London death of Putin foe Nikolai Glushkov ruled a homicide

The 2018 strangulation death of a Russian businessman who fled Vladimir Putin’s regime was a murder made to look like suicide, a British coroner has ruled.

Nikolai Glushkov, a Putin critic and close associate of onetime billionaire oligarch Boris Berezovsky, was found strangled in his southwest London home in March 2018 — just days after a nerve gas attack on ex-spy Sergei Skripal, another Russian emigre living in Britain.

Glushkov’s fatal injuries “could be consistent with a neck-hold, applied from behind, and the assailant being behind the victim,” according to the BBC.

Three years later, senior coroner Chinyere Inyama has ruled that Glushkov was unlawfully killed. Counter terrorism police are investigating his death.

Glushkov’s former boss Berezovsky, who once owned Russia’s Aeroflot airline and spent millions on an anti-Putin denunciation campaign after the Russian leader forced him to flee in 2003, was hanged in a supposed suicide at his ex-wife’s London home in 2013.