Blowing Up Russia, by Alexander Litvinenko & Yuri Felshtinsky

The haunting image of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian agent murdered by radioactive poisoning in London, stares out from the cover of this book. He died in agony from the effects of polonium 210, accusing President Vladimir Putin of responsibility in a vitriolic statement read out after his death. His friends and family also blame the Kremlin for the murder of the former FSB colonel who fled to London in 2000, after his revelation that he had been ordered to kill the tycoon Boris Berezovsky.

Blowing Up Russia is Litvinenko's posthumous revenge. The book, financed by Berezovsky, was confiscated by the Russian authorities when first published, and is now on sale for the first time in the UK, updated by its co-author, Yuri Felshtinsky. It pulls no punches in accusing the successor organisation of the KGB of fabricating terrorist attacks in Russia in 1999, arguing they were blamed on the Chechens as an excuse to launch the second Chechnya war.

Putin, Litvinenko's boss as head of the FSB, was elected president of Russia in the months that followed. Felshtinsky, a historian living in America, remains convinced that Litvinenko was the latest in a line of investigators of the terrorist bombings to be the target of assassination. None of the murders has been solved.

Blowing Up Russia, a densely written text that would have benefited from an index and a list of abbreviations, focuses on the foiled attack on a block of flats in Ryazan, after the unprecedented bombings had killed more than 300 people. Even at the time, there were widespread reports that the FSB had been behind the attacks.

For those seeking a reason for the killing of Litvinenko, this book contains the possible motive, although it does not mention the role of Berezovsky - sworn enemy of Putin - in bringing it out in the first place. The Kremlin has naturally expressed outrage at the fevered reaction in the West to the Litvinenko murder, and the allegations that the secret services, even the president, may have been to blame.

There is a reason why such a theory has gained currency. The KGB had a rightly fearsome reputation under communism and its successor has never demonstrated convincingly that it has reformed. Why did the bombings take place before the election campaign and stop after Putin's victory? "We shall only receive the final and complete answers," Felshtinsky concludes, "after power has changed hands in Russia".