August: The Russian concentration camps, known as the Gulags control 5% of the population for forced labour.

Stalin poses with Nikolai Yezhov (chief of the Soviet secret police) overlooking the Moscow canal.
From 1936 onward, Yezhov oversaw the height of the purges (approximately half of the Soviet political and military establishment were imprisoned or shot during this period).
However, in typical Stalin fashion, Yezhov fell victim to Stalin’s paranoia about disloyalty and so on April 10, 1939, he is executed, and any record of him is eradicated, even being removed from this photograph.

The Gulag concentration camps now control 10% of the population for forced labour.

April: An NKVD/НКВД (Народный комиссариат внутренних дел, the forerunner of Russia's KGB/FSB) officer Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin (Васи́лий Миха́йлович Блохи́н) on instruction begins executing about seven thousand Polish prisoners of war, and

their bodies are then dumped in mass graves in the Katyn forest.

Vladimir Barkovsky becomes the KGB's case officer for technical inteligence, until 1947.

February 28: In London, UK – KGB agent Aleksandr S. Feklisov obtains information from Klaus Fuchs on the development of the hydrogen bomb (the 'super-bomb') by Hungarian-born Edward Teller and Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago, USA.

Vladimir Barkovsky becomes KGB station chief in New York.

December: Soviet KGB agent Jewish Ze'ev Avni is offered a full time post in Israel's secret service Mossad (HaMossad leModi'in uleTafkidim Meyuchadim), and is posted as Israel's commercial attaché based in Belgrade.

The first secretary at the Soviet embassy in Belgrade becomes his new KGB controller.

Formed this year, as a direct successor of preceding agencies – such as: the Cheka/tɕɪˈka (Lenin's security organ, 1917), NKGB (Soviet secret police, 1941), and MGB (Soviet intelligence agency 1946-1953) – the KGB committee is attached to the Russian Council of Ministers as chief government agency of "union-republican jurisdiction", acting as internal security, intelligence, and secret police. (Similar agencies were created in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from Russia, and consisted of many ministries, state committees, and state commissions).

1960s, acting upon the information of KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, America's CIA counter-intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton believes the KGB has moles in two key places – the counter-intelligence section of CIA, and the FBI's counter-intelligence department – through whom they would know of, and control, US counter-espionage to protect their moles and hamper the detection and capture of other Communist spies. And that, KGB counter-intelligence vetted foreign intelligence sources, so that the moles might "officially" approve an anti-CIA double agent as trustworthy. (In retrospect, the capture of the moles Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen proves that Angleton, though ignored as over-aggressive, was correct, despite costing him his job at the CIA, which he leaves in 1975).

April: KGB agent Reino Hayhanen (who had operated in the US for five years) approaches the CIA office in Paris who fly him to New York and hand him to the American FBI.

June 21: Colonel 'Rudolph Abel' (real name Willie Fisher, from Newcasle-on-Tyne in the UK) is arrested by the FBI in New York. (Five years latter the United States swaps him for Francis Gary Powers, the imprisoned American pilot of their downed U-2 spy plane.

American KGB agent, Michael Straight, 'confesses' to the FBI about his recruitment and spying activities for Russia's KGB, but misrepresents it as having ended in '1942'.

October 22: In the UK – KGB Spymaster George Blake escapes from the security wing of Wormwood Scrubs prison in West London. The former MI6 officer had spied for the Russians for 12 years, exposing Britain's spyring in East Berlin to the KGB, etc, and had been sentenced in 1962 to 42-years, one year for each of the lives that Blakes treachery is alleged to have cost..

February 12, night: In Paris, France – The KGB burgles the Paris headquarters of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) via the main entrance with a duplicate key and removes the entire card-index database of the WJC's French supporters with details of financial contributions and 30,000 addresses in 55 countries to which the WJC French magazine 'Information Juive' is posted.

An estimate puts the number of people working for the KGB at 490,000.

mid-1970s, the KGB tries to secretly buy three banks in northern California to gain access to high-technology secrets. The banks are Peninsula National Bank in Burlingame, the First National Bank of Fresno, and the Tahoe National Bank in South Lake Tahoe. These banks have made numerous loans to advanced technology companies and have many of their officers and directors as clients. The KGB uses the Moscow Narodny Bank Limited to finance the acquisition, and an intermediary, Singaporean businessman Amos Dawe, as the frontman. Their efforts are thwarted by the CIA.

France, an agent drops a number of electronic bugs into the fresh concrete mix of the new South African embassy building under construction, which would turn minute voice vibrations into an electronic signal that could be monitored outside. These are discovered too late to remove and a team is sent from South Africa with gamma ray equipment to destroy them by irradiation.

27, 1979: Soviet KGB troops dressed in Afghan uniforms attack the palace where Afghan President Amin is hiding, execute him, and occupy strategic locations throughout Kabul city in a forty-five minute operation.

January: In New York City, U.S. – South African naval officer, Commodore Dieter Felix Gerhardt (Дитер Герхардт), head of their Simonstown Naval base, is arrested for spying on behalf of the Soviet Union.

