After a decade-long delay, a British criminal inquiry on Jan. 21 found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘probably’ ordered the 2006 polonium-210 poisoning that killed ex-Russian security service agent Alexander Litvinenko in London. But Litvinenko is just one of many Putin critics who have been killed or who have died suspiciously. Most cases remain unsolved. Some of the slain critics had accused Putin of many crimes, including support of terrorism and state-sponsored murder. The Litvinenko findings, coming after Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and ongoing war against Ukraine, have reignited calls to ostracize Putin and tighten economic sanctions against Kremlin insiders.
Alexander Litvinenko figured out who fatally poisoned him with polonium-210 in 2006. A British judge finally caught up a decade later.
High Court Judge Sir Robert Owen, summarizing a 327-page inquiry, found that Russian President Vladimir Putin and ex-Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) head Nikolai Patrushev “probably” gave the order to kill British citizen Litvinenko, a former Russian spy-turned-Kremlin critic.
The finding marks the first time a Western court echoed allegations that Putin and his cronies run a mafia state. Litvinenko was among the first to challenge the Kremlin leader’s rise to power in 2000. He also predicted a reign of brutality that has, to date, seen at least a dozen other Russian dissidents killed since Putin became president in 2000.
In 1998, when Putin headed Russia’s FSB, Litvinenko challenged his leadership by holding a news conference and accusing him of ordering contract killings.
He continued antagonizing Putin in the years to come, fleeing Russia in 2000 and co-writing a book published two years later, “Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within,” which accused Putin and the FSB of orchestrating a series of terrorist bombings against the Russian people in 1999 to boost support for a renewed war in Chechnya. He also accused Putin of supporting global terrorism, ordering contract murders in Russia and abroad and pedophilia.
The book prompted death threats against Litvinenko and his co-author Yuri Felshtinsky, and has largely been viewed as the motive for Litvinenko’s murder, the first-ever assassination by a rare and lethally radioactive poison in London.
‘Murder machine’
The British court’s verdict now “proves that Putin’s regime is a dangerous murder machine aimed at depraved suppression of its opponents,” said Felshtinsky, a friend of Litvinenko’s and one of the last people to speak to him before his death.
If true, Putin didn’t want to just kill Litvinenko, he wanted him to die a painful death and send a signal to silence other would-be whistleblowers against the Kremlin.
During the final three weeks before his death on Nov. 23, 2006, Litvinenko’s bones rotted, his skin turned yellow, his hair fell out and his mouth became so inflamed with sores that his tongue no longer fit inside. All the while his wife, Marina, and 12-year-old son, Anatoly, looked on.
Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, the two Russian agents who met with Litvinenko in London and allegedly administered the poisoning by getting the victim to drink polonium-laced tea on Nov. 1, 2006, have been treated as heroes in Russia. Putin has refused to extradite them to the U.K. for questioning.
Victim’s vindication
Litvinenko’s co-author, Feltshinsky, said that “the thrill of the verdict is that 10 years after the death of Litvinenko, we heard a verdict from the lips of a British judge, and that verdict was accusative.”
Alex Goldfarb, a Litvinenko friend who helped him flee Russia in 2000, said Litvinenko’s last words have now become a reality.
“You may succeed in silencing me,” Litvinenko wrote two days before he died, addressing the Russian president, “but a howl of protest from around the world will resound in your ears for the rest of your life.”
Goldfarb told the Kyiv Post: “Foreign affairs do not usually influence the wider public. … But now, if you grab a person on the street and just say ‘Putin’ to see his associations, he will most likely say Litvinenko.”
“When he wrote those letters, it seemed like such a crazy declaration (to blame Putin), because we didn’t even know at that time about the polonium,” Goldfarb said. “But now, not only is Putin’s role in the murder an issue acknowledged by wider society and seen as a legal fact, but so is his role in criminal activity in general,” Goldfarb told the Kyiv Post.
Litvinenko’s wife, Marina Litvinenko, and his friends welcomed the verdict on Jan. 21, cheering the “very important message” to the world about Putin’s criminal methods.
The verdict vindicated the claims made by Litvinenko in his final letters, Goldfarb said.
State-sanctioned murder
The final results of the public inquiry by Sir Robert Owen ruled that it is highly unlikely Kovtun and Lugovoi would have acted without prior approval from the highest echelons of power in the Kremlin.
The judge noted that secret evidence shown during closed hearings formed part of his reasoning.
