It's hard to check facts in Russia because if you do it properly you end up dead. If you doubt my word, you will get a lick with the rough end of my … - John Sweeney

He was shot in the back of the back several times one hundred metres or so from the walls of the Kremlin, one of the most closely CCTV-filmed areas on earth. The official narrative was that a bin lorry obscured the Kremlin's cameras from capturing the killer or killers. Attentive readers will have already got it, but for the avoidance of any doubt the official narrative is a load of old hogwash. In my four decades-plus of reporting, I have never been detained by police officers more often than outside the Kremlin. You cannot move five yards without a cop demanding to see your passport. The idea that Nemtsov was assassinated but that none of the Kremlin's cameras captured critical evidence is absurd.

Zhirinovsky was a fool's bladder on a fascist stick, using his cruel wit to malign opponents of Vladimir Putin, further the Kremlin's far-right agenda and consign his immortal soul to darkness. I met him once and reader, do not be surprised, we ended up shouting at each other.

[...] the two 'sports health technicians' who visited Salisbury to admire the famous '123-metre spire' were morons sent by morons. [...] Did no one close to Putin have the courage to say to him, 'Listen, Boss, if we use Novichok against Skripal there is a very good chance that the British will work it out'.
Clearly no one had. Perhaps Putin doesn't care. Perhaps showing hat he is willing to take extreme risks to kill people he considers traitors is the point.