Moving Forward

Berezovsky began treatment for clinical depression at London’s Priory Clinic, and Besharova was relieved to see that after a month or so he seemed to improve. At some point, she recalled, he made a full recovery: “Later we talked about the future, made plans, and he said, ‘I will never go back to politics, I will do business, I have some ideas’ … He calmed down, he no longer had a feeling of disappointment or resentment … That life was gone, there was no return to it, now was only the future: ‘I will take care of children, grandchildren, I don’t want anything else.’”¹⁰

Elena Gorbunova, who stayed in contact with Berezovsky despite their breakup and conflict over finances, also believed that his mental health had improved. When Aven later asked her, “there were no panic attacks, no depression?” Gorbunova responded: “No, no. Boris, as you know very well, always tried to find a way out of the situation.”¹¹ Dubov, who spoke to Berezovsky twice in the week before he died, thought that Berezovsky’s depression did not seem severe: “He made plans, was going to Israel, his friends were waiting for him there.”¹² And Nikolai Glushkov dismissed Berezovsky’s depression entirely: “I saw him the day that Mrs. Justice Gloster handed down her judgment in Boris’s case. He was full of life even then, talking about a certain young lady who was waiting for him in the house. Latterly he had managed to resolve his financial issues.”¹³

According to both Gorbunova and Sabirova, soon after Berezovsky lost the Abramovich case, he decided that he wanted to return to Russia and would write a letter informing Putin. Gorbunova said she had encouraged him to seek some sort of rapprochement with the Russian president, as did Berezovsky’s mother, Anna. Gorbunova recalled that Berezovsky wrote one letter to Putin, which he gave to an emissary, later said to be a German businessman named Klaus Mangold. But the letter was not delivered to Putin until after Berezovsky’s death because Berezovsky had second thoughts and told the emissary to hold off. He had begun negotiating through intermediaries with Badri Patarkatsishvili’s widow and Roman Abramovich over money due to him from Patarkatsishvili’s assets, some of which were frozen and held in Moscow. According to Gorbunova, Abramovich had suggested that the process would be expedited if Berezovsky wrote a letter to Putin asking to return to Russia, which Abramovich would arrange to be conveyed to the Russian president. Gorbunova said that the second letter was sent off on October 7, Putin’s birthday: “He said in the letter that he had some ideas, and he would really like to somehow participate in the processes going on in the country. He had become caught up with the idea. He discussed it with me all the time.”¹⁴

Sabirova knew of only one letter, which she thought was sent in November and which Berezovsky showed her: “He apologized to Putin and asked if it was possible to return to Russia. It was such an aberration. He asked me what I thought. I told him that he would look bad if the letter was published. And that it would not help him. He answered that he didn’t care, that everyone already accused him of sins, and that this was his only chance.”¹⁵

Dubov found it hard to believe that Berezovsky wrote a letter apologizing to Putin and asking to return to Russia. Berezovsky had never mentioned such a letter to him, he said, and never talked about going back to his home country: “Boris had a lot of crazy ideas … But the one thing he understood quite well was that, if he went back to Russia, he would go to jail.” While conceding that Berezovsky may have written to Putin, Dubov thought that the only thing he would have proposed to the Russian president would have been some sort of a “peace deal,” not a Russian homecoming. According to Dubov, British police thoroughly searched Berezovsky’s computers and papers after he died, but they could not locate a copy of any letter to Putin, so the contents could not be verified.¹⁶

After Sabirova’s departure for Moscow (her British visa expired in November), Berezovsky spent two months in Israel to continue his recovery and to see business and political acquaintances. In January, he met with Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, at the Israeli resort town of Eilat, and the two discussed his intended return to Russia. Apparently Berezovsky wanted Zhirinovsky to negotiate with the Kremlin on his behalf. They reportedly talked about whether Berezovsky could get any guarantees about his future there and what sort of punishments might await him. What sort of sacrifices would he be required to make?¹⁷ Zhirinovsky later told Ekho Moskvy that he had suggested to Berezovsky a campaign to pave the way for him in implementing his plans: “He responded very eagerly … he was prepared to return to Russia under any conditions.”¹⁸

