Oligarch and Kremlin opponent Boris Berezovsky asked Vladimir Putin for forgiveness and permission to return to Russia shortly before his death, the Russian president's spokesman said on Saturday. "Some time ago, maybe a couple of months back, Berezovsky sent Putin a letter that he personally wrote in which he said that he realises that he had committed a great number of mistakes," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state television.
"He asked Putin for forgiveness for his mistakes and asked him to obtain the opportunity to return to the motherland," said Peskov. The spokesman added that he did not know how Putin had reacted to the letter.