His cover is blown by Soviet double agent Vladimir Vetrov (given the codename "Farewell" by France's DST intelligence service).

• KGB London Station Chief Oleg Gordievsky (Олег Антонович Гордиевский), secret agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1974, defects to the West.
• KGB officer Colonel Vitaly Yurchenko (Виталий Юрченко) defects to the US during an assignment in Rome, only to return to the Soviet Union a few months later (the Soviet Embassy calls a press conference, at which Yurchenko announces he had been kidnapped and drugged by the Americans and held in forced isolation at a secluded CIA safe house near Fredericksburg, Virginia) to the embarrassment of the Reagan administration as it prepares for a Geneva summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Yurchenko later works as a security guard for a Russian bank in Moscow.

1991 August: The glasnost liberalisation of Soviet society provokes KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov (1988–91) to lead the Soviet coup d'état attempt to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev.

The thwarted coup d'état ends the KGB on 6 November 1991.

The KGB's successors are the secret police agency FSB ('Federal Security Service' of the Russian Federation). and the espionage agency SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service).
So the KGB, now known as the GRU (FSB in English), is head-quartered at

Khoroshevskoye shosse 76, Khodinka, Moscow, (55°46′49.41″N, 37°31′21.51″E).

Moscow and London engage in a furious six-day exchange of spy expulsions, declaring a draw after 31 on each side had been sent packing. This follows the defection to Britain of the KGB's London station chief, Oleg Gordievsky.

Hanssen works for America's FBI and at the same time works as a spy for the Russian KGB until 1991 when the USSR collapses and he is transferred to the Russian Intelligence Agency. He gave three types of information to Russia: –
• Assets – He disclosed to both the Soviets and Russians the list of American assets in the USSR and Russia and three people were known to have been executed due to this;
• Monitoring – He disclosed how the FBI were monitoring both countries to gain intelligence;
• Secret Operations – He disclosed operations by the FBI to stay on both country’s toes. (For example, he told the KGB that the FBI were building a billion dollar tunnel underneath the US-Soviet embassy to track the Soviets. The tunnel never was completed due to this.) His actions were a major breach in national security from within and exposed many flaws in the FBI.

In 2001, the FBI's Robert Hanssen is charged with selling U.S. secrets to Soviet and Russian sources.
He is sentenced to life in a US federal prison without parole.

Vasili Mitrokhin, senior KGB/FSB archivist, defects to the UK.
(The 40-member Mitrokhin Commission is established by the Italian Parliament, in 2002 under chair of Senator Guzzanti, concerning KGB/FSB activities in Italy, The UK authorities send papers and relevant information to the Commission).

Alexander (Sasha) Litvinenko is now transferred to the FSB Anti-Terrorist Centre.

June 7: 5:20pm, at The Club reception of Berezovsky's company, Moscow – A remote-controlled bomb placed in a parked blue Opel explodes as Berezovsky's gray Mercedes pulls out of the gates, killing Berezovsky's driver, but causing only minor burns to Berezovsky and his bodyguard. (See 1998).

March: Alexander Litvinenko prevents police from arresting Boris Berezovsky and taking him nto custody.

February 28: Alexander Litvinenko visits Boris Berezovsky and informs him of the KGB plot to assassinate him.

March 21: Viktor Shebalin and Andrei Ponkin inform Boris Berezovsky of thr KGB plan to assassinate him.

March 25: Alexander Itvinenko is charged with exceeding his authority as a KGB officer and detained in Lefortovo Prison for eight months. On release. he flees with his wife and child to London, where he receives asylum and later citizenship.

In the UK – Sir Eric Rideal (leading Cambridge chemist and senior figure in the British team working on the A-bomb Manhattan Project), codenamed ERIC, is exposed.

October 7: Journalist, Putin critic and investigative reporter on Russian atrocities in Chechnya Anna Politkovskaya (48) is gunned down in the entrance hall of her apartment block in Moscow.
October 13: In London – KGB / FSB Agents:
 • Andrei Konstantinovich Lugovoi (passport no. 0608109; Soloviniya Proezcl, 16-1-247, Moscow, Russia), and
 • Dmitri Vadimovich Kovtun (passport no. 9632078; Apartment no. 150, Golubinskay Street, Moscow, Russia, 117463), are sent from Moscow to assassinated Alexander Litvinenko in London, using radioactive polonium 210, because it only emits alpha radiation (as opposed to gamma radiation) and is therefore harder to detect.

In view of this method used, British authorities believe Litvinenko perished in a "state-sponsored" assassination
and therefore believe that it had been ordered by Vladimir V Putin, president of the Russian Federation.

October 20: Roman Andreyevich Zakharov (editor-in-chief of a publishing company) lodges an application against Russia with the European Court of Human Rights concerning the FSB's violation of his privacy by installation of surveillance equipment with mobile network providers to monitor his communications. (see December 4, 2015)

October31: Lugovoi returns to Londob again, this time with family and friends to watch a soccer match. Kovtun joins him the next day, via Hamburg, Germany. Radioactive trails (from the polonium-210 isotope) are later found at Emirates Stadium in LOndon and in Hamburg.