Whatever Berezovsky’s hopes were for a new future in Russia, they were not fulfilled. At approximately 3:23 p.m. on Saturday, March 23, 2013, his ex-Mossad bodyguard, Avi Navama, found him dead on the floor in the bathroom adjoining his bedroom at Besharova’s home. His black cashmere scarf was tied around his neck, and a strip of the scarf’s torn fabric was on the bar above the tub. Berezovsky was clad in a black t-shirt and track pants, his face deep purple. He had died at approximately 9:30 that morning. Navama, who had not seen his boss since the night before, had been out doing errands for several hours. When he went to check on Berezovsky, he found the bathroom door locked from the inside. After phoning for emergency help and calling Michael Cotlick, Navama finally kicked down the door and discovered Berezovsky.¹⁹ It appeared to be suicide. But Berezovsky’s actions in the days leading up to his death did not suggest that he was a man about to take his own life.

Last Days

On Monday, March 18, Berezovsky made numerous telephone calls, including to his son-in-law Egor Shuppe, who was preparing to fly to Kyiv. He spoke practically every day with Shuppe, a successful businessman. His secretaries often helped Berezovsky because he no longer had an office staff, and Berezovsky asked them to book a ticket for a flight to Israel the next week. He also called his business associate Mikhail Sheitelman, who was in Latvia at the time, and arranged to meet him in Israel to discuss a new business idea. Sheitelman told Berezovsky to let him know if his plans changed and heard nothing more. The rest of the day Berezovsky spent planning for his upcoming trip, organizing business meetings and doctors’ appointments. That evening he called Iulii Dubov and requested him to contact a journalist from the Russian Forbes, Ilia Zhegulev, who had been seeking an interview with Berezovsky.²⁰

The next day Berezovsky telephoned Dubov again, to tell him that he had arranged a meeting with Zhegulev for Thursday, March 21. It would be a conversation, Berezovsky said, not an interview, and he would be talking only off the record, but the time had come for him to emerge from the shadows. Dubov recalled that Berezovsky was full of energy and enthusiasm, very different from the man who earlier had complained about everything and sought sympathy from those around him. On Wednesday, March 20, Berezovsky met with the headmaster of his daughter Arina’s boarding school, along with Elena Gorbunova, and that evening had dinner at a London restaurant with Vladimir Gusinsky to discuss his proposed return to Russia and what he might expect from Putin. Gusinsky promised to lend Berezovsky money, and the two agreed to meet again in Israel. He said later that Berezovsky “felt he was no longer in the game and had lost his way … but he said he was ready to fight.”²¹

On Thursday, Berezovsky called Zhegulev and told him he wanted to postpone their meeting until the next evening, because he had a cold. According to Navama, Berezovsky also cancelled an appointment with his psychiatrist at the Priory Clinic. He told Navama that he was feeling okay mentally and did not think it necessary to see his doctor. He had just stopped taking antidepressants because of their negative side-effects, and Navama thought his boss seemed better. That evening, the two of them had a meal of veal chops and pasta, which Berezovsky enjoyed.²²

The next day, Friday, March 22, Berezovsky telephoned his friend Mikhail Cherny, a businessman in Tel Aviv who had helped Berezovsky pay legal fees when he was preparing for the Abramovich trial, and asked him to book a hotel for him in Eilat, where he and Sabirova planned to vacation after Berezovsky finished three days of meetings in Tel Aviv. Later that morning, Berezovsky met with his accountants in London and then had a late restaurant lunch with Cotlick. Navama drove Berezovsky to the Four Seasons Hotel to meet Zhegulev around 7 p.m.²³

Zhegulev published a story about the interview the next night, just after the news of Berezovsky’s death broke.²⁴ He noted that the hotel restaurant was noisy, with the piano playing and Arab businessmen negotiating nearby. Berezovsky, dressed in a “shabby black turtleneck, a hastily tied black scarf, and a jacket,” was nervous and seemed unenthusiastic about discussing his finances. But when Zhegulev asked him if he missed Russia, he was more responsive: “I want nothing more than to return to Russia. Even when a criminal case was opened against me, I wanted to go back.” Berezovsky went on to say that he had greatly overestimated democracy in the West and had put too much hope in Russia’s ability to develop democracy.

