Sergei & the Westminster Spy Ring

Sergei Cristo starts making enquiries into the mysterious new diplomat whose conversation over tea at the Carlton club has raised red flags. And what his friends, Marina Litvinenko and Oleg Gordievsky, tell him only increases his anxiety. Meanwhile, a new organisation launches - Conservative Friends of Russia - at the gardens of the Russian Embassy in London, just days after members of Pussy Riot are imprisoned in Moscow.

Episod...

A Russian diplomat newly posted to the capital contacts a Conservative party activist, Sergei Cristo, and asks for an introduction. They meet at the oldest Conservative private member’s club in London, late 2011. The conversation raises suspicions for Sergei and he looks to share his concerns. But is anyone listening?

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With seemingly little interest from MI5 in Sergei’s concerns around what he believes to be an illegal offer of Russian funds into the Conservative party, he looks for other ways to raise the alarm. And after the success of the Conservative Friends of Russia launch party, the Russian embassy opens up a new charm offensive, inviting bloggers and social media specialists to ‘digital barbecues’ within their sumptuous surroundings. Insi...

It’s now 2013 and a new organisation has risen from the ashes of the disgraced Conservative Friends of Russia - the Westminster Russia Forum. This time the launch is on the House of Commons riverside terrace. Russia Today is booming, experimenting with new ways to reach new audiences through packaging up content for online viral hits. Its tagline is question everything. Marina Litvinenko is dismayed when the government rejects her ...

Sergei Cristo circles back to his first meeting with Nalobin at the Carlton Club in London and the newspaper article that had got the Russian diplomat’s attention. How could this story about a suspected Russian honey pot be linked to activity around the Russian Embassy during the Brexit campaign? And what is a mysterious man introducing himself as Oleg doing at the UKIP party conference at Doncaster race track in 2015?&nb...

Westminster is caught up in bitter Brexit debates and Trump’s first term in office is getting mired in investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Suddenly the two worlds collide in the form of an enigmatic Maltese professor, revealed in the unsealing of FBI indictments. 

Sergei is disgusted with the atmosphere pervading British politics. Meanwhile, new trolling tactics of the Russian embassy, echoed by s...

Relations between Russia and the Conservative-led British government are being pushed to the brink. In Salisbury, former KGB officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia are found unconscious on a park bench, poisoned by the radioactive nerve agent Novichok. The attack sends shockwaves through Britain and Europe, while the suspected perpetrators are flaunted in a prime time TV interview on Russia Today, convincing Sergei Cris...

If you’re enjoying Sergei & the Westminster Spy Ring, we think you’ll love The Spy Who, from Wondery. In this special episode, we’ll play you an extract from their season: The Spy Who Putin Poisoned. When the USSR falls apart, GRU officer Sergei Skripal finds himself adrift in the new Russia, having never asked for the country's new democracy. So when he meets a shadowy wine dealer, he leaps at the chance to make some money, wi...

Carole, Peter and Sergei are closing on the core of the Russian Westminster plot as they untangle the secrets around the parliamentary Russia Report. With Dominic Grieve, the former Conservative Attorney General and chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, which produced the groundbreaking report, and two of the Committee’s key witnesses, Edward Lucas and Christopher Steele, they discover almost every...

On reading the Russia Report finally published by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) in the Summer of 2020, Sergei realises the significance of his experience with the Russian diplomat and MI5 eight years previously.

He writes to his old friend Dr Julian Lewis MP, who becomes the Chairman of the Committee. The advice comes back from Westminster, which sends Sergei round the circles of police and judicial...

As this tale of spies and influence at the heart of Westminster draws to a close, Carole, Peter and Sergei reflect on the story they’ve fought to uncover for so long. Meanwhile, The Guardian’s international correspondent Luke Harding shares his analysis of what Russian diplomats were up to in London. From the world of shadows, the former head of Estonian intelligence service, Rainer Saks, offers his perspective about the highl...