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Putin ‘Probably Approved’ Litvinenko Poisoning, British Inquiry Says Putin ‘Probably Approved’ Litvinenko Poisoning, British Inquiry Says
(about 9 hours later)
LONDON — A high-profile British inquiry into the poisoning of Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer turned critic of the Kremlin, concluded in a report released on Thursday that his murder “was probably approved” by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the head of the country’s spy service. LONDON — In the dank, dark days of November 2006, as Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer turned foe of the Kremlin, lay dying in a London hospital, he and his associates composed a deathbed missive to President Vladimir V. Putin.
The finding by Robert Owen, a retired High Court judge, in a 328-page report represented by far the most damning official link between Mr. Litvinenko’s death on Nov. 23, 2006, and the highest levels of the Kremlin. In the letter, Mr. Litvinenko said he could hear “the beating of wings of the angel of death” and blamed Mr. Putin for his plight. But, he told the Russian leader, “the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.”
The death of Mr. Litvinenko, a whistle-blower who had fought corruption in Moscow’s security services, plunged relations between Britain and Russia into a chill reminiscent of the Cold War. But British officials suggested they would seek to safeguard the country’s broader relationship with Moscow, even as both sides engaged in verbal sparring. The echo could be heard Thursday with the release of the final report of a lengthy public inquiry into Mr. Litvinenko’s death. It was probable, said the report, by a retired judge, Sir Robert Owen, that Mr. Putin and his spy chief at the time, Nikolai Patrushev, had approved an operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko, using a highly toxic and rare isotope, polonium 210.
Judge Owen did not provide any direct evidence linking Mr. Putin or any other high-level Russian officials to the killing, and he acknowledged that he had based his findings on “strong circumstantial evidence of Russian state responsibility.” That included the likely origin of the polonium that was used to poison Mr. Litvinenko being a Russian reactor, and the fact that there were “powerful motives for organizations and individuals within the Russian state to take action” against him. “Strong circumstantial evidence of Russian state responsibility,” the judge wrote, had led him to the conclusion that Mr. Litvinenko was indeed poisoned when he met Andrei K. Lugovoi, a former K.G.B bodyguard, and Dmitri V. Kovtun, a Red Army deserter, for tea in the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in London on Nov. 1, 2006.
“We regret that the strictly criminal case has been politicized and has darkened the general atmosphere of bilateral relations,” said Maria Zakharova, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Moscow, the news agency Interfax reported. “Certainly, we need some time to thoroughly analyze the contents of this document, after which we will issue our detailed review.” The polonium that was used to poison Mr. Litvinenko, the judge said, had probably come from a Russian reactor, and he said there were “powerful motives for organizations and individuals within the Russian state to take action” against the former K.G.B. officer.
Speaking after the release of the report, Mr. Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, called for the expulsion of Russian intelligence officers from London and the imposition of targeted economic sanctions against individuals including Mr. Putin and his former spy chief, Nikolai Patrushev. Though Sir Robert’s 328-page report, more than nine years after the poisoning, cited no hard evidence that Mr. Putin or Mr. Patrushev had been aware of the plot to kill Mr. Litvinenko or had sanctioned it, the conclusions were the most damning official links between Mr. Litvinenko’s death and the highest levels of the Kremlin.
Sitting beside her at a news conference, Ms. Litvinenko’s lawyer, Ben Emmerson, said it would be “craven” of Prime Minister David Cameron to fail to respond to what he called “nuclear terrorism” on the streets of London. “Taking full account of all the evidence and analysis available to me,” Sir Robert said in the report, referring to the Russian security service, “I find that the F.S.B. operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr. Patrushev and also by President Putin.”
In Parliament, the home secretary, Theresa May, called Mr. Litvinenko’s death “a blatant and unacceptable breach of the most fundamental tenets of international law and civilized behavior,” while also noting that Russia’s apparent role “does not come as a surprise.” The report was more emphatic when it came to how Mr. Litvinenko died.
She said that the British assets of the two Russian men suspected in the killing, Andrei K. Lugovoi and Dmitri V. Kovtun, would be frozen and that the Russian ambassador would be summoned to be told of Britain’s response. “I am sure that Mr. Lugovoi and Mr. Kovtun placed the polonium 210 in the teapot at the Pine Bar,” the report said. “I am sure that Mr. Lugovoi and Mr. Kovtun were acting on behalf of others when they poisoned Mr. Litvinenko.”