The conversation proceeded thus:

Then Berezovsky said he would like to return to science, pointing out that he had been a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. But when Zhegulev suggested that they talk in detail about the subject, Berezovsky did not seem eager. Zhegulev wrote: “It seems that he did not really believe either in returning to his homeland or in science. Trying to encourage him, I promised that the next time I met him it would be in Moscow at the Academy of Sciences. At that, Berezovsky chuckled grimly and said, ‘Exactly.’”

On his way home in the car, Berezovsky spoke on the phone with Gorbunova for about twenty minutes, mainly about their daughter Arina and her plans for study, which Gorbunova opposed. Berezovsky also talked with his son Gleb, telling him he would try to get Arina and her mother to “make peace,” and affirming plans to go to lunch with Gleb the next day.²⁵ By 9 p.m., he arrived at his destination and went to his bedroom. He made several more calls that evening. One was to his daughter Ekaterina to congratulate her on her fortieth birthday. Another was to Sabirova to discuss last-minute details regarding their upcoming vacation. Sabirova thought Berezovsky sounded good: “His inner state was always reflected in his voice. And I got the impression that he was much better. Also, his intentions were very firm—to meet in Israel. There was no sense that something would be cancelled or rescheduled.”²⁶

Berezovsky then talked on the phone with Shuppe, still in Kyiv, for more than an hour about his Israel plans and how websites of whistleblowers oppose governments. Shuppe recalled: “He was absolutely normal. We had a stimulating conversation. He was in the mood of someone about to leave for a trip to Israel. I had seen him at rock bottom, when I’d really feared for him. But now I thought that maybe we’d seen the worst and we’d manage to pull him out of it.”²⁷

Inquest

This was the last that was heard from Berezovsky. Nothing is known about what happened before he died the next morning. When police responded to Navama’s call that afternoon, they found no evidence of a violent struggle and no sign of forced entry into the home; subsequent toxicology reports showed no evidence of poison. The pathologist who conducted the postmortem concluded that Berezovsky’s injuries were “consistent with hanging.” Nonetheless, there was no suicide note, and in cases of violent or unusual deaths, inquests are required to determine all facts and rule out the possibility of foul play.

Although a brief inquest was conducted immediately after Berezovsky’s death, the formal two-day inquest, held at Windsor Guildhall in Berkshire, did not take place until March 2014. Dr. Simon Poole, the Home Office pathologist who had conducted the postmortem, reiterated his conclusion that Berezovsky had hung himself and there was nothing to indicate foul play. But Poole’s testimony was unexpectedly challenged. Berezovsky’s daughter Elizaveta, who originally assumed that her father’s death was a suicide, had experienced second thoughts and enlisted an eminent German asphyxiation expert, Professor Bernd Brinkmann, to examine photographs of Berezovsky’s body.²⁸ Brinkmann testified that “the strangulation mark is completely different to the strangulation mark in hanging”—circular, instead of the typical V-shaped mark left by self-hanging. Also, Berezovsky had petechiae, or spots on his skin and eyes—a so-called congestion syndrome—that were consistent with homicidal strangulation.²⁹

According to Brinkmann, Berezovsky could have been strangled from behind in the bedroom, which explained the absence of signs of a struggle in the bathroom and on the body. Then, Brinkmann continued, the corpse could have been dragged to the bathroom, where it was discovered by Navama. This theory would account for a strange fingerprint on the shower rail, which police were unable to identify, despite it being checked against numerous databases, including Interpol and the FBI.³⁰

Navama testified that he called the emergency number and then Michael Cotlick before he broke down the bathroom door. This raised a question from Bedford as to why Navama, a professional bodyguard, did not do this immediately. Navama answered, “Boris became more than a boss for me, he became my friend, and I was afraid of what I might see inside.” In his witness statement for the police, Navama said that Berezovsky usually woke up between 6 and 7 a.m. to eat his breakfast, which Navama would prepare. Yet on this day Navama slept until 11:30 a.m. and never checked on his boss before going out for more than two hours to do errands.³¹ This was puzzling, given that, as Navama told the inquest, he thought Berezovsky had been suicidal: “He wanted to die, he was talking about it for the last six months … Once when he was talking about wanting to die, he held up a steak knife and asked me where he should cut. He wanted me to show him how to choke. He said, ‘How to die? What is the best way?’”³²

