An enemy of Vladimir Putin is fearing for his life after being sent a bullet and a vile death threat in the post.
The sinister letter to former FSB spy Boris Karpichkov, which gave the sender’s address as London’s Putney Vale crematorium, began: “Die, you scum. You will soon die writhing in terrible torment.”
He believes neither the police nor MI5 can protect him, claiming they have done little to protect him when similar threats arrived.
Mr Karpichkov, 63, said: “I need for me and my family more than ever a secure safe house but they will not spend the money to supply one. I wake up fearing every day will be my last. My only protection now is my own wits and counter-surveillance training.”
The defector is just one of the Russian president’s foes who are increasing their personal security.
They fear the Kremlin despot will take revenge against them for Western sanctions over the Ukraine war.
The travel ban on top Russians and blockade of the country’s exports have put an even bigger target on the backs of those already on Putin’s kill list. US financier Bill Browder, 58, the architect of the latest Western clampdown on Russia, said with so many sanctions imposed, Putin has nothing to lose by murdering him.
He said: “Putin has always wanted to kill me. But now Russia has been sanctioned by every Western country that’s no longer a deterrent. Ukraine has made my situation worse, Russians blame me personally for sanctions.”
Mr Browder was behind the US Magnitsky Act named after his friend, tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky – beaten to death in a Moscow jail in 2009.
It freezes the assets of Russian human rights abusers and bans them from entering the US. It became the blueprint for sanctions against Russia after last year’s invasion of Ukraine.
Britain sanctions 1,200 Russians and 120 businesses and all assets belonging to Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have been frozen in the UK, EU, US and Canada.
Mr Browder and Mr Karpichkov were marked for execution on the same hit list as Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, poisoned in Salisbury in 2018.
The letter Mr Karpichkov got was signed with a cover name the spy used for one of his agents, which only the FSB could know.
And it used the word “olive”, spy slang for a bullet, stating: “You will get the same olive straight into your forehead – exactly between the eyes.
“English cops and special services are not going to protect you. We have reliable contacts everywhere.” The bullet was the untraceable type favoured by pro killers.
Mr Karpichkov had further angered Putin by predicting a full-scale invasion of Ukraine a month before Moscow mobilised its forces. He also claimed Putin has Parkinson’s disease and early stage dementia.
The ex-FSB major has hidden here under a false name since defecting in 1998 but Russian agents soon find him when he moves.
A 2020 bid to have him extradited to his native Latvia on bogus charges of fraud, falsifying documents and gun possession failed as a judge said his life would be at risk.
And in 2006 Russian killers tried to poison him in New Zealand – the same week as they murdered fellow ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko in London with radioactive polonium-210.
