But Lugovoi has confirmed receiving a request to protect Tregubova, telling Komsomolskaya Pravda last week: "He [Berezovsky] wanted to know if it was possible to keep journalist Yelena Tregubova safe. He wanted to know how much it would cost and the name of the company the bodyguards would be from. I asked him why Tregubova wanted bodyguards. He replied that Politkovskaya had criticized the regime and look what happened to her, and Tregubova was another critic."
By her account, Tregubova got two days of protection from Lugovoi's men, paid for by Berezovsky. When she met Berezovsky in London in mid-December last year, she still did not know what to believe about who was behind the Litvinenko killing, and Lugovoi's role. At their meeting, she and Berezovsky spoke of the murder, she says. "Why was it Sasha [the Russian diminutive of Litvinenko's forename, Alexander], instead of me?" Berezovsky asked her. "Lugovoi was in my office. We were drinking champagne. They could have killed me. Why didn't they do it?" Tregubova says she replied: "Don't worry, Boris, I am convinced that they are saving your assassination attempt for the next elections."
Seeing she was hungry, Berezovsky ordered a plate of soup for Tregubova. It was then she had to make up her mind. If it was Berezovsky who ordered the killing of Litvinenko, why had the FSB produced no evidence? "I picked up the spoon and ate the soup. It was my instinctive reply to the question." When the men from the Russian prosecutor-general's office came to the UK and interviewed Berezovsky this year as part of their Litvinenko murder investigation, they asked for Tregubova's London address. "It was their way of telling me: we are still watching you."
Tregubova continues to write and publish. "Putin's plan is to tell the West that if he needs to prevent a velvet revolution taking place in Russia by spilling blood, he will do so. To those of us outside Russia, he is saying: 'If you think you are free to criticize Russia from the safety of Western Europe, you are not. We can strike you wherever you are, and in a way that you will be able to do nothing about.'"
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