today

Agence France-Presse Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who last week died in a mysterious apparent poisoning, travelled to Israel weeks before his death, apparently to pass on a dossier investigating how the Kremlin took over Russian energy giant Yukos.

"Litvinenko had information on crimes committed with the Russian government's direct participation" Mr Nevzlin, the former second-in-command at Yukos, said. Mr Nevzlin had fled to Tel Aviv where he met Litvinenko, who had allegedly uncovered "startling" evidence of what happened to those who opposed the forced break-up of Yukos. Several people linked to the company are reported to have disappeared, or died in mysterious circumstances, while others, such as its head Mikhail Khodorkovsky, have been jailed.

IMO: Many Russians have gone to Israel, apparently fleeing Russia. We don't really know whether the connections here are with Israel, with Yukos, with both or indeed with neither I suppose. Certainly 'oil' is a topic for a great many people to think of and an irony is that Russian communism, for one reason or another, was very slow to use it up, unlike USA and now some would suppose that oil/gas gives Russia an important bargaining tool which it won't want to lose.