The dangerous dissident

If one man could be singled out as the catalyst for Britain’s deteriorating political relations with Russia, it is Boris Berezovsky. Short, stooping, with a penchant for black designer clothes and armoured limousines, the tycoon from Moscow has turned London into the headquarters of Russia’s new dissident movement.

Unlike other oligarchs, content with buying English football teams, expensive London mansions and sending their children to boarding schools, Berezovsky has never severed his ties with Russia’s political world, where he was once regarded as the most powerful figure in the Kremlin (under Boris Yeltsin). Today he is seen by President Putin as the most dangerous threat to his leadership and the rough rules of Moscow politics have spilt on to the streets of London. As long as he lives in Britain, where he was granted political asylum, relations between the two countries are likely to remain strained.

A former Soviet mathematician, forced to make his way in the chaotic postcommunist world of the 1990s, Berezovsky was a natural entrepreneur and political wheeler-dealer. He also experienced first-hand the dangers of doing business in modern Russia and narrowly missed an assassination attempt in 1994, when a bomb blew up beneath his car, killing his driver. He then built a business empire that included a car dealership, an airline, an oil company, a newspaper and control of Russia’s main television station. When he was appointed to a senior job in the Kremlin in 1996 he reached the apex of his power. But Putin arrived four years later and it became clear that Moscow was not big enough for the two men. Berezovsky fled his homeland, where he faces criminal charges for fraud and embezzlement, and settled in Britain.

But for the businessman, worth an estimate £800 million, quiet retirement was never a realistic option. At 61, he is determined one day to return to Russia. His dream is to return at the head of a mass popular movement that would sweep away the current leadership, in the same manner that street protests did in Ukraine and Georgia. That has turned him into a magnet for every Russian emigré with a grudge against Putin’s regime.

One man who came into his orbit was Alexander Litvinenko, the former intelligence officer, murdered last year in a plot that Berezovsky is sure was hatched by the Kremlin. Today, he claims that he faced a similar fate three weeks ago, when Scotland Yard warned him that his life was in danger after an assassination plot was uncovered. Berezovsky is now reenergised and determined to harry Putin, now in his last months in office. While the battle between the two men rages, London can only watch in despair – and try to pick up the pieces.