Toxic tea… the KGB love a very British murder

Hunting The KGB Killers

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No one can say that Russian assassins lack a dry sense of humour. When committing murder in London, they make sure to use the most British methods with a touch of lethal irony.

Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov was killed in 1978 by an unknown agent armed with a KGB poison, who injected his victim with deadly ricin by stabbing him in the leg with an umbrella on Waterloo Bridge.

No doubt the murderer was wearing a suit and tie, with a bowler hat and a raincoat folded over his arm — in those days, still the uniform of the City commuter.

And when Russian defector Alexander ‘Sacha’ Litvinenko was silenced, allegedly on the orders of President Vladimir Putin, the murder weapon was a teapot.

As a Met copper pointed out on Hunting The KGB Killers (C4), the crime was as English as a game of Cluedo: it was Mr Red, in the hotel tea-room, with the radioactive Darjeeling.

This painstaking documentary uncovered a secret world that is usually glimpsed only in the novels of John Le Carré.

The detectives believe they were also poisoned in Moscow, with an acute tummy bug . . . administered once again in cups of tea…

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