Noting that Navama had at one point guarded an Israeli prime minister, Elizaveta Berezovskaya would express concern in a later interview about what she saw as Navama’s negligence: “For some reason the security guard slept all morning on that ill-fated day, although Papa always woke up early. After that, the guard talked on the phone with his wife for a long time, then went out for coffee, then to the pharmacy to buy cold medicine for himself, then bought groceries. He did not return until three o’clock in the afternoon, even though all the other staff was off for the day … It is not clear why Avi suddenly decided it was okay to be absent for so long … This is a big mystery.”³³ Equally troublesome, she said more recently, was that Navama did not turn on the security alarm or CTV cameras before he left, although he knew Berezovsky would be alone in the house for several hours. When asked why he failed to do this, Navama’s answer was, “Boris did not tell me to.”³⁴

Berezovsky’s son Gleb shared his half-sister’s doubts about Navama. He recalled that not long before he died, his father told him that he no longer trusted Avi.³⁵ Berezovsky himself expressed similar negative feelings about Navama to Akhmed Zakaev.³⁶ But others, including Michael Cotlick and Iulii Dubov, insisted that Navama was trustworthy and loyal to Berezovsky.³⁷ Sabirova told a journalist that, after she heard of her lover’s death, she called Navama from Moscow, and “he cried, constantly repeating ‘I’m sorry,’ and cried again. He couldn’t speak.”³⁸

Cotlick told the inquest that Berezovsky had talked about suicide for months and asked him for advice on how to kill himself. But Cotlick had not taken his client seriously, reasoning that because Berezovsky spoke about suicide to “almost everybody,” he was unlikely to actually do it. Cotlick concluded his testimony thus: “If somebody told me before that he would end his life, I would never believe it. Looking back on the past year, I think that’s the only explanation.”³⁹

Berezovsky’s psychiatrist, Saeed Islam, testified at the inquest that Berezovsky had only moderate depression and was not “actively suicidal,” and Besharova, in a written statement to the inquest, said that on Sunday, March 24, some of Berezovsky’s friends were planning a visit, along with their children. She added that “suicide was not in his nature, he is not that kind of person. He would never have done this, especially knowing that the children would come.”⁴⁰ Elizaveta Berezovskaya voiced a similar view and even suggested that Putin had killed her father. After she told the inquest that “a number of people” would be interested in her father’s death, the coroner, Peter Bedford, pressed her as to whom she had in mind. She replied: “I think we all know. I don’t think they liked what my father was saying. He was saying that Putin was a danger to the whole world and you can see that now.”⁴¹ As a result of the conflicting evidence, the coroner declared an open verdict: “It is impossible to say, given the requisite burden of proof, that one explanation holds over another.”⁴²

The Kremlin Speaks Out

In the aftermath of Berezovsky’s death, the Kremlin painted a picture of the oligarch as a prodigal son who sought forgiveness from a wise Putin before he took his own life. On March 23, 2013, the day Berezovsky died, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced that Berezovsky had written a letter to the Russian president two months previously: “Boris Berezovsky sent a letter personally written by him. He admitted that he made lots of mistakes and asked Vladimir Putin to forgive him,” said Peskov. “He asked Putin for a chance to come back to Russia.” Peskov mentioned nothing about Putin’s reaction to Berezovsky’s letter, adding only, “I can say that in any case information about somebody’s death—whoever the person was—cannot bring positive emotions.”⁴³

That same day, Berezovsky’s supposed letter of repentance to Putin was published by an obscure Russian blogger named Viktor Telegin on LiveJournal. In the letter, Berezovsky was a supplicant to the extreme: “I am ready to openly admit my mistakes … Much of what I did, said, has no justification and deserves severe censure. But I am 68-years-old [sic] … Isolation from Russia is killing me. I ask you, Vladimir Vladimirovich, to forgive me those misdeeds and words I said in the blindness of anger … Vladimir Vladimirovich, I, like the Wandering Jew, am tired of wandering the earth. Allow me to return, Mr. President. I ask you to. I beg you. Sincerely yours, Boris Berezovsky.”⁴⁴

When asked about the published letter two days later, Peskov said that it was similar to the message that Vladimir Putin received, but he could not say for certain that the letter was genuine: “It’s close, but I’m not sure, I can’t say.”⁴⁵ It seems to have gone unnoticed that in the letter Berezovsky gave his age as sixty-eight years old, instead of sixty-seven, an unlikely mistake.