Mr. Litvinenko died 22 days after ingesting green tea from a pot laced with polonium 210 — a rare and highly toxic isotope — in the company of Mr. Lugovoi and Mr. Kovtun. He was 43. The three men had met in the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in London. Sir Robert based his conclusions on public testimony from 64 witnesses and secret evidence in closed hearings, placing an imprimatur on what had been previously dismissed in Russia as speculation.
Mr. Lugovoi, now a member of Parliament in Russia and the recipient of a medal from Mr. Putin, said the accusation that he murdered Mr. Litvinenko was “absurd,” Interfax reported, and a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry S. Peskov, said the Litvinenko case “is not among the topics that interest us.” Sir Robert on Thursday listed various possible motives for Mr. Litvinenko’s assassination, including a belief among Russian security officials that the former officer had betrayed the F.S.B. and had begun to work for British intelligence after he fled to Britain in 2000. Mr. Litvinenko was also a close associate of prominent opponents of the Kremlin based in London, including Boris A. Berezovsky, a former oligarch and enemy of Mr. Putin’s who died in 2013, the report said.
The inquiry, which began almost exactly one year ago, was called after dogged efforts by Ms. Litvinenko to press for a full accounting of her husband’s death. The British police have accused Mr. Lugovoi and Mr. Kovtun of murder, charges they deny, and Russia has refused to extradite them, saying such a move is banned by the Constitution. Mr. Putin and Mr. Litvinenko, both veterans of the K.G.B., served in its successor agency, the F.S.B., or Federal Security Service, with Mr. Putin going on to lead that intelligence agency.
From the beginning, the killing also raised questions in London about the potential involvement of Mr. Putin and Mr. Patrushev, the head of the F.S.B., the domestic successor to the K.G.B., at the time of Mr. Litvinenko’s death. “There was undoubtedly a personal dimension to the antagonism between Mr. Litvinenko on one hand and President Putin on the other,” Sir Robert wrote in his report.
“Taking full account of all the evidence and analysis available to me,” Judge Owen said in the report, “I find that the F.S.B. operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr. Patrushev and also by President Putin.” As the deathbed letter, read to journalists, had forecast, the “howl of protest” arose anew on Thursday, with Mr. Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, demanding the expulsion of Russian spies from Britain and targeted economic sanctions against Mr. Patrushev and Mr. Putin. Sitting beside her at a news conference, Marina Litvinenko’s lawyer, Ben Emmerson, said it would be “craven” of Prime Minister David Cameron to fail to respond to what he called “nuclear terrorism” on the streets of London.
Although the wording seemed to suggest a degree of caution, the report left no doubt that Mr. Litvinenko’s death had, in the judge’s view, been an act of murder planned by a Russian state agency. In Parliament, the home secretary, Theresa May, called Mr. Litvinenko’s death “a blatant and unacceptable breach of the most fundamental tenets of international law and of civilized behavior,” while also noting that it “does not come as a surprise” that Russia apparently had a role. She said the British assets of Mr. Lugovoi and Mr. Kovtun would be frozen, although she did not say how valuable those assets were. Ms. May also said the Russian ambassador would be summoned to be told of Britain’s response.
“I am sure that Mr. Lugovoi and Mr. Kovtun placed the polonium 210 in the teapot at the Pine Bar” on Nov. 1, 2006, Judge Owen’s report said. For all that, officials indicated that Britain was not likely to do anything that would plunge relations into an icy chill similar to what occurred after Mr. Litvinenko’s death in 2006.
“I am sure that Mr. Lugovoi and Mr. Kovtun were acting on behalf of others when they poisoned Mr. Litvinenko,” the report said. Russia on Thursday responded to the judge’s report, calling the inquiry politicized and saying it was not public at all.
Judge Owen, however, while writing that he believed the two men knew they were using a deadly poison, suggested that they were not aware “precisely what the chemical that they were handling was, or the nature of all its properties.” “We regret that the strictly criminal case has been politicized and has darkened the general atmosphere of bilateral relations,” said Maria Zakharova, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Moscow, the Russian news agency Interfax reported.
