Yegor Gaidar left mainstream Russian politics more than a decade ago, but the former Prime Minister was propelled back on to centre stage yesterday amid fears that he had become the latest victim of poisoning.

The portly economist, who once held Russia’s future in his hands, was fighting a mysterious illness in a Moscow hospital. His colleagues gave warning that his condition could be part of a conspiracy connected to the death last week of Alexander Litvinenko.

Anatoli Chubais, a former Kremlin colleague of Mr Gaidar, said that he suspected a link between the latest poisoning, Mr Litvinenko’s death and the murder in October of Anna Politkovskaya, the outspoken Russian journalist.

“This deadly triangle of Politkovskaya-Litvinenko-Gaidar, which only didn’t come off by a miracle, would have been extremely attractive for supporters of an unconstitutional, violent change of power in Russia,” Mr Chubais said.

He did not mention anybody by name, but he appeared to be alleging a link to Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch exiled in London, who has become the Kremlin’s most outspoken opponent. Mr Berezovsky has repeatedly denied involvement in the poisonings.

Mr Gaidar’s supporters drew the opposite conclusions from the mysterious spate of deaths and illnesses. They suspect a Kremlin hand in the events aimed at straining ties with the West and providing President Putin an excuse to remain in power after his final term in office expires next year.

“There is a plot aimed at creating conditions that would rule out Putin’s stepping down,” Natalia Gevorkian, a columnist on the online Russian newspaper gazeta.ru said.

Mr Gaidar, 50, makes an unlikely target in a cloak-and-dagger mystery. Many Russians have cause to dislike him for the painful “shock therapy” he administered on the country’s economy in the early 1990s when he tried to create a free market in the chaos of post-communist Russia.

But he left mainstream politics in January 1994, after his Russia’s Choice party was badly mauled in elections that spelt the beginning of the end of Russia’s liberalisation process. While he would be ideologically opposed to Mr Putin’s campaign to renationalise state assets, he did not pose any direct threat to the Kremlin.

Few would wish him harm. Since leaving politics he has been a respected figure in Moscow, where he now heads the Institute for the Economy in Transition.

He fell ill in Dublin last Friday after eating breakfast on a visit to promote his new book The Death of the Empire: Lessons from Contemporary Russia.

Maria Gaidar, his daughter, gave a vivid description of her father’s condition after he fainted: “I went up to him. He was lying on the floor unconscious. There was blood coming from his nose. He was vomiting blood. This went on for more than half an hour.”

Mr Gaidar’s condition was said last night to be improving. The Kremlin said that Mr Putin had called him to wish him a speedy recovery.

Ms Gaidar, a member of the liberal youth movement, staged a protest last Thursday in which she and a fellow activist unfurled a 15m banner from a bridge near the Kremlin criticising Mr Putin for changes to Russia’s electoral law.

The links

Yegor Gaidar

Mr Gaidar, 50, edited the Communist Party’s ideological journal until joining Boris Yeltsin’s Government in 1991 as a liberal reformer. As Finance Minister in 1992 he abolished price controls to launch Russia’s market economy.

He was acting Prime Minister from June to December 1992, when his candidacy was rejected by the Russian Parliament. By now he had become one of the most unpopular among a host of unpopular members of the Yeltsin Government. Mr Gaidar was protected by FSB bodyguards, who included . . .

Andrei Lugovoy

A former major in the FSB, Mr Lugovoy, 40, is now a multi millionaire businessman in Moscow specialising in security and consulting services. He became head of security at TV channel ORT, then part-owned by the billionaire Boris Berezovsky, before he fled to Britain after clashes with President Putin. At ORT, Mr Lugovoi got to know . . .

Alexander Litvinenko

Litvinenko, 43, was in an elite FSB organised crime unit until he publicly accused his superiors in 1998 of ordering him to kill Mr Berezovsky. Mr Putin was head of the FSB.

He fled to Britain in 2000, becoming a close friend of Mr Berezovsky. Litvinenko met the murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya in London last year. Among the last people to meet Mr Litvinenko on November 1, the day he fell ill, were Mr Lugovoy and a business partner called Dmitri Kovtun

Times Recommends

• Rio Tinto four held as China prepares case
• Diplomats must keep heads down and trousers up
• When in Rome should one make like Berlusconi?