Angus Roxburgh - The Strongman

Angus Roxburghis a respected British foreign correspondent and Russia specialist. He was the Sunday Times Moscow correspondent in the mid-1980s and the BBC’s Moscow correspondent during the Yeltsin years. He is the author of The Second Russian Revolution and Pravda: Inside the Soviet Press Machine .

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Copyright © 2012 Angus Roxburgh

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ISBN: 978 1 78076 016 2

eISBN: 978 0 85773 036 7

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Typeset in Goudy Old Style by A. & D. Worthington, Newmarket

1. The magistrate who rejected the extradition request for Berezovsky (and also for an exiled Chechen leader, Akhmed Zakayev, who was also wanted by Moscow) was Judge Timothy Workman. A few months later, in January 2004, an 83-year-old man with the same surname, Robert Workman, was shot dead when he opened his front door to a stranger in a quiet village north of London. No motive for the murder has been established and the killer has not been found. There was speculation that the murder could have been a case of mistaken identity.

2. The word silovik is often translated as ‘strongman’, but it really means ‘a member of the security forces’. It derives from the term silovye struktury , or ‘power structures’, in other words the FSB, ministry of defence, police, and so on. In effect the siloviki are men (I can’t think of any female siloviki ) who derive their power from having worked in one of these structures.