November 1: Lugovoi and Kovtun meet Litvinenko at the Millenium Hotel in Mayfair, where they spray polonium-210 into his pot of green tea. Litvienko, after drinking some of the tea, returns home and falls il.

Mikhail Fradkov is appointed as SVR director. Unlike the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the SVR is responsible for intelligence and espionage activities outside the Russian Federation.

It works in cooperation with the Russian Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye (GRU, Main Intelligence Directorate).

August 16: In Pimlico, London, UK – British GCHQ Codebreaker Gareth Williams is assassinated by Russia's foreign intelligence service, Слу́жба вне́шней разве́дки, by administering an untraceable poison through his ear because he refused to become a double agent and 'knew too much'.

to 2014 Britain’s high street banks process nearly $740 million from a vast money-laundering operation run by Russian criminals with links to the Russian government and the KGB/FSB.
Igor Putin, the cousin of Russia’s president, Vladimir, is on the board of a Moscow bank which held accounts involved in the fraud.

(of these 70,000 banking transactions, 1,920 that went through UK banks and 373 via US banks.)

GRU/FSB head Colonel General Aleksandr Shlyakhturov is replaced by General Igor Dmitrievich Sergun.

November: In the UK – Alexander Perepilichny dies by poisoning with gelsemium elegans. His inquest hears that the 44-year-old was helping Hermitage Capital Management (HCM) investigate a £150million money laundering case involving corruption among top Russian government officials.

The European Union and United States impose economic sanctions on General Igor Dmitrievich Sergun,

accusing him of coordinating "the activities of GRU/FSB officers in eastern Ukraine".

officers, Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev (33), Igor Anatolyevich Sushchin (43), Alexsey Alexseyevich Belan, aka "Magg," (29), Karim Baratov, Karim Akehmet Tokbergenov (22), protect, direct, facilitate and pay criminal hackers to collect information through computer intrusions in Yahoo Inc in the US and elsewhere in cracking 500 million Yahoo user accounts. The targets of the hack include security, diplomatic, journalists and military personnel, and the cyberattack is used for espionage and financial gain, and continues until December 2016, even though their Yahoo access is lost in September 2016.

The hackers, Alexsey Belan and Karim Baratov, are known to the American FBI.

April: In France – Russian hacker-group 'Fancy Bears' attacks French broadcaster TV5Monde. Posing as ISIS/ISIL supporters, the group force the channel's scheduled programme off the air for 18 hours and replace them with a screen showing the terror group's flag.

GCHQ analyse the attack and conclude it is also planning to attack every Whitehall server, including the Home Office, Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, and every major TV broadcaster, including the BBC, Channel 4 and Sky, and so successfully prevent it. The hackers, who are believed to have links to the Russian state, are also believed to have been responsible for the leak of medical data about top British athletes such as Sir Bradley Wiggins and Mo Farah.

November 5: In the Dupont Circle Hotel, Wshington, USA – Mikhail Y. Lesin (57/59) the Bulldaozer, a former aide to President Putin, is bludgeoned to death (blunt force trauma to his neck, torso, arms and legs). Lesin had had a dispute with Russian financier Yuri Kovalchuk, a longstanding friend of President Putin. He had served as information minister under Putin and advised the president on media policies, ran one of Russia’s biggest media operations, Gazprom Media, until December 2014. He was also a founder of the Russia Today news channel, now known as RT.

December 2: In Syria, the Islamic State (ISIL/Da'esh) beheads Russian Magomed Khasiev of Chechnya for espionage.

3: Russia's GRU/FSB spy chief Colonel-General Igor Dmitrievich Sergun (И́горь Дми́триевич Сергу́н) dies suddenly age 58. survived by his wife and two daughters.

4: The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) orders Russia to pay Roman Zakharov, editor-in-chief of a publishing company, €40,000 (£29,000) in expenses in a case over state spying on its own citizens.
• But Russia adopts a new law allowing it to overrule judgements from the ECHR. The vote in the Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, comes the same day as the ECHR rules against Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) over their spying on Russian citizens.

Russia had ratified the European Convention on Human Rights in 1998,
and is one of 47 member states in the Council of Europe, which monitors compliance with this convention.

May 22: In Rome, Italy – A senior intelligence official from Portugal, Frederico Carvalhão Gil (57), is arrested by Italian police along with his Russian intelligence handler, whom he was meeting clandestinely. Carvalhão was charging the Kremlin’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR/FSB, 10,000 Euros ($11,100) for each classified document he was selling them.

13: In the Russian Federation – Satellite photos indicate a significant expansion at the headquarters of Russia's international espionage service at Yasenevo, Moscow, Russia,

(55.584 N, 37.517 E):

Слу́жба вне́шней разве́дки, tr. Sluzhba vneshney razvedki

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) releases it report, which among other, accuses the FSB of active participation and assistance in controlling and overseeing the manipulation of Russian athletes’ analytical results and sample swapping.

10: The FSB claims that it had 'foiled a series of attacks by armed Ukrainians in Crimea', and

minutes later President Vladimir Putin accuses Ukraine of choosing the path of terror instead of peace.

