Alexander Litvinenko - Death of a Defector

Almost ten years ago Russia probably assassinated a British citizen in the heart of London.  A retired British High Court judge who conducted the inquiry into Alexander Litvinenko’s November 2006 death concluded that this act was carried out with Vladimir Putin’s approval.

“I am sure that Mr. Lugovoy and Mr. Kovtun placed the Polonium-210 into the teapot at the Pine Bar and did so with the intention of poisoning Mr. Litvinenko.  The further suggestion that has been made by Mr. Lugovoy that he had been the subject of a “set-up” is simply unsustainable by reference to the objective scientific evidence.  There can be no doubt that Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned by Mr. Lugovoy and Mr. Kovtun.  I have concluded that there is a strong probability that when Mr. Lugovoy poisoned Mr. Litvinenko he did so under the direction of the FSB, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.  I have further concluded that Mr. Kovtun was also acting under FSB direction, possibly indirectly through Mr. Lugovoy but probably in the knowledge that that was the body for which he was acting.  I have further concluded that the FSB operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr. Patrushev, then head of the FSB, and also by President Putin.” - Sir Robert Owen, 21 Jan 16.

At first the British government refused to conduct an inquiry into Litvinenko’s death so as not to upset the Russian government.  Litvinenko’s widow challenged the decision in the High Court, which overturned the British government’s decision.  The British Home Secretary then appointed retired High Court Judge Sir Robert Owen to conduct the inquiry.  On 21 Jan 16, Sir Robert released the report of his inquiry to the public.  What follows is a synopsis of a 329-page document.

Who was Alexander Litvinenko?  Alexander Litvinenko was a former KGB/FSB officer who defected to the United Kingdom in 2000.  At the time of his death, he was preparing to testify in a Spanish investigation into ties between Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and Russian organized crime groups operating throughout Europe.  Before his defection, he worked in the FSB’s Department for the Investigation and Prevention of Organized Crime, known as URPO.  He alleged there was corruption within, that he had been given orders to assault, kidnap, and even murder people who disagreed with that agency [including fugitive billionaire Boris Berezovsky].  He refused to carry out the orders which he said were “illegal,” and once he went public with his accusations he was dismissed from the FSB in December 1998.  Professor Robert Service was until 2014 Professor of Russian History at Oxford University.  He opined to those conducting the inquiry into Litvinenko’s death that there were those inside the FSB, including Vladimir Putin, thought that going public with his accusations of FSB corruption was the first of a series of occasions on which Litvinenko was guilty of breaching the FSB code of loyalty.

Between November 1998 and September 2000 the FSB tried three times to put Litvinenko away.  The first time they charged him with assaulting a suspect, a charge for which Litvinenko was detained in Lefortovo Prison for eight months.  After his acquittal on this charge in November 1999 the FSB charged him a second time, this time with mishandling suspects and stealing goods during an operation at a Moscow market in which he had been involved several years previously.  The new proceedings collapsed before trial when Litvinenko produced evidence that he had not been at the market on the day in question.  When that case fell apart he was charged with planting evidence on a suspect. Litvinenko was not arrested but his passport was confiscated and he was told not to leave Moscow without permission.  Without his passport Litvinenko managed to leave Russia in October 2000.  Litvinenko applied for asylum in the United Kingdom for himself and his family, which the British Home Office granted in May 2001.

Who are the prime suspects?  Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun.  Lugovoy, who is now a deputy of the Russian Duma, was ex-KGB.  He was part of the KGB’s Ninth Directorate, which was the uniformed bodyguard of Communist Party members and their families.  He transferred to the FSB in 1991 and remained there until 1996.  He was the head of private security for ORT, a television station owned by Berezovsky.  The Berezovsky connection is how Litvinenko and Lugovoy met and became friends.  Kovtun had the same KGB background as Lugovoy.  The two had also known each other since childhood.  After Litvinenko defected to the UK he supposedly told Lugovoy that he was working for British MI6 and that he tried to recruit Lugovoy to be a MI6 agent.  Mr. Litvinenko told him that he was working with the Spanish secret services against the Russian mafia operating in Spain, and moreover that Mr. Litvinenko suggested to Mr. Lugovoy that he join him in this work.  After this, Lugovoy informed the FSB.

What is Polonium-210?  Polonium-210 is a naturally occurring radioactive material that emits highly hazardous alpha (positively charged) particles. Although it occurs naturally in the environment, acquiring enough of it to kill would require individuals with expertise and connections.  Those connections would need access to sophisticated lab facilities [like a particle accelerator] as well as a nuclear reactor in order to produce enough to kill someone.  It has to be ingested in order to be deadly, so it could be easily transported in a glass vial.
 

