Russia ordered a killing that made no sense, then the assassin started talking
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“This, in general, is where I met with my handlers, in the cafe,” he said.
Smorodinov has never been an intelligence officer, or so he says. Though he had once served in the Soviet navy and worked for a few years as a police officer, he has dedicated much of his adult life to organised crime, having done time in prison for bribery and extortion. Between prison stints, he worked as a sex trafficker, a former criminal associate told me.
Russian soldiers in Crimea in 2014.Credit:Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times
Smorodinov is trying to persuade prosecutors in the Mamchur case, and me, that he was an unwitting assassin, duped by the two mysterious handlers. He said he understood that his mission was to document Mamchur’s movements. The killing was supposed to have been carried out by a team of what he called “the liquidators”.
“Liquidators only work for one day, an hour, two, three, not more,” he said. “They work under the principle that they don’t exist. As soon as they arrive, they’re gone to a different city.”
Article source: http://smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/what-will-tech-and-media-entrepreneur-justin-milne-do-with-our-old-abc-20170321-gv2scb.html
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