On the same day, far from the eyes of the media, Russia sends a large military force, including dozens of armoured vehicles, armoured personnel carriers and tanks, to the Crimean peninsula, that it took over in 2014. No specific incident sparked the current crisis although there have been regular exchanges of fire between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian rebels in Donesk in eastern Ukraine. The FSB say Ukraine is aiming to destabilise the situation on Crimea ahead of nationwide legislative elections next month.

lawmaker Olga Kovitidi says the Russia-installed government in Crimea has cut off Internet access in the northern part of Crimea, which is closer to the mainland, "for security reasons" (so what they people see cannot be reported).

The Kommersant newspaper reports, after Russia's parliamentary election which gave the United Russia Party an absolute majority, that a State Security Ministry, or MGB, would be created from the current Federal Security Service (FSB) , and would incorporate the foreign intelligence service (SVR) and the state guard service (FSO), under the plans. It would be handed all-encompassing powers once possessed by the KGB, and like the much-feared KGB, it would also oversee the prosecutions of Kremlin critics, a task currently undertaken by the Investigative Committee, headed by Alexander Bastrykin, a former university classmate of President Putin. Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center, believes that the desire to create a single powerful national security ministry is a sign of the Kremlin's fear of the future.

29: In the U.S. President Barack Obama announces new sanctions against the FSB, along with Russia's military intelligence agency (GRU) and several related entities, in retaliation for the alleged hacking.

February 2: The U.S. Treasury Department eases some financial sanctions imposed on Russia's FSB, a move experts say appears to be aimed at helping U.S. technology companies.

21: An unknown person enters the reception of the FSB office for the Khabarovsk region office at 17:02 (0702 GMT) without crossing the security check and begins to shoot at the people in reception.

An FSB employee and a visitor are killed as a result of the shooting. A second visitor is also injured.

5: In Southeaster Moscow – Armed police break into Marupova's rented apartment (from Uzbekistan) at dawn and abduct her two distraught daughters aged two and four to place in an orphanage, on the accusation that she has ties to 'terrorists' who masterminded the April 3 subway bombing in St Petersburg. However, after interrogation, no connection is found.
Her children are only released after human rights group Memorial complains and threatens legal action.

The action is part of a nationwide crackdown on nationals from Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan.

7: In Vilnius, Lithuania – FSB agent Nikolay Filipchenko (arrested in 2015) is now sentenced to 10-years imprisonment (by Judge Regina Pocene) for spying on behalf of Russia.

His cover had been blown while trying to recruit Lithuanian officials working for the Department of State Security.

He sought to find double agents, willing to install bugging devices in the Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite’s office and residence.

the Russian government's news agency, the Kremlin and the Cuban government agree in mid-October to expand Russian oil supplies and deepen cooperation on oil production around Cuba. This help could not come at a better time, since Venezuela is plagued by economic and political problems and can no longer provide a steady delivery of oil —

leaving a hole for the Russian energy giant Rosneft to fill.

As early as March, Rosneft had already committed to deliver 250,000 tons of oil and diesel fuel to Cuba. In the last two years, Rosneft lent PDVSA (Venezuela's state-owned oil and natural gas company) an estimated $5 billion (4.3 billion euros).

Thus any oil supplied to Cuba by PDVSA could go toward settling this debt.

Russia also signed an agreement at the end of 2016 to modernize Cuba's armed forces.

January: Major global technology providers SAP, Symantec and McAfee have allowed Russian authorities to hunt for vulnerabilities in software deeply embedded across the U.S. government. The practice potentially jeopardizes the security of computer networks in at least a dozen federal agencies, U.S. lawmakers and security experts said. It involves more companies and a broader swath of the government than previously reported. In order to sell in the Russian market, the tech companies let a Russian defense agency scour the inner workings, or source code, of some of their products. Russian authorities say the reviews are necessary to detect flaws that could be exploited by hackers.

4: In Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK – Russian Colonel Sergei Skripal is hospitalised after being poisoned. A major incident was declared as a number of people, including emergency service workers, fell ill, and the scene around the bench was later decontaminated by workers in full-body biohazard suits. Colonel Skripal was jailed in August 2006 for treason in Russia for reportedly working with British foreign intelligence agency MI6 and sentenced to 13-years in prison. Russian prosecutors said he had been paid $100,000 (£72,000) by Britain's MI6 for information he had been supplying since the 1990s when he was a serving officer. It was alleged that he disclosed the names of several dozen Russian agents working in Europe, but was allowed to leave for the UK in a spy swap in July 2010.
Land Registry documents show his house (Christie Miller Road) was registered in his real name and was bought for £260,000 with no mortgage on 12 August 2011, just over a year after the spy swap. Sergei Skripal, 66, was one of four Russians exchanged for 10 deep cover “sleeper” agents planted by Moscow in the US.
Sergei Skripal remains in critical condition in intensive care, under supervision of experts from Public Health England's Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards. Skripal’s sudden and unexplained illness invites comparison with the poisoning in 2006 of another Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko – a former officer with the KGB/FSB spy agency - fell ill after drinking a cup of tea laced with radioactive polonium-210. He met his killers on November 1, 2006, in a ground-floor bar of the Millennium hotel in Mayfair, central London. The pair were Andrei Lugovoi – a former KGB officer turned businessman, who is now a deputy in Russia’s state Duma/parliament – and Dmitry Kovtun, a childhood friend of Lugovoi’s from a Soviet military family. Litvinenko’s murder caused international scandal and lead to years of estrangement between Moscow and London.

