# Talk:Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko

This article assumes, incorrectly, that Yegor Gaidar was poisoned in the course of his visit to Ireland. There is absolutely no evidence of poisoning in this case. Yegor Gaidar was taken ill at Maynooth College near Dublin on the day of Litvinenko's death. He began to bleed from the nose and appeared to be unconscious for a short time. A member of the Russian group attending the Maynooth conference noted that Gaidar had begun to feel ill during a stop-over at Ferihegy Airport in Budapest on his way to Ireland. Gaidar suffers from hypertension and diabetes and doctors who examined him at the scene said his condition was consistent with these ailments. Gaidar was taken to the James Connolly Memorial Hospital at Blanchardstown near Dublin where his condition was regarded not to be life-threatening.
An Garda Siochana, the Irish national police force, conducted an investigation into the event. No traces of polonium or any other poisonous or toxic substance were found at any place in which Gaidar was present. The investigation into the Maynooth event was not and is not part of an "ongoing investigation in the UK and in Ireland" since the event had absolutely no connection with the UK and the investigation in the Republic of Ireland has been completed. Yegor Timurevich Gaidar was released from hospital the following morning and spent the day at the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Dublin where, according to Embassy sources, he was well enough to consume a considerable amount of vodka. 
On his return to Russia Gaidar checked himself into a clinic in which the doctors stated that it would be contrary to their medical ethics to declare him a poisoning victim. Gaidar believed he was poisoned but the reason he gave for this was not entirely logical. In short he has stated that since the Russian doctors could not find a reason for his illness it must, therefore, have been due to poisoning. -  Seamusfmartin (talk) 11:32, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

@Seamusfmartin I know nothing of that case, but the above opinion is highly suspect as one of great many posts worldwide by Putin's puppets at the Russian Internet Research Agency and other related arms of Putin's regime.
With Putin having been proven beyond all doubt as the maniacal murderer of many hundreds of thousands of people so far, in operations ranging from the small to the immense, and killing over 1000 young men every day in his genocidal war on Ukraine, this kind of propaganda denying his responsibility for a murder with polonium from Russia is offensive. If it involves polonium that means Putin orderred it to be done. 2604:3D09:8878:4500:D5F0:FAA:CA06:B2EC (talk) 01:13, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

The entire premise of this article seems unlikely.  Polonium is exceptionally rare and very expense to produce.  Why would a nation in the midst of economic collapse use 4-5 million dollars worth of a rare element to murder someone?  A bullet or knife is cheaper and very reliable.
A more likely explanation is they were smuggling the polonium out to one of the several organizations that hold missing Russian tactical nuclear weapons.  Those weapons use polonium triggers.  The polonium in these would have decayed decades ago and therefore be useless.  This sounds like a botched mule operation.  - HP Controls - — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hpcontrols (talk • contribs) 15:21, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

@Hpcontrols You have GOT to be kidding. But then we all know that puppets of Putin are rampant on the internet and have an IQ of zero. 2604:3D09:8878:4500:D5F0:FAA:CA06:B2EC (talk) 00:59, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

These discuss the Yasser Arafat polonium murder link claim:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/10/15/yasser-arafat-poisoned-polonium-litvinenko_n_4099837.html
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/yasser-arafat-poisoned-polonium-also-2372116
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Al-Jazeera-Others-Spread-by-William-Dunkerley-120811-171.html
http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp%253Fid%253D344808 
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Switchcraft (talk • contribs) 13:13, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

@Switchcraft Do you really expect that such sloppy journalism by such dubious sources could be used in a Wikipedia article?
It is very obvious that Putin has paid his puppets to flood the pages that discuss his megamaniacal and murderous tendencies with denials, but nobody is fooled by any of the propaganda posted by his puppets. 2604:3D09:8878:4500:D5F0:FAA:CA06:B2EC (talk) 01:26, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

In the section called Polonium 210, Sources And Production Of Polonium, the first paragraph consists entirely of one long sentence. That sentence states that Polonium 210, an EXTREMELY dangerous poison, the kind used to assassinate Alexander Litvinenko, can be gotten from anti-static fans. That info is not at all germaine to the topic and needs to removed ASAP!
I have never made an edit and I can't just go ahead without approval/permission.
Please remove that statement very quickly. Also please make sure there is a very clear rule against disclosure of dangerous info. The supposed relevance can never outweigh the risk when the case involves any kind of nuclear or radio-active substance or poison. It has already been demonstrated that people can and will use the info. I refer specifically to the teenager who built a nuclear bomb in his back yard in the US. 2604:3D09:8878:4500:D5F0:FAA:CA06:B2EC (talk) 00:54, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

Current version:

Suicide by multiple stab wounds is extremely rare— one study counts 8 cases of multiple-site wounds for 513,182 suicides.
The total number of suicides (513,182) is taken from the Pubmed version of the abstract in the second reference (click on 'PMID 11953487'), but the numbers in that version of the abstract don't make sense — half a million suicides in South Australia in 40 years?! Plus 'men (n = 1835)' and 'women (n = 1416)' add up to just 3251 cases and '[f]ifty-one cases [...] representing 1.6% of total suicides (513182)'?!?
When you look at the original abstract (click on '10.1097/00000433-200203000-00003'), it becomes clear that Pubmed left out several slashes — '1.6% of total suicides (51/3182)', '51.4% of men (n = 18/35)' and '87.5% of women (n = 14/16)'. This means that the total number of cases we want is just 3182, not 513,182. ~2025-35349-00 (talk) 14:25, 23 November 2025 (UTC)