Peskov later said that the letter on the Internet was fabricated and declared that Berezovsky’s actual letter to Putin would never be made public. Sergei Ivanov, Putin’s chief of staff, made a similar statement.⁴⁶ But many people accepted the published letter as genuine, so it served the Kremlin’s purposes. In fact, already in early March the Kremlin had leaked news of Berezovsky’s repentance letter to journalists at Vedomosti and probably to others, thus setting the stage for Peskov’s revelations and the flurry of speculation that would follow. The journalists had also been told from other sources that Abramovich was the emissary.⁴⁷

Meanwhile, the Russian media put its own spin on Berezovsky’s death. The former FSB chief Nikolai Kovalev said on Russian television that Berezovsky, as a traitor, had got what he deserved—a nasty death.⁴⁸ On March 31, Russia’s NTV broadcast a documentary titled See Big Ben and Die, in which it was claimed that MI6 had murdered both Litvinenko and Berezovsky. According to this theory, on learning that Berezovsky had become disillusioned with the West and planned to return to Russia, the British intelligence services decided to eliminate him so he could not reveal their secrets.⁴⁹

In late April 2013, Putin himself spoke out about Berezovsky’s letter in response to a question during his annual nationally televised call-in show, Direct Line: “I received the first letter from him early this year, sometime in February, I think, and the second letter arrived recently, after his death. The text was the same.” Putin noted that the first letter, delivered by one of Berezovsky’s former Russian business partners, was handwritten, while the second, brought to him by a foreign businessman, was typed, with a handwritten header. Asked about the content, Putin seemed to endorse the Internet version: “Actually, some details have already appeared in the media. He wrote that he had made a lot of mistakes and caused great damage and asked for forgiveness and the opportunity to return to his homeland.”⁵⁰

The Kremlin, apparently with Berezovsky’s original letter in hand, seems to have waited for the right opportunity—Berezovsky’s death—to reveal its existence and portray it as an unconditional surrender, regardless of what the letter actually said. As the political scientist Vladimir Pastukhov wrote: “Its content destroys Berezovsky as a historical figure. This is more than death, it is the erasure of his historical memory into cosmic dust … Everything falls into place if the idea of a letter (or a real letter) was held in anticipation for the possibility of death, prepared in advance as a kind of scenario, as a preapproved and agreed-on plan of action in case an ‘unforeseen’ situation arises.”⁵¹

Significantly, Russian threats on Berezovsky’s life had continued after the London arrest of a hit man in 2007. In June 2010, Litvinenko’s accused killer Lugovoi, a member of parliament who would later receive a state honor from Putin, sent Berezovsky a black t-shirt with the words “radioactive death is knocking at your door” printed on the back.⁵² Michael Cotlick, who had been present when Berezovsky received the t-shirt, told the inquest that after Berezovsky’s court loss to Abramovich he was no longer a danger to the Kremlin, thus suggesting that the Kremlin had no motive to kill him.⁵³ But Putin’s sense of threat did not necessarily correspond to reality, and his need for revenge did not always subside when an enemy was defeated. As Dubov said: “Putin would not forgive Berezovsky under any circumstances. This is not about revelations, not about the Liberal Russia party, not about his activities here. The point is that Berezovsky made Putin the president. This is unforgivable.”⁵⁴

Tying up Loose Ends

Putin was also asked during the April call-in show about the Boston Marathon bombings, carried out by two Chechen immigrants twelve days earlier, leaving 3 dead and 260 wounded. It would later emerge that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the perpetrator of the bombings along with his younger brother Dzhokhar, had traveled to Russia in January 2012 under the watchful eye of the FSB and spent several weeks in the North Caucasus with Islamic jihadists. Russian authorities had never notified their American counterparts of Tamerlan’s visit, where much of his radicalization had occurred. According to one US counterterrorism official, if they had known of the trip to Russia, “it would have changed everything.”⁵⁵

The Boston bombings offered Putin an opportunity to convey an important message—that Russia and the United States were both victims of international terrorism and should join together in struggling against this evil: “I have always felt outraged when our Western partners … referred to our terrorists who committed brutal, bloody, appalling crimes on the territory of our country as ‘insurgents’… We always said that Western governments shouldn’t make empty declarations that terrorism is a common threat, but actually make real efforts and cooperate with us more closely. Now these two criminals have provided the best possible proof that we were right.”⁵⁶ Washington got the message. In June 2013, Nikolai Patrushev, since 2008 secretary of the National Security Council, was invited to the White House, where he met with Obama to discuss uniting efforts against global terrorism.