Putin denies all involvement and refused to extradite either of the killers from Moscow to London. But
Putin had threatened "traitors will kick the bucket' when Sergei Skripal was sent to the UK
in a Cold War-style spy swap between Russia and the US

Sir Robert Owen (chair of the judicial enquiry) also ruled that Vladimir Putin had "probably approved" the operation, together with the FSB’s then chief Nikolai Patrushev. Skripal is cast as a traitor by Moscow. He is thought to have done serious damage to Russian spy networks in Britain and Europe.
Boris Johnson (UK Foreign Secretary) has called Russia a "malign" force and promised that it will be "brought to heel" following the alleged poisoning of a former Russian spy on British soil. Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, who is in her 30s, were found collapsed on a bench at a shopping centre in Salisbury, south England, on Sunday March 4.. Both are in critical condition at a nearby hospital. "Russia is in many respects a malign and disruptive force," Johnson tells MPs.

The Royal family could pull out of the World Cup if there is a proven link between Russia and the recent 'poisoning attempt' of a former spy and his daughter Yulia. It has also emerged that Yulia had criticised Putin on Facebook, calling him "the worst president in the world". Yulia is understood to have been visiting Britain from her home in Moscow. She arrived in the UK at Heathrow Airport at 2.40pm on March 3 on a plane from Russia.

A UK police officer who was the first to attend the scene in Salisbury on Sunday is now also in a serious condition in hospital,
and believe that it may have been a nerve agent which was used against the Skripals.

Met. Police assistant commissioner Mark Rowley says the case is being treated as attempted murder and that 66-year-old Mr Skripal and his daughter, 33, were deliberately targeted: "In summary, this is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder by use of a nerve agent."

"If it was poison, it would mean people are still not protected," Marina Litvinenko said, referring Mr. Skripal’s case.
"It’s a very bad message for other people. The lessons from my husband’s death have not been properly learned."

Bill Browder, a wealthy American fund manager clamoring for justice on behalf of his lawyer, Sergei L. Magnitsky, who died in a Russian prison in 2009, told the Press Association news agency that "the first operating assumption" of the Skripal case should be "that this was an assassination attempt by the Kremlin against a 'traitor' of Russia."

poisoning of the two in the normally quiet town of Salisbury is threatening a full-scale security and diplomatic crisis for Britain, with lawmakers demanding the government launch an urgent inquiry into

more than a dozen recent suspicious deaths in Britain, all potentially tied to Russian intelligence services.

Britisj investigators have identified the nerve agent used on the pair, but are not making it public at this point.
Mr Tugendhat, a former British Army officer, said it now seemed "likely" that Colonel Skripal’s wife Lyudmila and son Alexandr had both been murdered. The circumstances of both their deaths are disputed, with some reports claiming both died in 'car crashes'.
About 100 British troops, from the Royal Marines, Royal Air Force and chemical specialist, sare being assigned to help police remove contaminated items at crime scenes linked to the poisoning of a former Russian spy Colonel Sktipal and his daughter Yulia. Mr Skripal's home and a number of other locations, including the bench, remained sealed off on Friday March 9 as Home Secretary Ms Amber Rudd visited the medieval cathedral city.
Prime Minister Theresa May plans a response to the poisoning that will include, in the longer term, more British soldiers and fighter jets in Eastern Europe near the Russian border, and a push for Nato-wide reinforcement.

A presenter on Russian state television has issued an apparent threat to "traitors" living in Britain. Kirill Kleymenov warned of the dangers of spying on Russia and advised those who betrayed their country:

"Don't choose Britain as a place to live."

The comments, made on Channel One's Vremya news programme on Wednesday evening March 7, come amid speculation over who was behind the attempted murder of a double agent on British soil.

10: Investigators are said to have found traces of the chemical weapon at the Zizzi restaurant in the city centre. Ex-Spy Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia are said to have eaten at Zizzi in the hours before they were taken ill. Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia are still fighting for their lives after being exposed to a toxic substance in the Wiltshire city.

