President Putin is a paedophile with links to the Russian mafia and Colombian drug barons, who rose to power on the back of a deliberate bomb attack that killed hundreds of civilians, according to Alexander Litvinenko.

The allegations made by the former Russian spy were listed by the inquiry into Litvinenko’s death as “powerful motives” for the Kremlin and the Russian president to have wanted him silenced. Another factor was a belief that he was working for MI6.

Sir Robert Owen, the chairman of the inquiry, went even further. He raised the possibility that Mr Putin’s Russia had authorised the killing of as many as seven other perceived enemies of the state prior to Litvinenko’s murder in November 2006. “These cases suggest that... the Russian