Why Kill Litvinenko?  In 2001, Litvinenko published Blowing Up Russia.  The subject of the book was the apartment bombings that had taken place around Russia in September 1999.  Nearly 300 people were killed in four different explosions that were blamed on Chechen separatists.  But Litvinenko alleged the bombings were the work of the FSB in order to provide justification of the Second Chechen War.  As Vladimir Putin was elevated from FSB Director to Russian Prime Minister just a month before the bombings, he was the one to benefit from the reaction to the bombings and public support for the war.  These factors assisted Putin’s political rise in the following months that culminated in his election as Russian president in March 2000.  This was Vladimir Putin’s “original sin.”

In 2002, Litvinenko wrote a second book, The Gang from the Lubyanka.  The book took the form of transcripts of interviews between Litvinenko and a Russian journalist named Akram Murtazaev.  It is a record of Litvinenko’s own experiences in Russia in the years before he had left, as well as allegations of corruption and other criminality on behalf of the FSB in general and Vladimir Putin in particular.  Litvinenko suggested links between Putin and the Tambov Group [based in Putin’s hometown St. Petersburg].  Litvinenko discovered evidence that the Tambov group was engaged in smuggling heroin from Afghanistan via Uzbekistan and St Petersburg to Western Europe.  Litvinenko was convinced there was cooperation between the Tambrov group and both Vladimir Putin and Nikolai Patrushev, then head of the FSB.

In July 2006, Litvinenko published an article on the Chechenpress website in which he accused Putin of being a pedophile.  To quote his article:

“A few days ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin walked from the Big Kremlin Palace to his Residence. At one of the Kremlin squares, the president stopped to chat with the tourists. Among them was a boy aged 4 or 5.

’What is your name?’ Putin asked.

'Nikita,’ the boy replied.

Putin knee[le]d, lifted the boy’s T-shirt and kissed his stomach.

The world public is shocked. Nobody can understand why the Russian president did such a strange thing as kissing the stomach of an unfamiliar small boy.

The explanation may be found if we look carefully at the so-called ‘blank spots’ in Putin’s biography.

After graduating from the Andropov Institute, which prepares officers for the KGB intelligence service, Putin was not accepted into the foreign intelligence. Instead, he was sent to a junior position in KGB Leningrad Directorate. This was a very unusual twist for a career of an Andropov Institute’s graduate with fluent German. Why did that happen with Putin?

Because, shortly before his graduation, his bosses learned that Putin was a pedophile [sic]. So say some people who knew Putin as a student at the Institute.

The Institute officials feared to report this to their own superiors, which would cause an unpleasant investigation. They decided it was easier just to avoid sending Putin abroad under some pretext. Such a solution is not unusual for the secret services.

Many years later, when Putin became the FSB director and was preparing for the presidency, he began to seek and destroy any compromising materials collected against him by the secret services over earlier years. It was not difficult, provided he himself was the FSB director. Among other things, Putin found videotapes in the FSB Internal Security directorate, which showed him making sex with some underage boys.”

Do you think Vladimir noticed this challenge to his manhood?  But this article begs a question – if Putin wasn’t accepted into foreign intelligence, how did he get posted to East Germany?

The Polonium Trail.
The London Metropilitan Police did their due diligence by employing standard techniques such as interviewing Litvinenko’s friends and associates, investigating the movements of persons of interest, interrogating telephone records and seizing and viewing closed circuit television (CCTV) footage.  Forensic scientists were sent to conduct tests for alpha radiation at a series of locations across London and, subsequently, beyond. The results demonstrated widespread radioactive contamination at locations that had been linked to Lugovoy, Kovtun and Litvinenko in a period of a little over two weeks from mid-October 2006 until the onset of Litvinenko’s fatal illness in early November 2006.

Where was Polonium-210 contamination found?

