The History Bureau Putin and the Apartment Bombs: 4. The Poisoning
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Jan 13, 2026 
Gordon Corera, a BBC national security reporter who investigated Litvinenko's poisoning. Jeremy Vine, a BBC journalist who covered Berezovsky’s dramatic 2002 press conference. They trace Berezovsky’s claim that Russian services staged the 1999 apartment bombings. They follow Litvinenko’s flight to London, his probe into the attacks, the mysterious poisoning with polonium, and the UK inquiry pointing to state involvement.
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Berezovsky's Explosive London Reveal
- Boris Berezovsky held a high-profile London press conference in March 2002 claiming the FSB staged the apartment bombings to boost Putin.
- Jeremy Vine and other journalists largely dismissed it as revenge from a fallen kingmaker and the story sank from view.
Litvinenko Goes Public and Flees
- Alexander Litvinenko publicly accused FSB corruption in 1998 and faced imprisonment and threats for going public.
- He fled to the UK in 2000, where Boris Berezovsky funded him and supported his investigation into the apartment bombings.
Parliament Transcript Fuels Suspicion
- Litvinenko found a Duma transcript error naming Volgodonsk before that city was bombed three days later.
- He and Yuri Felshtinsky used this and other anomalies to argue in their book that the FSB blew up the apartments.