Putin’s stature as a global leader was enhanced by the February 2014 Olympics in Sochi. But Russia’s annexation of Crimea and incitement of insurgency in Eastern Ukraine the next month resulted in serious damage to his image abroad. Russia was thrown out of the G8 and subjected to Western economic sanctions. Relations between Washington and Moscow remained at a post-Cold War low until the 2016 election of Donald Trump, who was eager for a friendship with Putin. Trump not only tried to lift US economic sanctions against Russia; he sought to weaken NATO. But despite his cozy relationship with the new US president, Putin continued to fear that NATO would undermine his regime, and that internal political opposition, stirred up by democrats like Aleksei Navalny, would strengthen. These perceived threats may have given Putin the impetus to settle old scores shortly before the Russian presidential election on March 18, 2018.

Sergei Skripal was a former Russian colonel for the Russian military intelligence agency (GRU) living in the British city of Salisbury. In 1995, while posted in Madrid, Skripal had been recruited by MI6. He subsequently passed on to British intelligence the names of hundreds of agents working undercover for the GRU, along with valuable details of the GRU’s overseas operations. Skripal’s role as an informant was eventually discovered. He was arrested by the FSB in 2004 and two years later convicted of treason, with a sentence of thirteen years’ hard labor. In 2010, Skripal gained release from prison as part of a “spy swap” with the United States and settled in Britain. At the time of the swap, Putin issued a not-so-veiled threat: “These people betrayed their friends, their brothers in arms. Whatever they got in exchange for it, those thirty pieces of silver they were given, they will choke on them.”⁵⁷

On the afternoon of March 4, Skripal and his daughter Iulia, visiting from Moscow, were found unconscious on a Salisbury park bench after having lunch at a local Italian restaurant. They had been poisoned with Novichok, a lethal nerve agent developed in Russia. But the poisoning was carried out carelessly. Not only did Skripal and his daughter survive (after months in the hospital); the would-be assassins, two GRU operatives, were caught on CCTV cameras walking near Skripal’s home before the poisoning, and traces of Novichok were found in their London hotel room. The British were quick to condemn the Kremlin for the Skripal poisonings and within days sent twenty-three Russian diplomats packing.

Why would the Kremlin wait eight years before targeting Skripal for death? By this time he had long since offered up all his secrets to British intelligence. Perhaps, as with Berezovsky, there had been earlier attempts that were unsuccessful, or perhaps Moscow had a sudden need to deter other defections by using Skripal as an example. Given that the poisoning occurred just two weeks before Putin’s election, it may also be that Putin wanted to send a signal of strength to his Russian supporters and the West: the Kremlin would go after its enemies, no matter the consequences.

In keeping with this message, Litvinenko’s accused killer, Andrei Lugovoi, gave an interview on Ekho Moskvy about the Skripal poisonings. Although he denied that Russia was responsible, he nonetheless offered a warning: “Something constantly happens to Russian citizens who either run away from Russian justice, or for some reason choose for themselves a way of life they call ‘changing their Motherland.’ So the more Britain accepts on its territory every good-for-nothing, every scum from all over the world, the more problems they will have.”⁵⁸