• On the seats on which Lugovoy and Kovtun sat on their 18 Oct 06 flight to Moscow;
• In a boardroom where a meeting between Litvinenko, Lugovoy, and Kovtun occurred on 16 Oct 06 [Kovtun and Lugovoy made their first poisoning attempt here];
• At the Pescatori Restaurant where Lugovoy and Kovtun the night of 16 Oct 06;
• A hotel bar named Dar Marrakesh, where Lugovoy purchased a shisha pipe the night of 16 Oct 06;
• Rooms 107 and 308 of a Best Western Hotel where Lugovoy and Kovtun stayed 16 Oct 06 [Lugovoy – 107; Kovtun – 308].  Room 107 was more contaminated;
• Rooms 23 and 25 of the Parkes Hotel in Knightsbridge where Lugovoy and Kovtun stayed 17 Oct 06 [Lugovoy – 23; Kovtun – 25];
• A meeting room at the CPL offices on 58 Grosvenor Street where Lugovoy and Kovtun met with a Dr. Shadrin on 17 Oct 06;
• A meeting room at RISC, 1 Cavendish Place where Lugovoy and Kovtun had another business meeting on 17 Oct 06;
• Various places visited by Kovtun in Hamburg, Germany prior to his return to London on 1 Nov 06;
• Seat 23D of British Airways Flight 873 from Moscow to London.  This seat was occupied by Lugovoy on the 31 Oct 06 flight;
• Rooms 441 [Lugovoy] and 382 [Kovtun] of the Millennium Hotel;
• The teapot at the Pine Bar from which Litvinenko drank on 1 Nov 06;
• The table in the Pine Bar where Litvinenko, Lugovoy, and Kovtun met on 1 Nov 06;
• The Emirates Stadium where Lugovoy and a group of people went to a football match.  Contamination was found in a block of seats bought by Lugovoy’s group;
• Seat 16F, Lugovoy’s seat on British Airways Flight 874 – the flight he took back to Moscow on 3 Nov 06

In 2010, Lugovoy sent a gift to Berezovsky.  The gift was a black T-shirt.  The writing on the front of the shirt said “POLONIUM-210 CSKA LONDON, HAMBURG To Be Continued”, while the back said “CSKA Moscow Nuclear Death Is Knocking Your Door”.

Lugovoy claimed he was framed. 

“I was framed. I suspect this was some British intelligence operation involving Litvinenko and possibly Berezovsky that went wrong. I was contaminated by Litvinenko or someone else, not the other way round. I think polonium was planted on us and left in places we visited, to frame us.”

Where did the Polonium-210 come from?
Professor Norman Dombey, Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Sussex provided expert testimony.  He had extensive practical knowledge of polonium-210 production in Russia from his many international contacts.  He explained the polonium-210 production program was done at two former closed cities, both of which were initially connected with the production of nuclear weapons.  The production was in two steps – irradiation of bismuth and recovery of polonium-210 from the irradiated bismuth.  The first step took place in a facility at the Mayak facility [formerly known as Chelyabinsk], the second at the Avangard facility in Sarov [formerly known as Arzamas-16].  Professor Dombey admitted it was possible for the polonium to be produced somewhere else, but Sir Robert concluded the use of polonium as a weapon suggests Russian state involvement.  His reasoning is that ordinary criminals would be expected to use a more straightforward, less sophisticated means of killing Litvinenko.

Aftermath of the Litvinenko murder
The British government requested extradition of Lugovoy and Kovtun, but the Russians refused.  Putin awarded a medal to Lugovoy “for services to the fatherland” after Litvinenko’s murder.  Sir Robert viewed this act as a deliberate sign of public support from Putin.  Putin did the same thing with Ramzan Kadyrov after the assassination of Boris Nemtsov.

How were Vladimir Putin and Nikolai Patrushev involved?

Yuri Shvets, like Litvinenko, was ex-KGB.  He was a contemporary of Vladimir Putin and retired from the KGB in 1990.  From 1985-87, he worked in the Soviet Embassy in the KGB’s First Main Directorate as the KGB equivalent of a CIA station chief.  After he retired, he sought and was granted asylum in the United States.  He wrote a book about his time in the KGB - Washington Station: My Life as a KGB Spy in America. He and Litvinenko met in 2002 and worked together until Litvinenko’s death.  Sir Robert relied on him as an expert witness. 

When asked if an operation to kill Litvinenko could have taken place without Vladimir Putin’s knowledge, Shvets replied:

“I strongly believe that it couldn’t be done without Vladimir Putin’s knowledge, because of one of the key traditions of the KGB. Any general, including Mr Ivanov or any other FSB general, before issuing an order to assassinate Sasha or anybody else in Russia or outside Russia, would think about covering his back just in case. This is a KGB rule number one, cover your back, and covering your back is to get approval from your superior, especially in Russia where they say about developing this structure, straight line structure of leadership, where the boss – there is just one single boss who makes all the important decisions. So I rule out basically the possibility that a decision to assassinate Sasha or anybody else outside of Russia would have been made without approval of the top authority of Russia, which is Vladimir Putin.”

Shvets paints a picture of the KGB/FSB as being a risk-adverse organization.  They practice CYA as much as our own bureaucrats.

Tony’s Thoughts:  Having read the entire document, there are lots of “probable” and statements of “I guess” and “I sure”.  This makes for a good narrative that Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated by the FSB with the full knowledge and support of Vladimir Putin.  But [and there’s always a “but”], there are enough gray areas in this document that could cast doubt.  The preponderance of the evidence would probably be good enough to get a judgment in a civil case, but in a criminal case this reads more like an indictment.  I think the events happened just as they have been laid out in this document.  Good luck proving it in court.