Viktor Kalashnikov

Viktor Kalashnikov is a Russian freelance journalist and a former KGB colonel. In the autumn of 2010, he and his wife Marina Kalashnikova were treated in hospital in Germany for mercury poisoning in what they said had been an attempt on their lives by Russia's FSB, the successor to the KGB. He is a distant relative of Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47.

Poisoning and investigation In November 2010, it was reported that the doctors at Berlin's Charité hospital had discovered that Kalashnikov who had been losing weight significantly, had 53.7 microgrammes of mercury per litre of blood, while his wife had even more - 56 microgrammes (the safe level is between one and three microgrammes). that its journalistic investigation had led to a preliminary criminal inquiry being opened in Berlin, which was announced on December 27, 2010.

Later, German prosecutors have dropped an investigation. Spokesman for the state prosecutor's office in Berlin told the AFP news agency: "There is no evidence that they were poisoned, at least in Germany."