In 2010 she and her ex-KGB agent husband Viktor Kalashnikov were treated in hospital in Germany for mercury poisoning in what they have said was an attempt on their life by Russia's FSB, the successor to the KGB.
[1] The case has been compared to the alleged poisoning and murder of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko.
In August 2009 she stated, "The West does not care to wake from the dream of its wishful thinking, even when Moscow turns to [...] reanimating Joseph Stalin’s cult of personality together with the ideology of the Cheka.
"[4] In the view of writer Jeffrey R. Nyquist, these kinds of views have made Kalashnikova a target: "When Marina Kalashnikova presented her analysis to Russian and Ukrainian readers on August 26, 2008, she annoyed the regime and made herself a target of the Russian secret police.
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.