Russian Nikolai Glushkov's Death In London Was A Murder, Police Say

[Upstate One]

Source: NPR

The death of Nikolai Glushkov, the 68-year-old Russian businessman whose body was found in his London home on Monday, is being investigated as a murder. The cause of death was "compression to the neck," police say.

Glushkov was a former close associate of oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a flamboyant tycoon who had backed Russia's President Vladimir Putin early in the president's political career — but who had become a vocal critic before living in self-imposed exile. Berezovsky, who was also close to the poisoned former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, died in 2013, in what has been described as a hanging. All three men died in London.

The murder investigation into Glushkov's death is being announced days after Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May accused Russia of "attempted murder" in another case involving a high-profile Russian native living in the U.K.: former spy Sergei Skripal.

Skripal was poisoned by an exotic and lethal Novichok nerve agent that is seen as Russia's sole property. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found on a bench at a shopping center in Salisbury, England. They remain in the hospital; a police officer who came to the scene is also receiving care.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/16/594330084/russian-nikolai-glushkovs-death-in-london-was-a-murder-police-say

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Looks like the nerve-agent attack wasn't an isolated incident.

[barbtries]

1. sounds like Putin is on a bit of a roll.

is he manic depressive?

so my theory is these brazen murders are designed to scare the shit out of donald trump and other complicit/compromised republicans. the threat being not so much, i will expose you, but i will KILL you.

[defacto7]

2. I agree that it's a warning/threat

But he's not manic depressive, he's a psychopath. IMO

[barbtries]

3. i think both pathologies can exist in a single person.

look at trump. it's just that both of these attacks were carried out within days, i wondered if it was precipitated by a mood. the way it would be if it was trump.

[Jedi Guy]

4. I dunno...

I don't get the manic depressive vibe from Putin at all. Granted, it's not as if I associate with him on any basis, so it's hard to know what he's really like.

That being said, I definitely think he's got some psychopathy going on, as well as megalomania and narcissism. I can't imagine that Putin was unaware of or not involved in the decision to murder a former spy with a nerve agent in a foreign country. This applies to Skripal and Litvinenko, of course, though the former is more worrisome. The polonium tea incident was likely only going to kill its target; the use of Novichok on Skripal and his daughter very well could have injured or killed multiple people. Normal people don't casually accept the possible deaths of multiple people and carry on with that course of action. So yeah, definitely some psychopathy going on.

Megalomania is evident in the way that Putin has stubbornly clung to power, evading term limits and the like. Narcissism is an easy call, as well, given the cult of personality around Putin that exists in Russia. One only has to see just how many shirtless pictures of Putin exist, versus how few for other world leaders.

In any case, while North Korea gets a lot of press, I think Russia and Putin are the gravest threats to world stability. We all laughed at Mitt Romney in 2012 when he pointed to Russia as a major threat, but now his remarks seem eerily prescient. The fact that we have a Putin fanboy as the supposed leader of the free world only means that Putin feels comfortable doing whatever the hell he wants.

Definitely not a good situation. I think the next few years will be a rough ride as Russia continues to flex its muscle on the global stage.

[Steviehh]

5. Spies

Should expect execution. The Soviets supposedly shot ex-agents/cooperators in the face w/ a trick camera. It was their last photo before leaving. A gun hidden in a camera was supposedly used to "take a last photo".

Why a double agent would be so visible after death of the spy Levechinko (sp?) in 2006 is beyond me.