Ahmet Üzümcü, the director general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), of the 192-member UN body had seemingly overseen and verified the destruction of Russia’s entire stock of chemical weapons, all 39,967 metric tons.

is to raise the Sergei Skripal poisoning case with its Nato allies, a British defence minister has revealed. With military chemical weapons experts now investigating the suspected nerve agent attack and Home Secretary Amber Rudd chairing an emergency Cobra meeting on Saturday afternoon, Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood said the UK Government intended to discuss the case at Nato level.

murders connected to Russian security agencies include Alexander Perepilichny, a Moscow banker turned whistleblower who died after jogging near his house in Surrey and is suspected of having been poisoned, and Berezovsky, whose body was found hanged at his ex-wife’s mansion in Berkshire. Former Russian press minister Mikhail Lesin was found beaten to death in a Washington hotel room last year. The former Chechen president, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, was killed in an explosion in Qatar in 2004 for which three Russians were jailed for life, only to be extradited to their homeland, where they were given a heroes’ welcome and apparently freed.

steps up its war of words with Britain on Saturday March 10 as its embassy in London linked the attempted murder of double agent Sergei Skripal to the deaths of three exiled enemies of the Kremlin. The provocative move came as the home secretary, Amber Rudd, chaired a meeting of the emergency Cobra committee into how the investigation into the attack on Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, was progressing. How Salisbury case went from local drama to international incident. The committee heard that 250 counter-terrorism police have identified more than 240 witnesses and are looking at more than 200 pieces of evidence.

wearing a black surgical (Sars) mask was spotted in Salisbury metres from where poisoned Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter collapsed. Witness Mark Francis says he reported the strange sighting to Wiltshire Police as the hunt for clues continues.

On Sunday, hundreds of diners and pub-goers were urged to wash clothes and other items a week after potentially coming into contact with the nerve agent. The "precautionary advice" was issued after traces of the substance were found in The Mill pub and the nearby Zizzi restaurant, in Salisbury.

Nikolai Glushkov’s body is found by his daughter Natalya at his house in New Malden, Kingston upon Thames, UK. There were signs of "suffocation". Glushkov, 68, lived alone. Friends of the Russian exile found dead in his London home said they believed his death to be suspicious, adding that he had shown no signs of depression in recent months and was "in a perfect mood".

The midnight Tuesday deadline for Moscow to respond to London's ultimatum that it explain its suspected involvement in last week's nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy has passed without a response from Russia. A spokesperson for the Russian Embassy in London said Moscow would not respond "until it receives samples of the chemical substance."

The embassy has called for a joint investigation into the incident.

dispute between the two countries has sharply worsened tensions between Russia and the West, already strained by Moscow’s role in the Syrian conflict and its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Though American laboratories stopped producing nerve agents around 1970, after the production of so-called third-generation nerve agents like sarin and VX, Soviet scientists continued their work for two decades, producing a "fourth generation." The Novichok nerve agents came in solid form, like a powder or thick paste, and would not register on the chemical detector paper that NATO troops used. A chemist who worked in the laboratory developing Novichok accidentally inhaled fumes while filling a syringe, and collapsed. Though he was injected with an antidote and eventually awoke, he suffered from depression and epilepsy and died five years later,

leaving Vil Mirzayanov, a scientist who helped develop the nerve agent, deeply disillusioned.

the chemical Novichok enters the bloodstream, it causes the victim’s muscles to go into spasms, pupils to shrink to pinpoints, and breathing to become very laboured, said Alastair Hay, an emeritus professor of toxicology at the University of Leeds. At this point, the victim’s life could be saved only by the administration of atropine, which counteracts the agent and allows the body to metabolize it.

UK will now expel 23 Russian diplomats after Moscow refused to explain how a Russian-made weapon's grade nerve agent Novichok was used on a former spy in Salisbury, the PM says. Theresa May said the diplomats, who have a week to leave, were identified as "undeclared intelligence officers". She also revoked an invitation to Russia's foreign minister, and said the Royal Family would not attend the Fifa World Cup later this year.

The United States, European Union and NATO all voiced support for Britain ahead of the statement
and Mrs May discussed the case with the leaders of Germany and France.

secretary Gavin Williamson has said there been a "tenfold increase" in the number of Russian submarines operating in the North Atlantic over the last seven years. Typhoon jets from RAF Lossiemouth intercepted two Russian long-range bombers as they approached to within 50 miles of the UK in January 2018.

U.S. national security officials say the FBI, the Homeland Security Department and intelligence agencies have determined that Russian intelligence and others are behind attacks on the American energy sector.

The U.S. officials the energy industry targets were chosen deliberately.

Thousands of British troops will be vaccinated against anthrax poisoning following the nerve agent attack in Salisbury. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson will announce the measure today along with plans for a new chemical weapons defence centre.

The foreign secretary Boris Johnson says Britain is taking retaliatory action against "Putin’s Kremlin", and not the Russian people, as he visited the Battle of Britain Bunker museum in Uxbridge with his Polish counterpart.

"We think it overwhelmingly likely that it was his [Putin’s] decision to direct the use of a nerve agent on the streets of the UK,
on the streets of Europe, for the first time since the second world war. That is why we are at odds with Russia,"Johnson said.