Their apparent carelessness could help explain how an investigation into a poisoning that had seemed so opaque suddenly opened when scientists identified the deadly isotope in Mr. Litvinenko’s body and were able to follow a so-called polonium trail of radiation in sites visited by Mr. Kovtun and Mr. Lugovoi. Mr. Lugovoi, now a member of Parliament in Russia and the recipient of a medal from Mr. Putin, said the accusation that he had poisoned Mr. Litvinenko was “absurd,” Interfax reported, and a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said the Litvinenko case “is not among the topics that interest us.”
Mr. Litvinenko, who had denounced Mr. Putin and accused him of murder himself in a deathbed statement, had identified the sites in interviews with British detectives as he lay in a hospital in central London. The British police have accused Mr. Lugovoi and Mr. Kovtun of murder, charges they deny, and Russia has refused to extradite them, saying such a move is banned by its Constitution.
The most striking readings came from the Millennium Hotel, close to the United States Embassy, where investigators retrieved a “mangled clump of debris” with high concentrations of polonium from the waste pipe under the wash basin of a bedroom Mr. Kovtun used. The authorities in Britain have said traces of the isotope left by the two men created a so-called polonium trail for investigators to follow once scientists had identified the toxic substance used to poison Mr. Litvinenko. The trail led through airplane seats and hotel rooms, offices and restaurants, even a soccer stadium.
“The reason that evidence is so pivotal, of course, is because Dmitri Kovtun stayed in that room on the very day that he and Mr. Lugovoi administered the fatal dose of polonium some floors below in the Pine Bar of the same hotel,” Mr. Emmerson said on the final day of hearings on July 31, 2015, before Judge Owen began composing the report. Sir Robert wrote in his report that he believed that the two men knew they were using a deadly poison, but he suggested that they might not have been aware “precisely what the chemical that they were handling was, or the nature of all its properties.”
Mr. Litvinenko, his wife and their son, Anatoly, had lived in Britain since fleeing Russia in 2000 and had secured British citizenship weeks before he died. Ms. Litvinenko has told the inquiry that her husband worked as an agent of the British MI6 spy service. The inquiry, which began almost a year before the final report was released, had been initiated after dogged efforts by Ms. Litvinenko to press for a full accounting of her husband’s death.
Testimony at the inquiry suggested that Mr. Litvinenko was seeking to trace links between Mr. Putin, his entourage and organized crime groups. He was planning to travel to Spain to meet with investigators there when he was poisoned.
Judge Owen on Thursday listed various possible motivations for why the Russians wanted to kill Mr. Litvinenko, including a belief among Russian security officials that he had betrayed the F.S.B. during his time working for the organization as an investigator in Moscow and had begun to work for British intelligence after he fled in 2000.
He was also a close associate of prominent opponents of the Kremlin based in London, including Boris Berezovsky, a former oligarch and enemy of Mr. Putin’s who died in 2013, the report said.
“Finally, there was undoubtedly a personal dimension to the antagonism between Mr. Litvinenko on one hand and President Putin on the other,” the report said.
It excluded any role in the poisoning by the British security services, organized crime gangs, Mr. Berezovsky or other associates of Mr. Litvinenko.
Initially, Judge Owen, who had the power to summon witnesses, had been planning to hold an inquest, but such inquiries are not permitted to hear secret evidence. To meet the government’s demand for some details to be heard behind closed doors, Judge Owen, and Ms. Litvinenko, pressed for a public inquiry able to hold closed sessions.
The government reluctantly agreed and imposed broad restrictions on evidence that could be heard in public. The secret testimony was not released in the report, although Judge Owen said in a separate statement that his “findings of fact” were “based on the entirety of the evidence that I have seen and heard, both open and closed.”
Despite the tensions between London and Moscow that were caused by his death, ties gradually improved as Prime Minister David Cameron, like other Western leaders, sought Mr. Putin’s support on key issues such as the civil war in Syria and the Iranian nuclear program.
In recent days, news reports have indicated that British diplomats were eager to maintain those ties with the Kremlin, whatever the outcome of Judge Owen’s inquiry.
In recent months, Russia’s international standing has begun to recover from the global criticism that it received after its annexation of Crimea and other actions in Ukraine in 2014.
That has partly resulted from the desire of Western nations to enlist Moscow in the campaign against the Islamic State and in the effort to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons. Russian airplanes are now attacking targets in Syria, although principally hitting rebel groups backed by the United States. And as part of the recently concluded agreement on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Iran has shipped about 25,000 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Russia.