# Quote — John Sweeney, Killer in the Kremlin

> Some idiot is moving heavy furniture around in the flat above and I wake up with a start. I'm about to give Lambeth Council a ring to get them to sort him out when I remember I am in Kyiv and it's four o'clock in the morning, and it's not tables and chairs that are going bang but Russian artillery.
>
> The idiot is Vladimir Putin and his idiot war is two days old.

- Author: [John Sweeney](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-sweeney.md)
- Book: [Killer in the Kremlin](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-sweeney/killer-in-the-kremlin.md)
- Page: 1
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Sweeney_(journalist)#Killer_in_the_Kremlin_(2022)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-sweeney/killer-in-the-kremlin/some-idiot-is-moving

## More from this book

> Squealer in Animal Farm but without the charm.

p. 268 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-sweeney/killer-in-the-kremlin/squealer-in-animal.md)

> The Putin I had challenged in 2014 was a different man, subtle, supple, willing to engage with a difficult BBC reporter, albeit only to lie so calmly. The Putin of 2022 was hyper-aggressive. But the reason I felt fear was something else. The Putin I had met in 2014 looked like a ferret or a reptile, thin-faced, lean. The 2022 Putin looks like a hamster, his cheeks stuffed, unhealthy. He looks like a man on steroids and that made me full of fear.

p. 260 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-sweeney/killer-in-the-kremlin/the-putin-i-had.md)

> He was shot in the back of the back several times one hundred metres or so from the walls of the Kremlin, one of the most closely CCTV-filmed areas on earth. The official narrative was that a bin lorry obscured the Kremlin's cameras from capturing the killer or killers. Attentive readers will have already got it, but for the avoidance of any doubt the official narrative is a load of old hogwash. In my four decades-plus of reporting, I have never been detained by police officers more often than outside the Kremlin. You cannot move five yards without a cop demanding to see your passport. The idea that Nemtsov was assassinated but that none of the Kremlin's cameras captured critical evidence is absurd.

p. 174 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-sweeney/killer-in-the-kremlin/he-was-shot.md)