Poland’s foreign minister, Jacek Czaputowicz, said on Friday that his country backed the tough stance. " As far as sanctions are concerned Poland would support such action," he said during the museum visit with Johnson. "I think the international community has to mobilise around this case in order to demonstrate to Russia decisiveness and

Boris Johnson has said the UK is in possession of evidence that Russia has been exploring nerve-agent based assassinations and that the country has been stockpiling deadly chemical weapons in the last decade. The Foreign Secretary in particular claimed Britain has reason to believe Moscow has been collecting the “military grade” Novichok nerve agent that the UK Government says was deployed in the Salisbury attack.

international chemical weapons experts coming to the UK to begin independent testing of samples from Salisbury, the Foreign Office indicated this line of investigation could form part of a probe into what it claimed is a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Inspectors from the world's chemical weapons watchdog have begun examining the nerve agent used to poison ex Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are carrying out tests on samples taken from Salisbury at the Ministry of Defence's military research facility at Porton Down.

investigation into what left the Skripals in a coma is now one of the biggest and most complex counter terror officers have ever undertaken, Britain's Met Police said. About 250 anti terrorism detectives are working on the inquiry, with many others involved, including specialists in protective equipment. Officers are trawling through 4,000 hours of CCTV to work out Mr Skripal and Yulia's movements, and they have seized 800 exhibits and taken 400 witness statements.

developer of Soviet-era nerve agents related to the one used against former spy and his daughter Yulia has told the Guardian newspaper in the UK that a similar poison was used in the murder of a Russian businessman in the 1990s. The remarks by Vladimir Uglev, a Soviet chemical weapons scientist, contradict official Russian denials that the country had any chemical weapons programme tied to the name novichok, with the formal codename foliant. 'It’s got me' – lonely death of Soviet scientist poisoned by novichok. Uglev is one of three Russian scientists to confirm the existence of the top secret chemical weapons programme since the Salisbury attack. His remarks were sent to a handful of journalists on Friday 23.Uglev worked in the State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology in the city of Shikhany, Saratov region, from 1972 until 1993. Uglev is one of three Russian scientists to confirm the existence of the top secret chemical weapons programme since the Salisbury attack. His remarks were sent to a handful of journalists on Friday 23 March, and he answered follow up questions for the Guardian. Uglev on Friday said he had been questioned by police immediately after the grisly 1995 murders of banker Ivan Kivelidi and his secretary in an apparent poisoning, and recognised a nerve agent synthesised by his own working group at a closed state laboratory near the Volga river. Court documents first reported by Reuters and later published by the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta said that a member of Uglev’s lab, Leonid Rink, had been jailed briefly after admitting to selling a small amount of a deadly nerve agent developed under Russia’s so-called foliant programme. That programme has become famous in the west in recent days as novichok, identified by British authorities as the Soviet-era nerve agent used in Salisbury earlier this month. The likely sale of the nerve agent to a criminal group in the 1990s will raise questions about Theresa May’s assurances that only a state could have ordered the attack on Skripal. He said he handled foliant nerve agents for the last time in 1990.

They were not on the list of chemical weapons submitted by Russia as part of the Chemical Weapons Convention signed in 1993.

investigating the attempted murders of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal have said they believe the pair were poisoned with a nerve agent at the front door of his Salisbury home. Specialists investigating the poisoning of the the Skripals have found the highest concentration of the nerve agent on the front door at the address, police said.

The daughter of the Russian spy targeted in the Salisbury nerve agent attack is no longer in a critical condition and "improving rapidly". Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust said in a statement that only two patients remained in hospital following the incident earlier this month. Police officer Nick Bailey was discharged from hospital last week. She had been given power of attorney over the cash in late February from her father, double agent Sergei Skripal, who was also poisoned by nerve agent Novichok alongside her on March 4 in Salisbury. The cash – now in an unknown Russian bank - was from the sale of the house he had shared in Britain with his ex-wife, Natalia, like Yulia, 33, the daughter of a GRU military intelligence colonel.

Yulia Skripal had collected the proceeds from a house sale in Britain, which belonged to her brother Alexander
who died in mysterious circumstances in St Petersburg last year.

At the end of February, Yulia received a general power of attorney from her father Sergei in order to take ownership of a secret bank account that belonged to her late brother Alexander.

"After his divorce, his wife Natalia paid him $200,000 USD, and he kept this money. It is in a Russian bank now."

British Security services claim to have located the source of the nerve agent used to poison Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. According to reports, officials found the Russian laboratory where the novichik poison was made.

Sergei Skripal is no longer in a critical condition following last month's nerve agent attack, Salisbury District Hospital says.

The recovery of poisoned spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia has raised hopes the pair could provide new clues to British officers investigating the nerve agent attack in Salisbury. It was revealed that the former Russian double agent was no longer in a critical condition and was "responding well to treatment" at Salisbury District Hospital, more than a month after he and Ms Skripal were found unconscious on a park bench in the Wiltshire city, UK.

cousin of Yulia Skripal has been refused a visa to come to Britain and visit her relatives in Salisbury District Hospital. Viktoria Skripal wanted to travel from Russia to visit Yulia and Sergei Skripal as they recover from a nerve agent attack in the Wiltshire city, but has been denied entry to the UK.

intercepted a message to Moscow saying 'the package has been delivered' shortly after Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia were poisoned, it has been reported. It is understood the information was central to the intelligence package shared with Britain’s allies before more than 100 Russian diplomats were expelled from countries across the world. The British Government has repeatedly said it is 'highly likely' Russia was behind the attacks in Salisbury despite scientists at military research site Porton Down being unable to confirm that the Novichok nerve agent came from Moscow.
two messages sent from Syria to Moscow were intercepted at an RAF listening post in Cyprus on March 3 and 4. The message on March 4, the day of the poisoning, included the phrase 'the package has been delivered' and that two people have 'made a successful egress'. A Flight Lieutenant then flagged the message intercepted the previous day following the attack on the Skripals, although its contents have not been revealed.
It comes as the Mail on Sunday revealed the agent used to poison former Russian agent Mr Skripal and his daughter was specially designed to take 'four hours to kill them' so their assassins could flee Britain. Security sources said the Russians developed a less powerful 'boutique' Novichok that could be absorbed through the skin to help their agents avoid capture.