On March 12, 2018, six days after Lugovoi’s interview, Nikolai Glushkov’s lifeless body was discovered by his daughter, Natalia, at his home in New Malden. He was due to attend London’s Commercial Court for a hearing in the Aeroflot case that very day. Police launched a murder investigation, interviewing over 1,800 witnesses and viewing 2,200 hours of CCTV footage, along with thousands of forensic samples and physical evidence. After an inquest in April 2021, the coroner ruled that Glushkov was strangled by a third party who had attempted to make the death appear to be a suicide. The assailant had wrapped the leash of Glushkov’s dog around his neck and put a small two-stepped ladder next to his body to simulate a hanging. But the ladder was upright, whereas with a self-hanging it would have been knocked over. Just as forensic expert Brinkman had hypothesized in the Berezovsky case, Glushkov was apparently ambushed from behind and rapidly subdued. As Natalia Glushkova described the scene, “it was a trashy setup of a murder.”⁵⁹

Aside from footage of a black van seen driving near Glushkov’s home the night of the murder, which was never identified, the police found no clues to determine the killer. But Moscow’s involvement seemed likely. In fact, Glushkov had predicted after Berezovsky died that he would be the next Kremlin target, telling The Guardian that the list of designated Russian victims in Britain was getting smaller and “I don’t see anyone left on it apart from me.”⁶⁰ As it turned out, Glushkov seems to have also suffered a poisoning not long after Berezovsky’s death. In November 2013, he was staying at a hotel in Bristol when two Russians whom he had met on an earlier occasion approached him with a bottle of champagne. Glushkov accepted their offer to sit down with them and share a glass. The next morning he was so ill that he had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital.⁶¹

Glushkov did receive some posthumous justice from a British court. Aeroflot suddenly dropped the case against him and the Forus group, and at a hearing in June 2018, the court ordered the airlines to pay $3.9 million in indemnity costs to Glushkov’s estate and to the other defendants. The judge criticized Aeroflot for the “aggressive and unsympathetic” way in which it treated Glushkov’s bereaved loved ones after his death and noted: “The Forus Defendants do not shirk from asserting that neither Aeroflot nor its legal representatives ever had any real belief in the truth of the fraud allegations that they were making: ‘Aeroflot’s game, or the game of the Russian state acting through Aeroflot, was essentially to use civil proceedings as an instrument of political oppression.’”⁶²

Fabricating a Legend

However much Putin liked to convey the message that traitors would be punished, portraying Berezovsky’s death as a suicide reinforced the image of Berezovsky as a fallen enemy, in despair because he realized how wrong he had been to turn against Putin. Posthumous attacks on Berezovsky’s character and his legacy as a successful businessman who had been a power broker in the Yeltsin years also served Putin’s purposes. In April 2013, RT produced a documentary on Berezovsky’s life, comparing him with Rasputin.⁶³ And Petr Aven set about interviewing Berezovsky’s friends, associates, and two of his wives, for a book that would portray Berezovsky in the worst possible light.⁶⁴

Aven’s book, The Time of Berezovsky (Vremia Berezovskogo), composed of excerpts from thirty two-hour taped interviews, was published in Russia in 2017. In themselves, the interviews are valuable because they are firsthand accounts from people who knew Berezovsky well. But Aven encouraged those he interviewed to focus on Berezovsky’s deep flaws.⁶⁵ In the book’s lengthy introduction, Aven himself sets the stage: “Boris had a pathological indifference to the grief of others … As his social status grew it became easier for Boris not to demonstrate basic sympathy, and his indifference offended and disgusted many.” According to Aven, Berezovsky did not repay his debts: “Boris still owes a lot of money to many people … For me, such a casual attitude toward debt is unacceptable.” Later Aven tells readers: “Boris was a bad mathematician … He himself never wrote a single scholarly article; they were written by the young people who worked for him.”⁶⁶

Following up in an interview with Vladimir Borzenko, who collaborated with Berezovsky as an academic, Aven asks: “If I am not mistaken, his doctoral dissertation passed by only one vote … What was the problem? Was the dissertation not very good or did someone else write it?” Borzenko replies that neither was the case. There was simply a lot of competition and intrigue going on. In conversation with the media magnate Vladimir Voronov, Aven notes: “there was a myth that Boris was a great mathematician. This myth was easy for me dispel because I knew it wasn’t true.”⁶⁷

Aven discusses Berezovsky’s business skills with Chubais, who says, “Petya, you know better than I that Boris Abramovich Berezovsky certainly was not a great businessman in the true sense of the word.” “Absolutely not,” Aven agrees. Chubais then elaborates: “There were businessmen who created entire giant companies from scratch. What did Boris Abramovich create? What new enterprise did he ever create?” “Nothing, nothing at all,” Aven answers.⁶⁸

