New death plot chills relations with Putin

Reported from the Times of London:

The murder of a second Russian dissident on British soil was averted last month when police and intelligence agencies intercepted a suspected killer in London, it was confirmed last night.

In a move likely to damage already strained relations between Britain and Russia, Scotland Yard said that officers arrested a man on suspicion of conspiracy to murder on June 21 and held him for two days. He was later handed over to the immigration service and deported back to Russia.

Stuff like this always makes the Chief recall that Putin was the last head of the old Soviet KGB. Just as a refresher – the KGB was the Soviet analog of the Nazi Gestapo. Imagine a Martin Bormann or a Heinrich Himmler as head of government of a major power.

Let yourself just imagine the type of “apprenticeship” experiences and the types of “ticket punching” required for someone to (virtually) claw their way through the apparatchik nomenklatura of the USSR to become head of the KGB.

Trust me on this…it doesn’t make a pretty picture. If you DON’T trust me on this, fine – go read Solzhenitsyn’s GULAG Archipelago. for some of the (literally) gory details.

Keeping this in mind, who then could be surprised by by this case, or the earlier case of Litvenenko (killed by radioactive poisoning), or the reporters regularly assassinated in Russia.