Novichok is normally administered in gas form and kills its victims within minutes.

Poisoned spy Sergei Skripal is no longer in a critical condition and is expected to leave hospital in "due course", while his daughter Yulia has been discharged. "The nerve agents are deadly," says Prof Hay. "That's why they were chosen as chemical weapons. If you are exposed to a number of lethal doses then invariably it is fatal. " They block acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme active in the nervous system. The result is involuntary contraction of all muscles, leading to cardiac arrest and asphyxiation. One of the scientists who helped make novichok has also told Sky News the substance was designed to do "irreparable" damage to the body.

The international chemical weapons watchdog’s report on the Salisbury nerve agent attack in the UK is released as a fierce diplomatic battle between Russia and the UK continues. The British Foreign Office asked for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to release an executive summary of its findings at midday on Thursday.

It is believed that British authorities immediately spirited Ms Yulia Skripal away to a secure location when she was discharged from hospital earlier this week.

The Russian embassy reacted angrily, suggesting in a series of tweets that the Russian national had been taken against her will.

Blood tests also revealed that the chemical was found in blood samples taken from the Skripals and Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, the police officer who first attended the scene. The report from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) says the chemical was "high purity" with a complete absence of contaminants (in other words not a derivative). Tests by military experts at the Porton Down laboratories in Wiltshire found that novichok, one of a group of deadly chemical compounds developed by the Soviet government in the 1970s and 1980s, was responsible for the poisoning.

Russian intelligence agencies have been spying on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter for at least five years, Britain says in the latest twist in the Salisbury nerve agent attack. National Security Security Adviser Sir Mark Sedwill said cyber specialists from the GRU – Russian military intelligence – targeted Yulia Skripal’s email accounts as far back as 2013.

Britain’s top National Security chief has revealed further evidence that Russia was behind the nerve agent attack in Salisbury. In a letter to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, National Security Advisor Mark Sedwill said Sergei and Yulia Skripal had been under scrutiny from Russian intelligence services in recent years. Yulia Skripal’s email account, he says, was targeted by Russian intelligence cyber experts as far back as 2013. The letter, now shared with NATO allies, set out the government’s case for Russia being the only state with “the technical means, operational experience and the motive” to carry out the attack. Mr Sedwill wrote:

"There is no plausible alternative explanation".

British intelligence have now identified key suspects in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The attempted assassins, thought to be now residing in Russia, targeted former double agent Skripal and smeared the chemical nerve agent Novichok – in liquid form – on the front door of his home in Wiltshire, Salisbury, authorities believe. Counter-terrorism police are building a case against 'persons of interest', The Daily Telegraph reports.

It is understood that analysis of flight records in and out of the UK has provided officers with specific names connected to the case. While police have also referred to CCTV footage in Salisbury and trawled car number plate recognition cameras. 

But UK police fear they will hit a diplomatic brick wall in trying to interview, or at a later date, prosecute the suspects. 

The revelations come following a report by experts at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed Britain's analysis that the attack on the Skripals in Salisbury on March 4 was conducted with the nerve agent Novichok.

The international chemical weapons watchdog has rowed back on a suggestion that up to 100 grams of liquid nerve agent were used in the attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter. The head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ahmet Uzumcu, tells the New York Times the amount of Novichok used indicated it was deliberately applied as a weapon.

Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, who was targeted with the novichok nerve agent, is discharged from hospital.

Yulia Skripal has said she feels lucky to have survived being poisoned and she would one day like to return home to Russia. Ms Skripal, who was poisoned in March in Salisbury – along with her father, said: "We are so lucky to have both survived this attempted assassination. Our recovery has been slow and extremely painful."
Speaking from a secret location in London, where she is under police protection, she added: "As I to come to terms with the devastating changes thrust upon me both physically and emotionally, I take one day at a time and want to help care for my dad till his full recovery. In the longer term, I hope to return home to my country."

Ms Skripal also thanked medical staff and the people who helped them when they were found on a bench after having lunch in the city. "I am grateful to all of the wonderful, kind staff at Salisbury hospital, a place I have become all too familiar with," she said.

Bill Browder, who had travelled to Spain to provide evidence concerning the Russian Mafia/Bratva is arrested in Spain on a Russian arrest warrent issued through Interpol.

Copyright © Lloyd Thomas 2015-2018. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
Feel free to copy, as long as this full copyright notice is included.

FOR A ROUGH TRANSLATION SIMPLY CHOOSE A LANGUAGE