Lord Rooker’s letter also raised questions over why the 14 deaths exposed by BuzzFeed News have been treated as non-suspicious by the British police. He used a speech in the chamber of the House of Lords last June to call for all 14 cases to be fully investigated.

The peer has joined a growing chorus of politicians on both sides of the Atlantic calling for action in response to a spate of suspected assassinations on British soil that the government has, so far, ignored. Ben Bradshaw, the former Labour cabinet minister, demanded a proper investigation into “unexplained Russia-related deaths in Britain” in a speech in the House of Commons last November in the wake of BuzzFeed News’ investigation, and the matter has also been raised by the former Tory minister John Whittingdale.

The Commons intelligence and security committee has convened an investigation into Russian interference in the UK and its members are understood to be examining the evidence published by BuzzFeed News.

An inquest into one of the 14 deaths – that of Alexander Perepilichnyy, a financier who dropped dead in Surrey after blowing the whistle on massive Russian money laundering scheme – was upended in June after BuzzFeed News exposed explosive intelligence connecting his death directly to the Kremlin. It has now been delayed till the spring while the coroner seeks fresh evidence from the government and the police in the wake of the fresh revelations.



In the US, a report by Democratic members of the Senate’s foreign relations committee this week warned Western governments not to ignore a spate of suspected Russian assassinations in Britain and the US, exposed by BuzzFeed News last year, as part of President Vladimir Putin’s assault on the global democratic order.



The 200-plus-page report released on Wednesday warned that “a number of individuals, including vocal Putin critics, investigative journalists, and others in the Kremlin’s crosshairs, have died beyond Russia’s borders”, and that such suspected political assassinations are part of Kremlin’s efforts “to promote a climate more conducive to the Russian government’s corrupt and anti-democratic behavior” in the West.

The report refers extensively to the two-year investigation by BuzzFeed News that revealed explosive evidence connecting 14 deaths in the UK and one in the US to Russia, and called on the governments of both countries not to turn a blind eye. “It is not inconceivable that the Kremlin could use its security services in the United States as it has elsewhere,” they wrote. “The trail of mysterious deaths, all of which happened to people who possessed information that the Kremlin did not want made public, should not be ignored by Western countries on the assumption that they are safe from these extreme measures.”

The report pointed to the evidence uncovered by BuzzFeed News on the death of Perepilichnyy and also highlighed the case of Mikhail Lesin, the founder of the news and propaganda network RT, who was found bludgeoned to death in his hotel room in Washington, DC, in 2015. The US government ruled the death an accident, but BuzzFeed News revealed last year that Lesin’s battered body was discovered on the eve of a planned meeting with the US Justice Department and that multiple intelligence and law enforcement officials said he was bludgeoned to death. BuzzFeed News also exposed holes in the police investigation.