On March 17, 2020, Boris Johnson learnt that British intelligence had warned against granting a peerage to his close friend Evgeny Lebedev on national security grounds. He responded with incredulity.
The 41-year-old Russian businessman derives his wealth from his father, Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB spy turned billionaire oligarch with investments in occupied Crimea. Lebedev Jr has previously defended Vladimir Putin and raised questions over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the Kremlin critic poisoned with polonium at a London hotel.
Yet he is also the longstanding proprietor of two British newspapers — The Independent and the Evening Standard — and a mainstay of the British establishment. Sir Elton John, Sir Ian McKellen and Stephen Fry are friends. They, like Johnson, have dined at his London
