In late November 2006 the whole world was shaken by a ruthless assassination in London of a former lieutenant colonel of the FSB, a British citizen Alexander Litvinenko. This has been the most notorious crime in the past 30 years committed by the Russian intelligence on foreign soil. In a rare unison both the Russian foreign intelligence (SVR) and the Russian security service (FSB) as well as the Russian president himself publicly declared in an orchestrated chorus that they had absolutely nothing to do with the murder. The author, a former Russian military intelligence officer and an international expert in the special operations, had consulted the Metropolitan Police SO15 team at the peak of the investigation. Based on his experience and knowledge as well of the new archival material that became available after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Boris Volodarsky proves that since 1917 Lenin and his Cheka, a predecessor of the KGB, have been planning and carrying out poisoning operations all over the world in order to eliminate the enemies of the Kremlin. Mr. Volodarsky has documented over 20 cases when the Russian authorities used poison as a weapon to murder the opponents of the regime including several leaders of the foreign states. Developing a thesis first put forward in his article in the Wall Street Journal [April 7, 2005], the author proves that the Litvinenkors"s poisoning is just one episode in the chain of murders that started in Vienna, Austria, in 1921 and continued throughout the whole history of the USSR and the post-Soviet or, rather, neo-Soviet Putinrs"s Russia.

What makes this book absolutely unique is that Boris was professionally involved in this or that way in practically every case that he describes, be it the first recorded radioactive thallium poisoning of the Soviet defector Nikolai Khokhlov in Franfurt/Main, Germany, in September 1957; a biological weapons murder of the former Hungarian state security officer Beacute;la Lapusnyik in Vienna, Austria, in 1962; a sedative overdose and death of the CIA double agent Nikolai Artamonov in Vienna in 1975; a ricin "umbrella murder" of the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London in September 1978; a deliberate poisoning and then shooting of the Afghan Premier Hafizzullah Amin in Kabul in December 1979; a dioxin assassination attempt on the life of the Ukrainian presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko in Kyiv in September 2004; a world infamous polonium-210 poisoning and murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London on 1 November 2006; a mysterious and still uninvestigated death of the Georgian oligarch Badri Patarkatsyshvili in London on 14 February 2007; and, finally, a scandalous alleged "big white pill" poisoning of Oleg Gordievsky, a former British ls"molers" within the KGB, in November 2007. Besides, the book presents many historical cases for the first time and gives detailed and well-documented backgrounds of the Yushchenko and Litvinenko operations based on the authorrs"s firsthand experience. Mr. Volodarsky was in Vienna when "the Ukrainian patient" was brought in by a private jet from Kyiv to undergo treatment at the Rudolfinerhaus on September 10, 2004, and had a chance to meet and interview his doctors, study the papers, speak with Mr. Yushchenko during 4 press-conferences in Vienna, and then take part in a private investigation of the attempted poisoning. Mr. Volodarskyrs"s first article specifying the poison itself and pointing at the former "Kamera", Russian special lab, appeared in the Wall Street Journal when Litvinenko was still alive ["Russian Venom", 22 November 2006], followed by virtually hundreds of articles and interviews published by the leading international media. After taking part in the Litvinenko funerals alongside a selected tiny group of family and friends including the exiled Russian oligarch Boris Ber.