RUSSIA

The Russian federal Rossiya 1 TV station took up the baton in the recent series of blood-curdling revelations about Kremlin opponents, airing a documentary about Boris Berezovsky in the late hours on Sunday.

The film by Andrei Kondrashov, a former news anchor with the TV channel, accused the London-based oligarch in self-exile of five murders and plotting a coup d'état in the country.  

The double assassination of Vladimir Golovlyov and Sergei Yushchenkov, co-chairmen at the Liberal Russia party sponsored by the oligarch at the time, was to convince the British authorities that his persecution in Russia was due to political reasons and grant him asylum.

The highly publicized poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a security service officer-turned-whistleblower, was also staged by him in the British capital, according to ex-presidential security chief Alexander Korzhkov interviewed for the film.  

Duma deputy Andrei Lugovoi, who allegedly played the key role in the polonium poisoning in a London restaurant back in 2006, was also interviewed in the film, confirming these allegations.

Two other killings allegedly ordered by Berezovsky were his business partner Badri Patarkatsishvili, a Georgian businessman who died of a heart attack in 2008 in the UK, and journalist Vladislav Listyev.

Previous TV documentaries about the Russian opposition aired by the NTV TV-station loyal to the Kremlin targeted prominent figures of the country's most recent movement challenging the rule of long-time President Vladimir Putin.

In its aftermath, criminal cases have been launched against left-wing protest leader Sergei Udaltsov and his aides, Konstantin Lebedev and Leonid Razvozzhayev.