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.