London murder of Putin enemy made to look like 'trashy suicide', says victim's daughter

The murder of an enemy of Vladimir Putin was made to look like a “trashy suicide”, his daughter has said as she speaks publicly for the first time.

Natalia Glushkova found the body of her father Nikolai Glushkov, the former Aeroflot deputy director, in his London home a year ago and police have yet to identify any suspects.

In a series of interviews to mark the anniversary, Miss Glushkova said it had all the hallmarks of a targeted hit, with no sign of a break-in and no noise from his normally protective large ridgeback dog.

Mr Glushkov, right-hand man to the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky and a friend of assassinated Alexander Litvinenko, was killed exactly a week after the Novichok poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury by agents from Russia’s military intelligence unit.

“I could see some traces of physical harm done to him. The picture was so trashy,” Miss Glushkova told the Guardian.

“It looked like a cheap set-up of a suicide. My father was a kind soul, always positive, and a very refined person. I had never seen any sort of depression in him.”

The Metropolitan Police have revealed that he was strangled and have appealed for information to trace a Volkswagen van which was seen near his home in New Malden, south London, the day before his death on March 12 last year.