Russian historian Yuri Felshtinsky helped to spirit his ex-FSB friend Alexander Litvinenko out of Russia when he was threatened with arrest in November 2000.

Litvinenko was on the run after pointing a finger at former colleagues in the spy service he alleged had targeted enemies of the Kremlin. But Felshtinsky couldn’t save him from a grisly death by radioactive poisoning after Litvinenko gained asylum in Britain.

“When we last met, Litvinenko approached me with a big smile and said ‘Yuri, I just received my British citizenship. Now they will not be able to touch me,’ ” Felshtinsky recalled. “Then he was poisoned exactly six years after he arrived in London.”

Litvinenko fell fatally ill on Nov. 1, 2006, after drinking tea containing radioactive polonium with two former Russian secret service officials. A British inquiry recently accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “probably” approving his murder.

Felshtinsky, who was in Toronto on Monday, also blames Putin – and the cadre of former security officials around him – for Litvinenko’s killing, and for playing a role in the assassination one year ago of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister.

Putin has denied any involvement with Litvinenko’s or Nemtsov’s deaths. A group of Chechens who are reported to work for the Russian interior ministry and Chechen law enforcement agencies have been charged with gunning down Nemtsov on a bridge near the Kremlin.

Felshtinsky argues that it is part of a pattern of impunity of Russia’s resurgent security services, backed by Putin and exemplified by the invasion of Ukraine.

“When Putin invaded Crimea in March 2014, many people thought it was the end of the story,” Felshtinsky said. “But it was just the beginning. Putin and those around him came to power not to create a second Switzerland. When they say they would make Russia great, it’s all about military power.”

Felshtinsky, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1978, was in Toronto for an event sponsored by Canadians for Democracy in Russia to commemorate the anniversary of Nemtsov’s death. His most recent book is World War III: The Battle for Ukraine.

The person who ordered Nemtsov’s murder has never been named, though some have linked the killing with offending Muslim religious sensibilities or labelling Ramzan Kadyrov, the notoriously brutal Kremlin-installed head of Russia’s Chechen Republic, as “a very psychologically sick man.”

But it has also been tied to a report that Nemtsov was compiling on Russia’s military presence in Ukraine, published after his death on Feb. 27.

The Kremlin consistently denies any hand in eastern Ukraine, although satellite images, videos and interviews with Russian soldiers and mothers of missing troops show evidence to the contrary. But state-controlled Russian media do not broadcast those reports and frame the continuing conflict as purely an uprising of pro-Russian Ukrainians.

However, Nemtsov’s report details the military takeover of Crimea and deployment of Russian soldiers to back separatists in eastern Ukraine, claiming that more than 200 Russian soldiers have been killed in fighting on Ukrainian territory.

Nemtsov’s focus on Russia’s military ambitions was more dangerous to Putin and his allies than allegations of corruption from other critics, Felshtinsky says. That, he says, explains why high profile opposition activist Alexei Navalny has not been targeted for assassination in spite of denouncing Putin as “the tsar of corruption.”

Navalny has been jailed and released, but his brother Oleg is imprisoned on fraud charges critics call politically motivated.

“Everyone knows there is a lot of corruption in Russia, and it annoys people,” Felshtinsky said. “But Putin can laugh at that because he knows everyone is corrupt. Nemtsov was the one politician who underlined how dangerous Russia is to the world.”

That, he says, could gain the attention of Russians who fear new wars, and who remember Russia’s history of terrible losses.

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Although Kadyrov probably organized Nemtsov’s death, using Chechen security services, he contended, “Putin is very open about how loyal Kadyrov is to him, and how loyal he is to Kadyrov.”

Shortly after Nemtsov’s murder, Kadyrov, and Litvinenko murder suspect Andrei Lugovoi, were given prestigious awards, Felshtinsky added. “That wouldn’t be the case if Kadyrov just killed Nemtsov on his own initiative.”

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