A prominent Kremlin critic gunned down in Warsaw. A hit that smells of state-sanctioned murder. And now Downing Street is suddenly standing shoulder to shoulder with Emmanuel Macron. The pieces are falling into place, and the trail leads straight back to Moscow.
Sources close to the investigation confirm that the victim, Dmitry Volkov, a former oligarch turned Putin whistleblower, was shot twice in the head outside his apartment in the Mokotów district on Tuesday night. No signs of robbery, no forced entry. Just a professional kill. Polish counter-intelligence officials are already pointing fingers at the GRU, citing intercepted communications that mention a “package delivery” in the hours before the murder.
What makes this different from the Litvinenko affair or the Skripal poisoning is the speed of the diplomatic reaction. Within 24 hours, Britain issued a joint statement with France, pledging “full solidarity” and a coordinated response. The Foreign Office called it “an unacceptable violation of European sovereignty”. But the real question is what they know and aren’t telling us.
I have obtained a confidential FCDO memo, marked “UK-EYES ONLY”, that warns of an active Russian “intimidation network” operating across the EU. The memo, dated 3 March, identifies six Russian nationals currently under surveillance for suspected links to the GRU’s assassination unit. Three of them crossed into Poland from Belarus less than a week before Volkov was killed. The timing is damning.
Volkov was no ordinary dissident. He had been feeding intelligence to Western agencies since 2018, according to a former MI6 officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he still consults for the government. “He knew where the bodies were buried. Literally. He had documents on the Novichok programme, on the Skripal hit, on the financing of Wagner. He was a walking archive of Kremlin crimes.”
Macron and Starmer are now locked in emergency talks, with a joint press conference scheduled for Thursday. But behind the scenes, there is panic. The French president has been pushing for a tougher stance on Russia for months, often alone. Now he has a corpse as evidence. British intelligence has reportedly shared satellite imagery of a known GRU safe house in Kaliningrad that may have been used to coordinate the hit.
But here is the part they won’t say out loud. This assassination happened on Polish soil. Poland is a NATO member. Article 5 has been invoked for far less. Yet the response so far is diplomacy, not deployment. Why? Because the Kremlin has built its long arm on the assumption that the West will flinch. And so far, they have been right.
The money trail, as always, is instructive. I have reviewed Volkov’s last bank records, obtained from a source in the Polish financial intelligence unit. Four months ago, he received a transfer of €2.3 million from a shell company registered in Cyprus. The beneficial owner traces back to a Moscow law firm that has represented several Kremlin-connected figures in asset seizure cases. This was not a hit motivated by ideology. This was a liquidation. Volkov was killed to stop him talking about money. The same money that keeps Putin’s inner circle rich and his foreign operations running.
Downing Street declined to comment on the specific evidence, but a spokesperson said: “We are working closely with our French and Polish allies to ensure those responsible face justice.” Face justice. As if the International Criminal Court has ever laid a hand on a GRU colonel.
The truth is grimmer. Moscow’s long arm is not just about assassins and nerve agents. It is about the systematic corruption of European institutions, the laundering of dirty money through London property, the bribes that keep politicians quiet. And when a man like Volkov gets too close to the truth, they send a bullet. The only question left is whether Britain and France will send anything more than a strongly worded statement.
