Litvinenko poisoned

Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB lieutenant colonel, had been assigned to a unit targeting organized crime; the group was eventually disbanded but questions had long been raised about its brutal methods. Litvinenko also took part in an open press conference in 1998, at which he claimed the FSB had ordered him to kill the oligarch Boris Berezovsky.

Two years later, Litvinenko fled to London and sought political asylum. Russia in turn accused him of breaking FSB rules. In London, Litvinenko was supported financially by Berezovsky. Litvinenko kept up the public criticism of the Russian authorities and in a press conference in London he accused the FSB of organizing the 1999 Moscow apartment building bombings. In his books, "Blowing up Russia: Terror from within" and "Lubyanka Criminal Group", Litvinenko described Vladimir Putin's rise to power as a coup d'état organised by the FSB. Later he also declared that the FSB was working with Al Qaeda and had been involved in the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized. Earlier that day he had met two former KGB officers, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun. By then Lugovoi, a former Federal Protective Service (FSO) officer. was a successful businessman, an owner of a private security firm that worked for Boris Berezovsky and for the Russian TV channel ORT. Kovtun was also a businessman, living in Germany.

Litvinenko died three weeks later, on November 23, becoming the first confirmed victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome.

British experts determined that he had been poisoned by the highly radioactive substance polonium-210. In his last statement, made from his hospital bed, Litvinenko accused Putin of ordering his killing. The British investigation showed that the nuclear material had come from Russia, and resulted in an extradition request for Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB officer turned successful businessman in the 1990s, who met with Litvinenko in London on November 1, 2006, and then returned to Russia. The Russian authorities refused to extradite Lugovoi because it was at odds with the Russian constitution. Lugovoi, in turn, flatly denied he was guilty and said someone tried to frame him, and he was deliberately marked with polonium.

The British Crown Prosecution Service has never suggested a motive for Litvinenko’s killing. Unofficially, British journalists briefed by the counterintelligence service MI5 were told that the poisoning had been organized by the Kremlin, but the government did not accuse Russia directly.40 When Russia refused to extradite Lugovoi, the United Kingdom expelled four Russian diplomats from the Russian embassy in London.

In response, Russia expelled four British diplomats. A joint Russian-British counterterrorism group was disbanded. In Russia, Lugovoi was elected to Parlia- ment, where he was invited to serve on the Security Committee, the same committee that oversees the Russian secret services and writes the laws that govern them.

Litvinenko’s murder was one of the highest-profile examples of a Russian assassinated abroad in a decade. The polonium clearly originated in Russia, and it was impossible to bring the nuclear material into the United Kingdom without the help of Russian of- ficials. But there is no information about whether Litvinenko’s death was ordered by the Russian leadership or had been carried out by people who were bribed and hired as mercenaries. Russia’s lack of cooperation with the British investigation, as well as the election of Lugovoi to the Russian Parliament, were seen in the West as clear indications of the government’s support for the poisoning. But within Russia, the events were interpreted as proof that the country would not be pushed around by the outside world—a sentiment that was effectively turned into a propaganda campaign playing on anti-Western sentiments.

Agentura.Ru, March 2011