“I will either return to the Kremlin on a white horse, or in a black limousine to the Mausoleum.”
It is customary to say something nice about the recently deceased, so here goes… *ahem.* If not for Berezovsky, Putin probably wouldn’t be President.
UPDATE: As expected, the conspiracy theories have inevitably began to crawl out of the Internet’s woodwork. As one of my Facebook friends put it, my own radical conspiracy theory is that Berezovsky was rather old, depressed, and out of shape.
The “depressed” part, in particular, is backed up by this account of Berezovsky’s last interview at Russian Forbes, which is full of regrets about his life choices. This also supports Putin’s PR spokesman Peskov’s claim that Berezovsky had written to Putin to ask forgiveness and allow him to return to Russia without facing charges. My guess is that Putin simply didn’t answer him. Certainly no other response could have disturbed a man as narcissistic and beset by delusions of grandeur as Berezovsky the more.
UPDATE 3/25: Richard Behar: Did Boris Berezovsky Kill Himself? More Compelling, Did He Kill Forbes Editor Paul Klebnikov.