Bit of a deeper dive gives a very different picture.. https://bylinetimes.com/2022/03/15/lebedev-the-kgb-spy-who-helped-put-putin-in-the-kremlin/ https://bylin

Bit of a deeper dive gives a very different picture.. https://bylinetimes.com/2022/03/15/lebedev-the-kgb-spy-who-helped-put-putin-in-the-kremlin/ https://bylinetimes.com/2022/03/15/lebedev-the-kgb-spy-who-h... > Britain’s spies were not worried too much about the boy, Evgeny, a seemingly self-obsessed featherweight who once, while freelancing for the BBC, asked Alexander Lukashenko, the strongman of Belarus, what he thought about group sex. Their anxiety focussed on the father, a once and maybe current KGB/FSB actor, who helped put Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. All of Evgeny’s money flows from this single fact, that Putin was grateful to his father for his service as a spy and he was rewarded handsomely for it. And Alexander Lebedev still owes fealty to the master of the Kremlin. > On the face of it, Alexander Lebedev looks like a model anti-Putin oligarch. He’s big mates with Mikhail Gorbachev with whom he part-owned the now closed Novaya Gazeta, the last good newspaper in Russia. He’s a liberal, or poses as such, and, like his son, he’s thick with the luvvies: friends with Kevin Spacey, John Malkovich, Sir Elton John, Ralph Fiennes who plays M in the Bond movies and Hugh Grant. > No wonder Boris Johnson ignored warnings from MI6 that the Lebedevs were to be avoided. But look into Alexander Lebedev’s past and the story gets dark, very quickly.