Death of Russian businessman killed in New Malden ‘now a murder enquiry’

On 12th March 2018, Russian businessman and political exile Nikolai Glushkov was found dead at his house in the quiet South West London suburb of New Malden. His death came just a week after the assassination attempt with the nerve agent Novochok upon Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury, which the British government and its allies blame on Russia.

The investigation into his death by the Metropolitan police found marks on his neck consistent with strangulation. Although the Metropolitan Police have said that, at present ‘there is no evidence linking Gluskov’s death to the assassination attempt’ in Salisbury a week earlier, the proximity of the two events, and the fact that Glushkov told the Guardian in 2013 that he ‘didn’t see anyone left [on the Kremlin’s hit list]’ apart from him, have led many to suspect the shadowy hand of the Russian state behind all this.

Glushkov, a friend of Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with Polonium in 2006, and Boris Berezovsky, an oligarch who was found dead in suspicious circumstances in 2013, was a major businessman in the aerospace and automobile industries until his arrest on politically motivated charges of financial misdealings, probably resulting from his aforementioned friendship with Berezovsky. In 2010, he was granted political asylum in the U.K. to the chagrin of Russia, who in 2017 made further charges against him in absentia and sentenced him to 8 years in prison. The extradition request by the Russian government was ignored by the U.K., and only a year later Glushkov is found dead.

Residents of New Malden seemed shocked at Mr Glushkov’s death. One told me that ‘I never expected anything like this to happen here. [The police] have practically cordoned off the whole road!’ while another said ‘I’d always thought that if anyone was going to be assassinated here it would be a North Korean’, a not particularly politically correct reference to the large Korean community in New Malden.

Glushkov’s murder comes amid a climate of dramatically increasing tensions between Russia and the West to levels not seen since the Cold War, first over the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, then the brutal bombing of rebel areas in Syria, including hospitals, with the incendiary, cluster and conventional bombs of the Russian and Syrian airforces, the use of information warfare and fake news and, most notably, the suspected use of chemical weapons on British soil. In response, tit for tat expulsions of diplomats have ensued, as well as a war of words. Most memorably, this occurred at a UN Security Council debate on 14th of March when Russia mockingly evoked the stories of Sherlock Holmes to criticise the competence of Scotland Yard detective.

Those most worried over these events are Russian residents in the U.K. One Russian student who lives near to New Malden says that his father ‘experiences widespread discrimination in the workplace’, prompting him to consider moving out of the U.K. He is certainly not the only one. According to YouGov, Russia has a -50 disapproval rating among the British public, making it more unpopular than Iran and Tony Blair. 

We must wait to see how the police investigation into the death of Glushkov turns out,   for we cannot be certain of Russia’s involvement, but it is certainly clear that his death has brought the excitement of international intrigue to leafy suburbia.

By Alfie Watkins, Hampton School