Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Taking readers on thrilling ride inside the high-rolling underworld of Russia's exiled oligarchs, award-winning journalist Heidi Blake (Buzzfeed) illuminates Putin's alarming assassination campaign and the West's shocking attempts to cover them up
In 2014, Scot Young plummeted from the window of his London penthouse. Despite his repeated warnings to friends, family, and the police that he was being tailed by a Russian hit-squad, and the deaths of his eight associates, British police declared Young's fall a suicide and shut the case within minutes of arriving on the scene. For years, Young was a high-rolling British fixer for a ring of exiled Russian oligarchs, most notably Boris Berezovsky, who brought with them extensive organized crime connections and came to the UK tailed by teams of Russian spies deployed to track their every move. Public enemies of Putin, these emigres extracted enormous wealth from Russia and openly criticized Putin's regime, using their power and influence abroad to raise questions about an emboldened FSB. As tensions rose, bodies began to mysteriously pile up, yet any British investigations were uncomfortably subdued and quickly shut down. Based on 250 boxes of documents, years of reporting, and interviews with hundreds of associates, From Russia With Blood tells this story, revealing how the death of Berezovsky, Young, and countless others can be linked to Putin's assassination program--and how Western governments are failing to protect those living abroad against the threat.
Synopsis
Inside the high-rolling underworld of Russia's exiled oligarchs: award-winning journalist Heidi Blake illuminates Putin's alarming assassination campaign and the West's shocking attempts to cover them up.In 2014, Scot Young plummeted from the window of his London penthouse. Despite his repeated warnings to friends, family, and the police that he was being tailed by a Russian hit-squad, and the deaths of his
eight associates, British police declared Young's fall a suicide and closed the case within minutes of arriving on the scene.
For years, Young was a high-rolling British fixer for a ring of exiled Russian oligarchs, most notably Boris Berezovsky, who had extensive organized crime connections and came to the UK tailed by teams of Russian spies deployed to track their every move. Public enemies of Putin, these emigres extracted enormous wealth from Russia and openly criticized Putin's regime, using their power and influence abroad to raise questions about an emboldened FSB. As tensions rose, bodies began to mysteriously pile up, yet any British investigations were notably subdued and quickly shut down.
Based on 250 boxes of documents, years of reporting, and interviews with hundreds of associates, From Russia With Blood tells this story, revealing how the death of Berezovsky, Young, and countless others can be linked to Putin's assassination program--and how Western governments are failing to protect those living abroad against the threat.
Synopsis
The untold story of how Russia refined the art and science of targeted assassination abroad-while Western spies watched in horror as their governments failed to guard against the threat They thought they had found a safe haven in the green hills of England. They were wrong. One by one, the Russian oligarchs, dissidents, and gangsters who fled to Britain after Vladimir Putin came to power dropped dead in strange or suspicious circumstances. One by one, their British lawyers and fixers met similarly grisly ends. Yet, one by one, the British authorities shut down every investigation-and carried on courting the Kremlin.
The spies in the riverside headquarters of MI6 looked on with horror as the scope of the Kremlin's global killing campaign became all too clear. And, across the Atlantic, American intelligence officials watched with mounting alarm as the bodies piled up, concerned that the tide of death could spread to the United States. Those fears intensified when a one-time Kremlin henchman was found bludgeoned to death in a Washington, D.C. penthouse. But it wasn't until Putin's assassins unleashed a deadly chemical weapon on the streets of Britain, endangering hundreds of members of the public in a failed attempt to slay the double agent Sergei Skripal, that Western governments were finally forced to admit that the killing had spun out of control.
Unflinchingly documenting the growing web of death on British and American soil, Heidi Blake bravely exposes the Kremlin's assassination campaign as part of Putin's ruthless pursuit of global dominance-and reveals why Western governments have failed to stop the bloodshed. The unforgettable story that emerges whisks us from London's high-end night clubs to Miami's million-dollar hideouts, ultimately rendering a bone-chilling portrait of money, betrayal, and murder, written with the pace and propulsive power of a thriller.
Based on a vast trove of unpublished documents, bags of discarded police evidence, and interviews with hundreds of insiders, this heart-stopping international investigation uncovers one of the most important- and terrifying-geopolitical stories of our time.