Prof Christopher Andrew: ‘Russian intelligence assassinations: From Ivan the Terrible to Putin’

From Ivan the Terrible (much admired by Joseph Stalin) to President Putin, a distinctive characteristic of Russian intelligence operations has been assassination. A century ago, Soviet intelligence celebrated its first major success against British Intelligence by putting the corpse of the so-called MI6 master spy on secret display in the Lubyanka, which still remains Putin’s chief intelligence HQ. Twenty years ago, a Russian intelligence defector and Putin opponent was poisoned shortly after he visited the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. It tends to be forgotten that for many years, assassination has also played a key role in the Kremlin’s long war against Ukrainian independence. During the early Cold War, the KGB assassinated a number of leaders of Ukrainian independence movements who ha