Khodorkovsky, a leading figure in Russian diaspora opposition circles who claims to be well-informed about current thinking among Moscow's elite, stated that Russian security services are planning an attack similar to the 2018 Salisbury Novichok poisonings to destabilise the UK. He also asserted that Putin is likely to mass troops on the border of a NATO country such as Estonia to 'flex his muscles'. Whether Russian security services are actively planning a Salisbury-style attack on UK soil remains unknown, as does whether Putin will carry out such a troop buildup.
Khodorkovsky was Russia's richest man with a reported fortune of $15 billion built around the fall of the Soviet Union, including via his Siberian oil business Yukos. He was arrested in 2003 after challenging Vladimir Putin by advocating for democratic reforms, charged with fraud, and jailed for 10 years in a sentence widely considered politically motivated. After spending a decade in prison, during which he was slashed in the face by another inmate with a makeshift knife, he went into exile in the UK.
In his analysis, Khodorkovsky argued that the Trump presidency provided Vladimir Putin with a 'window of opportunity' to threaten Europe, and he claimed that Putin has chosen the UK as his main enemy. He recommended that the UK government's best strategy to prevent further incidents similar to Salisbury may be to go on the offensive against the Russian security services. Whether the UK government will adopt more aggressive tactics against the Kremlin as suggested by Khodorkovsky is unknown.