Goldfarb, a witness in the inquiry, told the Kyiv Post he believed the evidence had been intercepts of Lugovoi’s telephone conversations recorded by Western intelligence agencies.
Suspects doing well
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov mocked the inquiry’s findings on Jan. 21. But for many, that comes as no surprise. Russian officials had obstructed the British investigation from the start, with Kovtun and Lugovoi refusing to cooperate with the inquiry.
Putin praised the suspects. Lugovoi’s career took off. He is now a wealthy member of parliament running a private security firm. In March, as the British inquiry listed all the evidence against Lugovoi, Putin gave him an award “for services to the motherland.” He also hosts his own TV show on Russian television called “Traitors.” The program focuses on spies who turn against their own countries.
Russian human-rights activists hold portraits of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko during their protest in front of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow on Dec. 15, 2006. (AFP)
So what?
International leaders have reacted to the inquiry’s verdict with dramatic words of condemnation for the Kremlin, but so far, that’s about it.
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the “appalling crime” on British soil but said U.K.-Russian relations needed to continue to resolve the conflict in Syria.
Some doubt that Putin will face sanctions.
“Targeted sanctions against named individuals could be extended, but the government is clearly most reluctant to include Putin in that list. Economic sanctions over Ukraine are already in place and causing difficulties for the faltering Russian economy,” said Michael Bowker, an expert on Russian foreign policy and Russia-U.K. relations at the University of East Anglia.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said just days after the Litvinenko verdict that sanctions against Russia could be lifted within a few months, and Paris has also spoken in favor of lifting the sanctions.
Political scientist Andreas Umland told the Kyiv Post that the British court’s findings are still “a problem for Russia, as they further damage the reputation of the current regime. … Russia’s image is getting close to that of a rogue state.”
For Felshtinsky, Russia’s reputation is already so bad that “if you show documentary video of Putin eating babies alive on Russian television, it would make no difference.”
Marina Litvinenko has called on Cameron to impose economic sanctions on the individuals suspected in her husband’s murder.
Felshtinsky said authorities could – and should – go even further and throw Russian employees out of embassies in the U.K., or ban all Aeroflot flights in the country.
“If it didn’t happen after the murder of Litvinenko, after the invasion of Georgia, after the invasion of Ukraine, after the downing of the Malaysian airliner, after Russia’s involvement in Syria – then it will happen a bit later, when Russia moves on to the next stage of its foreign policy program, which Putin is only now starting,” Felshtinsky said.
Other victims
Litvinenko was not the first and not the last to fall victim to an increasingly ruthless dictatorship.
Felshtinsky said no one should forget all the other figures who were killed or died under mysterious circumstances.
“That in 2013 in strange circumstances they found (Boris) Berezovsky himself dead (one theory said he hanged himself, another – that he was hanged, and no serious investigation was conducted); that also in 2013, they found businessman Alexander Perepilichny dead. Initially they thought he’d just died, but a bit later, after an investigation, it became clear he’d been poisoned,” Felshtinsky told Ukrainian journalists on Jan. 26.
Like Litvinenko, both Berezovsky and Perepilichny had gone against the Kremlin. Perepilichny gave Swiss prosecutors evidence of the involvement of top Russian officials in a $220 million fraud.
At the same time the Kremlin laughed off the findings of the Litvinenko inquiry, Zhanna Nemtsova, the daughter of the late opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, appealed to the Council of Europe to launch an international investigation into her father’s murder.
Nemtsov was gunned down just steps from the Kremlin on Feb. 27, 2015. His supporters and friends believe someone at the top must have sanctioned his murder, since such an audacious crime could hardly be committed right next to the Kremlin walls without prior approval.
Russia’s Investigative Committee has placed the blame on several former Chechen police officers with ties to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. In recent weeks, Kadyrov has publicly threatened Nemtsov’s fellow opposition politicians – even calling them out by name and describing them as “traitors.”
The Kremlin has done nothing in response, perhaps because Kadyrov, like Lugovoi, has permission to target Putin critics. Putin gave Kadyrov a “Hero of Russia” award after Kadyrov called Nemtsov’s suspected murderer a “true patriot” in March.
Marina Litvinenko has no plans to return to Russia.
“You never know who might give an order to do something against you. It might not come direct from the top. It could be some ‘patriot,’” she is quoted as saying after the court’s verdict on Jan. 21.
