Mark Hollingsworth

It is 00.40 pm, 26 September 1983. Lieutenant-Colonel Stanislav Petrov, the duty commander in charge of monitoring the Soviet Union’s early warning satellites designed to identify American missile attacks, is carefully checking his panels. Suddenly, the alarms roar into loud action. The word 'Launch' flashes onto his screen in large red letters. For the next 15 seconds, one of the satellites reports that five American Minuteman missiles have been launched and are heading towards the Soviet Union. Based in a secret bunker hidden deep beneath the woods just outside Moscow, Petrov is transfixed and stares at the screen in disbelief and shock. The automatic order to launch in retaliation is also sent to Soviet military commanders.

Wearing a long white scarf, military khaki pants and holding a drum and stick, Vladimir Putin smiles as he watches a shaman – a combination of a psychic and spiritual healer – play an acoustic guitar for a traditional ritual. It is 2007 and the Russian president, his close friend Sergei Shoigu, now head of Russia’s national security council, and the shaman are sitting by a fire in Tuva, a remote area of Siberia on the border with Mongolia. Known as 'a place of power' where shamanic traditions are strong, this region is home to Shoigu, a native Siberian Asiatic, who in his former role as defence minister played a crucial role in the brutal invasion of Ukraine.

At 1.30 p.m. on 7 September 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident and BBC journalist, approached a bus stop at the south end of Waterloo bridge. As he gazed absent-mindedly across the Thames, office workers jostled him as they streamed past. Suddenly he felt a sharp pain on the back of his right thigh. Turning quickly, he saw a man stoop to pick up an umbrella. ‘I am sorry’, the man mumbled in a gruff foreign accent. Seconds later, a taxi pulled up, the man jumped inside and disappeared.  The pain was excruciating, and Markov was taken to St James’ hospital, Balham. As he lay in bed, the Soviet bloc defector mentioned the incident, but the doctors did not suspect foul play and thought he had a high fever. Four days later Markov died.

In 1992, Richard Nixon assessed the future of Russia in a remarkably prophetic interview. ‘Russia is at a crossroads’, said the former US President: It is often said the cold war is over and the West has won. But that is only half of the truth. Communism has been defeated but the ideas of freedom are now on trial. If they don’t work, there will be a reversion not to communism but to a new despotism which would pose a mortal danger to the rest of the world. It will be affected by a virus of Russian imperialism which has been a characteristic of Russian foreign policy for centuries.   Therefore, the West and the US has a great stake in freedom succeeding in Russia. If it succeeds, then China and other communist states will follow.

In April this year, a sombre looking Vladimir Putin attended a midnight Orthodox Easter Service in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. Holding a lit red candle, the Russian President crossed himself several times during the ceremony, known as the Divine Liturgy. When Father Kirill declared ‘Christ has risen’, Putin duly responded with the congregation: ‘Truly he is risen’. It was a year after the brutal invasion of Ukraine, but the Russian leader and Father Kirill showed no remorse or compassion for the suffering caused by the war. In fact, Putin and the Kremlin has exploited the support of the Orthodox Church in an attempt to give his actions a spurious philosophical and cultural ‘justification’.

‘Ukrainians fight for their homeland, Russians fight for Putin’s ambitions’, declared the TV presenter on his YouTube channel earlier this year. This was not a Ukrainian propagandist. In fact, the commentator was Russian and talking on ‘TV Rain’, the most popular and effective opposition channel broadcasting into Russia.  In TV Rain’s final programme from Moscow before the station was forced to shut down and move abroad, the founder declared: ‘No to war. Putin cannot win the war’. In exile, the channel remained robust. ‘The war has no justification and has to be stopped’, says the editor Tikhon Dzyadko. ‘Russia must withdraw its troops from Ukraine’.

On 29 August 1942, as German tanks reached the Volga river near Stalingrad, Josef Stalin consulted his most senior General, Georgy Zhukov about his strategy. Despite his impoverished background, Zhukov was intelligent, demanding and strong-willed. The general persuaded Stalin to delay counter-attacking the Nazis for a week to allow time for supplies and artillery to reach the Red Army. Five days later Stalin discovered the Nazis had almost reached the Stalingrad suburbs. Incensed, the Soviet dictator ordered General Zhukov to attack immediately. The Soviets did counter attack but Zhukov later objected and argued this tactic was not feasible. Despite his despotic instincts, Stalin accepted the general’s advice and ordered him to produce a new plan.

Boris Ratnikov, a former KGB officer and retired chief advisor to Russia's security service, gave a remarkable interview back in 2016. Ratnikov, who died in 2020, claimed his boss had penetrated and read the mind of Madeleine Albright while she was US Secretary of State in the mid-1990s. Ratnikov said his superior officer used a photograph to penetrate Albright's subconscious where he discovered her secret thoughts about the priority of removing Siberia and the Far East from Russian territory. The senior intelligence official in question was Georgy Rogozin, a top KGB officer between 1969 and 1992, who became deputy chief of president Yeltsin's security service.

The Queen rarely – if ever – accepts invitations to dinner at private houses, no matter how grand. But in the summer of 2014 the oil and gas rich Gulf state of Qatar became the first ‘official partner’ of Royal Ascot and secured branding rights for the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II stakes. The Qataris also agreed to pay for the upkeep of the Castle of Mey which is owned by the royal family. And so breaking with tradition the Queen accepted a dinner invitation and joined the ruling family of Qatar and assorted guests. The Qataris had just spent an estimated £75 million on their London mansion at Dudley House, Park Lane, and so were delighted.

On 28 October 2016, I received an email from a well-connected former senior MI6 officer who asked me if I had any material about properties in London owned by wealthy Russians. I was a natural person to ask because I had written a book about the Russian oligarchs and had become an expert on the ownership of expensive houses and luxury apartments in central London. I then discovered that the discreet inquiry was on behalf of the National Security Council who were reviewing the activities and assets of the oligarchs in the UK, including Roman Abramovich. And so I was expecting legislative action soon.