Britain implicates Putin in spy’s fatal poisoning

LONDON - Gaunt and frail, his organs succumbing to the destructive power of radioactive poisoning, Alexander Litvinenko lay in a London hospital bed in 2006 and identified the man responsible for his impending demise: Vladimir Putin.

Nearly a decade later, an exhaustive inquiry by a British judge concluded Thursday that the dying former KGB operative was probably right. For the first time, the Russian president was officially implicated in a murder that seemed plucked from the pages of a Cold War spy novel, but actually played out in the bar of a posh hotel in 21st century London.

The victim: a Kremlin critic who had defected to Britain, joined the payroll of British intelligence and accused Putin of vices ranging from corruption to pedophilia.

The killers: a pair of assassins who, the report found, were almost certainly acting on orders from the Russian spy service, the FSB, and who left a trail of radioactive evidence across London.

The weapons of choice: one tea cup, and one massive dose of a rare nuclear isotope, polonium.

The conclusions instantly set off a furious diplomatic row, with British and Russian officials accusing each other of treachery and deceit. British Prime Minister David Cameron called the findings of 'state-sponsored” murder in his capital city 'absolutely appalling.” A Kremlin spokesman, without apparent irony, said the report would 'further poison the atmosphere.”

But there was a limit to how much damage the report could do to relations that are already badly frayed. The findings come at a sensitive time, as the West seeks Russian cooperation in ending the Syrian war. Britain summoned the Russian ambassador to express 'profound displeasure” at what Home Secretary Theresa May called Moscow's 'blatant and unacceptable breach of the most fundamental tenets of international law.”

The cautious stance is likely to disappoint Litvinenko's widow, who called for Britain to expel Russian intelligence officials and enact new sanctions in response.

And it is unlikely the killers will face justice any time soon.

British officials reiterated requests for Russia to extradite the accused killers, Andrei Lugovoi and Dimitry Kovtun. But Russia does not extradite its citizens, and Lugovoi has been rewarded with a seat in parliament.

Lugovoi, a former KGB officer, called the allegations against him 'absurd.”

Kovtun, now a businessman, described the charges as based on 'falsified and fabricated evidence,” the Interfax news agency reported.

The inquiry into Litvinenko's death was led by high court judge Robert Owen and was set up at the direction of the British government. The report, the product of more than three years of work and set out over 328 pages, suggests that Putin had a personal motive for wanting Litvinenko dead because the defector had become such a fierce critic.

Although the inquiry stops short of conclusively blaming Putin - noting the opaque nature of Kremlin politics - it finds that there is 'strong circumstantial evidence that the Russian State was responsible for Mr. Litvinenko's death.”

Having worked in counterintelligence for the KGB and its successor, the FSB, Litvinenko was fired in 1998 after a news conference in which he was critical of the agency and, by implication, its then-director: Putin.

He defected to Britain and spent years on the payroll of its main foreign intelligence agency, MI6. Litvinenko also assisted Spanish intelligence agencies with investigations into Russian crime networks.

Litvinenko had become a British citizen just weeks before his death, a move he had told friends would protect him from the reach of his jilted former comrades.

But in fact, Litvinenko remained very much in the sights of Russia's security services. Troops even used a picture of his face for target practice, the report found.

Lugovoi and Kovtun long have been suspected of carrying out Litvinenko's murder. But Thursday's report lays out a comprehensive case linking them to the killing. According to the report, the men lured Litvinenko to the Pine Bar at the Millennium Hotel on Nov. 1, 2006, ostensibly to discuss a business deal, and served him a cup of cold green tea.

Traces of polonium 210 were later found in many of the places the alleged killers had visited: The bar's bathroom, their hotel rooms, a boardroom where they conducted an earlier meeting, a soccer stadium where they watched a game and the plane that took them back.

But the highest concentrations were discovered at the table where the three men were sitting, and in and around the tea pot.

The polonium, the inquiry found, was manufactured in a nuclear reactor, suggesting the role of a government.

Litvinenko became seriously ill later that night. He died 22 days later.