Contract killings for the Moscow Mafia are often carried out by former members of Russia’s Spetsnaz, the counterpart to Britain’s SAS. Whatever weapon is chosen for such assignments, be it a Kalashnikov or a handgun, the victim usually receives what is known as a ‘control shot’ — a bullet in the head, spelling instant death.This was the fate intended for German Gorbuntsov.
Mr Gorbuntsov, 45, who has more enemies than friends in his native Russia, has been in exile in the UK since 2010. At around 7.30pm on Tuesday of last week his old enemies back home caught up with him outside his bolthole in East London’s Docklands.
The last thing Mr Gorbuntsov heard as he walked towards the entrance of his apartment block after being dropped off by a taxi was a ‘click’, then a dull ‘thud’. It was the sound of someone pulling the trigger of a pistol fitted with a silencer.
There were six ‘thuds’ in all, which left a window in the lobby shattered, walls sprayed with blood and Mr Gorbuntsov slumped on the floor. He had been hit in the stomach and liver. He survived, against all odds, because his assailant was unable to deliver a signature ‘control shot’. It is one of the few occasions on which someone pumped full of lead could be described as ‘lucky’.
Either way, for a few terrifying moments, an affluent corner of London — in the shadow of Canary Wharf and the Olympic Stadium — resembled downtown Moscow, where shootings and gun battles are practically a daily occurrence.
Nevertheless, Scotland Yard chose to play down the incident, almost to the point of covering it up. It took four days for officers to even confirm Mr Gorbuntsov’s identity or, crucially, the fact he was a Russian national. The attempt on his life was reported in Moscow before London.
In fact, the bloody drama which unfolded on Byng Street, on the Isle of Dogs, marked a chilling ‘first’ for the capital. Russians have been targeted on British soil before, of course: most notably Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, who died after radioactive polonium was slipped into his tea at a London hotel in 2006.
A few months later, a gunman, from Russia, was arrested at the Park Lane Hilton hotel before he could complete his mission to murder oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
Both men were outspoken critics of President-elect Vladimir Putin, then in his second term of office, and were believed to have been the victims of ‘state-sponsored terrorism’ sanctioned by the Russian government. Read More
