Every tsar has his personal demon, goes an old Russian saying. If so, the fiend stalking President Vladimir Putin is almost certainly Boris Berezovsky, the former Kremlin insider who claims to have placed Mr Putin on his throne and now publicly threatens to overthrow him.
Earlier this month, from exile in Britain, Mr Berezovsky told The Guardian he was working with forces 'close to the Kremlin' to prepare a coup d'etat that will sweep Putin away. 'We need to use force to change this regime,' said Mr Berezovsky, 61. 'It isn't possible to change this regime through democratic means. There can be no change without force, pressure.'
The Kremlin went ballistic. The Russian ambassador in London, Yury Fedotov, presented the British government with a warrant for Mr Berezovsky's arrest on charges of embezzlement and graft during the wild privatisations of Russian state assets in the 1990s. Mr Putin's spokesman, Dmitri Peskov said, 'We now expect British authorities to rethink their decision to harbour this fugitive billionaire.'
Moscow warned that Russian-British relations would suffer if Mr Berezovsky was not turned over, and, to drive the point home, dozens of Russian officials and business leaders abruptly cancelled plans to attend an annual economic forum in London. It did not help that Mr Berezovsky quickly qualified his remarks, insisting that he intended to use only 'non-violent means'.
At home, Mr Putin cracked down hard. Tiny mid-April street demonstrations by an anti-Putin coalition called The Other Russia, which denies any connection to Mr Berezovsky, were met with 9,000 helmeted riot troopers wielding truncheons and backed by armoured vehicles. About 200 were arrested, including the group's leader, chess grand master Garry Kasparov. 'The mask has come off the Putin police state,' Mr Kasparov said. 'It's obvious the regime is nervous and unstable if this is how they react to a non-violent march.'
After Mr Putin arrived in power seven years ago, he stripped Mr Berezovsky of his influence, as well as much of his property, and hounded him into British self-exile. Other former 'oligarchs', who lorded it over Russia during the chaotic '90s, received similar treatment. Under his newly adopted name, Platon Elenin, Mr Berezovsky today lives comfortably in a palatial, and heavily guarded, US$20 million, 70-hectare estate in Wentworth, Surrey, along with his wife, Yelena, and six children from three marriages. His fortune, estimated at US$3 billion by Forbes in 1999, is said to be half that today.