News / Crime
‘Russian poisoning attempt’ in Bristol hotel
A paramedic has told how he treated a Russian exile for suspected poisoning after he had drinks with two men from Moscow in a Bristol hotel.
Former Aeroflot deputy director Nikolai Glushkov was found apparently strangled in his home in New Malden, south-west London, a week after the Novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.
The murdered exile believed he had previously been poisoned by mystery Russians who bought him champagne at the Grand Hotel on Broad Street.
This happened in November 2013, six months after Glushkov publicly accused the Kremlin of murdering his friend, the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
According to the account of the paramedic who treated Glushkov in the Guardian, the Russians approached him and bought a bottle of champagne from the hotel bar.
Paramedic Keith Carr said he was called to the hotel the next morning to deal with a “collapse”. “I found Nikolai on the floor of his hotel room. He was able to stand up with help. He looked a bit tottery. We sat him on the bed.
“I asked him what had happened. He told me that he and the two Russians had been drinking the champagne together the previous evening. He went off to the loo and when he came back he drank more champagne.
The next thing he remembered was waking up on the carpet the next morning. He had carpet burns on his face and on his chest.”
Glushkov told Carr he believed the Russians had poisoned him, explained that he was a target because of his friendship with Berezovsky. Two police constables – a man and a woman – were in the room at the time, but they were sceptical of his claim, Carr said.
Carr added: “At the time I don’t think anybody gave any credibility to what he was saying. Nikolai told me: ‘I’ve been given something. I don’t know what it is.'”
Glushkov was “quite lucid”, the paramedic said, who then tested Glushkov with an electrocardiogram machine and found that the readings were strange.
Glushkov was taken by ambulance to the BRI, where he was visited by his daughter Natalia and later transferred to a private clinic near London.
“Glushkov told me the men just turned up at his hotel,” Carr said, adding that this was the only case of an alleged deliberate poisoning he had seen in four decades with the ambulance service.
Avon & Somerset police confirmed they attended a “suspicious incident” at the hotel and investigated, but no charges were brought.
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
