From its earliest days, the Soviet Union’s intelligence services — whether known as the Cheka or the names of any of its successor agencies like the KGB — kept the government in power by pursuing its opponents no matter where they lived.

David Tennant remembers seeing in the news the image of Alexander Litvinenko lying in a hospital bed.

Russian agent Dmitry Kovtun, who was accused by the U.K. authorities in the poisoning death of former spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006, has died at 57.

The European Court of Human Rights has backed the conclusion of a British inquiry that Russia was responsible for the killing of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who died in 2006 after drinking tea laced with a radioactive material.

MOSCOW When Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny collapsed in an airplane bathroom Thursday, his supporters immediately suspected poisoning. If true, he wouldnt be the first prominent, outspoken Russian to be the target of toxic attack. A British inquiry found that Russian agents had killed Litvinenko, probably with President Vladimir Putin's approval. At the time of Litvinenkos poisoning, he had been investigating the killing of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya three weeks earlier. PYOTR VERZILOVVerzilov, a member of Russian protest group Pussy Riot, ended up in an intensive care unit after a suspected poisoning in 2018 and had to be flown to Berlin for treatment.