in the middle of the heightening tensions between Britain and Russia after the Skripal poisoning. As the investigation has gone further the nerve toxin has been confirmed as a Russian brand, however, what is being determined now is if this was an act on Russia's part.
Calling in the cavalry
After a heated announcement from May that "Russia is highly likely to be behind the poisoning" and again from Boris Johnson this morning stating that Russia had today to come up with a convincing argument as to how a Russian nerve agent was used or there would be a response from the United Kingdom. Following this calls had been made to President Macron in France and President Trump in the USA to gather support for Britain's actions should Russia not cooperate.
Now former secretary of state for the US, Rex Tillerson spoke up and agreed that "Russia is certainly behind the poisoning of Skripal" but hours later he was fired by President Trump, raising eyebrows as to the timing.
Ill-fitting jokes
As of now, Russia has not made any official statements outside of asking for access to the nerve agent samples so that they may look into it themselves.
President Putin when asked by a BBC reporter if they were in fact behind it, said: "sort it out there first, then we will talk about this". Russia also called for the UK ambassador to Russia to the state office, nothing is known of the talks as of yet. Outside of the official statements not much has developed yet but a few jokes have been made, Russian Foreign minister tweeted out "It is highly likely Russia cast snow on Britain" and ex-Prime Minister of Belgium and the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt joked that the incident "happened on European soil" but did call for a meeting to talk countermeasures against Russia should this escalate.
As Trump confirms that the US will renounce Russia should this get linked to them and tensions continue to heighten between Britain and Russia, the story is still alive and growing and the outcome of the investigation will make a significant impact on international relations as well as Russia reputation.