Aven remarks to the billionaire Leonid Boguslavskii, who had been a fellow student of Berezovsky’s and later worked at LogoVAZ: “Boris certainly did not believe in democracy. He valued his freedom but not the rights of others.” Boguslavskii, who at some point had fallen out with Berezovsky, agrees.⁶⁹ But Demian Kudriavtsev, the former general director of Kommersant, refuses to play along. When Aven asserts that “Boris was an extremely authoritarian person, he was contemptuous of others’ opinions and, in my view, was not a democrat at all,” Kudriavtsev retorts: “This is absolutely not true. This is the reason why I didn’t want to participate in your project: not only do you not understand Berezovsky, you don’t even want to!”⁷⁰

Clearly intent on confirming the Kremlin’s preferred version of Berezovsky’s death—that he died of suicide—Aven dwells on Berezovsky’s depression. After Alex Goldfarb tells Aven that he spoke with Berezovsky by phone several times before he died, Aven inquires, “Did you have the feeling that he was depressed?” Aven asks the former Kommersant editor Andrei Vasiliev: “Was Boris in a bad mood? I’ve talked to different people, and many said he was depressed.” When Aven directs a similar question to Dubov, “Did he give the impression of a sick person?” Dubov demurs: “Well, I’m not a doctor.” Aven then presses him: “Didn’t you see his depression?” But Dubov only responds, “You see, I can’t really recognize depression.”⁷¹

Ekho Moskvy editor Aleksei Venediktov expressed outrage over The Time of Berezovsky during a discussion of the book at the Yeltsin Center in Moscow. In their interviews, Venediktov said, Voloshin, Chubais, and Iumashev “deliberately obscured the political role of Boris Berezovsky” because “they were ashamed to admit that someone like Berezovsky, who later became a ‘traitor,’ was pivotal in such events as the re-election of Boris Yeltsin in 1996.” Calling the book “contemptuous” of Berezovsky, Venediktov said that it aimed to portray Berezovsky as a “little demon.” But, he went on, “the main point was not that he is a demon, it’s that he is little. And he loses all the time.” Venediktov concluded, “If Boris were alive, this book would not have appeared.”⁷²

After Aven’s book was published, a web series, “Berezovsky—Who Is He?,” based on Aven’s videotaped interviews, appeared online. The ten-episode series, produced by the Russian journalist Andrei Loshak, included longer segments from the interviews and presented Berezovsky in a more balanced way than Aven’s book. As Loshak observed about his film: “Unlike the rest, Berezovsky declared a fight against authoritarian tendencies—and found himself completely alone. Not a single former comrade from the mighty of this world supported him.”⁷³ But the series had a much smaller audience than it would have had if it appeared on television, where the image of Berezovsky as a vanquished villain continued to prevail.

Berezovsky’s death allowed his enemies to rewrite his history, thus giving Putin a final victory against the oligarch who had helped him to become the most powerful and longest-lasting Kremlin leader since Joseph Stalin. But Putin now lives with the knowledge that his own legacy will be that of a ruthless, authoritarian leader who launched an unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine and set his country on the road to isolation and economic decline. Berezovsky’s urgent warnings from exile about the dangers of Putin’s leadership, ignored for so long, will now be recognized for their prescience.

Berezovsky’s flaws were many. His ambition took precedence over concerns about Russia’s democratic development, and his hubris blinded him to the dangers of Putin’s rise to power until it was too late. But he was far from alone in failing to recognize Putin for who he was. It was Yeltsin who left his country in the hands of a career Chekist whose ruthless disregard for human rights became apparent with the invasion of Chechnya, and the Russian people readily went along. On the occasion of Putin’s inauguration as president for his second term in 2004, Anna Politkovskaya wrote: “Tomorrow a KGB snoop, who even in that capacity did not make much of an impression, will strut through the Kremlin just as Lenin did … It is we who are responsible for Putin’s policies, we first and foremost, not Putin … Society has shown limitless apathy, and this is what has given Putin the indulgence he requires.”⁷⁴ Two decades later, with most democratic oppositionists having been forced to leave Russia or face prison, that societal apathy prevails.