The Covert Poisoning of an Ex-Russian Spy

**"The Covert Poisoning of an Ex-Russian Spy"** is a video made by Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, uploaded onto YouTube on August 10, 2018. It was the fifth episode of the fourth season of *BuzzFeed Unsolved: True Crime*, and the seventy-first episode overall. You can find it here.

## Description

An ex-spy is murdered with an unusual poison. Was it an enemy, or his former employers?

## Background

Who was the ill-fated Alexander Litvinenko? Born in Russia, Litvinenko began working for the KGB in the 1980s and eventually became a Lieutenant Colonel after the KGB became the FSB, the counterintelligence and internal security service in Russia. There, he is believed to have had a falling out over FSB corruption, with his ultimate superior, Vladimir Putin. Litvinenko also wrote a book called *Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within* after leaving the service. In the book, he asserts that in 1999, FSB agents bombed apartment blocks in Moscow and other cities. These bombings were previously said to have been carried out be Chechen separatists, but in the book, Litvinenko suggested that these bombings were used as a justification for the Russian invasion of Chechnya for the second time.

In 2000, citing persecution, Litvinenko fled to the UK, where he was granted asylum. Once in the UK, he did not conceal his loathing for Russia's leader, criticizing Putin publicly. Litvinenko was part of a circle of exiled Russian critics and in 2003, Litvinenko was recruited by MI6. He provided information about senior figures in the Kremlin and their connections to organized crime in Russia, while also possessing information about the Russian mafia's work in Spain. Litvinenko informed authorities he had faced harassment and dead threats essentially since he fled to the UK. For example, Major Andrei Ponkin, a former colleague, reportedly contacted him in 2001 saying, "you will either be brought back in a body bag to Russia, or pushed in front of a train". Litvinenko is believed to have become a British citizen in 2006, the same year he mysteriously died.

On November 1, 2006, Litvinenko had tea at the Millennium Hotel in Central London with Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun, two former Russian agents. It's said that Litvinenko had been planning to travel to Spain with Lugovoy and that he was investigating the Russia mafia's connections to Spain. It's worth noting that Litvinenko had also been investigating the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who, prior to being shot at her apartment block in Moscow the month before, had received death threats.

After this meeting with Lugovoy and Kovtun, Litvinenko became sick and vomited all night. He was admitted to a London hospital three days later, where his condition worsened. When BBC Russian service interviewed Litvinenko on November 11th, Litvinenko said that he was the victim of a "serious poisoning," and that he was in, "very bad shape." On November 23rd, 2006, Litvinenko died with his family beside him. This was three weeks after his meeting with Lugovoy and Kovtun.

Doctors were not able to diagnose Litvinenko's condition while he was hospitalized, but in the hours before his death, test results confirmed tremendously high levels of the substance Polonium 210, a radioactive isotope in his body, finally revealing the cause of his sickness. Doctor Nathaniel Cary, a home office forensic pathologist, later said of the post-mortem examination, "it has been described as the most dangerous post-mortem examination ever undertaken in the Western world and I think that is probably right."

## Theories

* **The official conclusions of the Litvinenko inquiry report, compiled by the Chairman of the Inquiry, Sir Robert Owen, published on January 21st, 2016, explains that there is a great deal of evidence implicating Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun and their meeting with Litvinenko at the Millennium Hotel's Pine Bar.** Forensic evidence indicated high levels of Polonium 210 contamination at the Pine Bar, with the greatest Polonium 210 readings coming from the inside of one of the teapots and the table where Litvinenko was sitting. None of the other places Litvinenko went that day had any comparable level of contamination.
	+ Sir Owen writes, "I am sure that Mr. Lugovoy and Mr. Kovtun placed the Polonium 210 in the teapot at the Pine Bar on November 1st, 2006. I am also sure that they did this with the intention of poisoning Mr. Litvinenko." Sir Owen explains that he is certain that they intended to kill Litvinenko and were aware they were using a deadly substance; not, "a truth drug or a sleeping draught." However, he does not believe they understood exactly what kind of substance they were using and he is sure Lugovoy and Kovtun were poisoning Litvinenko on the orders of someone else. In the report, Owen says that it's likely Litvinenko was poisoned at the FSB's direction, which at the time was led by Nikolai Patrushev. Furthermore, Sir Owen was also certain Lugovoy and Kovtun attempted to poison Litvinenko with Polonium 210 earlier, on October 16th, 2006.
	+ There is plenty of evidence that supports Sir Owen's conclusions. Lugovoy and Kovtun left traces of Polonium all over their paths; on restaurant tables, in planes, even in an erotic nightclub. In fact, during the investigation, approximately 700 people had to be tested for radioactive poisoning, though no one proved seriously sick. The inquiry report portrays Lugovoy and Kovtun as careless and bumbling, allowing the Polonium to be "splashed around in hotel bathrooms and mopped up with hotel towels that were then left in the hotel." There was also support for the idea that Lugovoy and Kovtun weren't aware of the nature of the poison, given that Lugovoy also told his eight-year-old son to shake hands with Litvinenko after he had consumed the poison. They clearly did not understand the nature of radiation.
	+ The inquiry report also references a suspicious phone call Kovtun made to a cook he knew. Kovtun was reportedly trying to find a cook that would put "a very expensive poison" in food or a beverage that Litvinenko would consume. On November 1, at 11:33 A.M., Kovtun tried to reach the cook, who was not able to help him. Lugovoy called Litvinenko only eight minutes later to arrange their meeting at the Millennium Hotel later that day. The report explains, "once it had become apparent to Mr. Lugovoy and Mr. Kovtun that they would not get any help from the cook, at least not in the short term, they decided to make another attempt to poison Mr. Litvinenko themselves. Their plan, which they subsequently put into effect, was to make this attempt in the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel."
	+ The report concludes by saying, "the FSB operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr. Patrushev and also by President Putin." It seems secret evidence revealed in closed hearings of the inquiry contributed to the report's conclusion that Putin and Patrushev probably approved the killing. Who within the Russian state would have had a reason to murder Litvinenko? Well, for starters, he was thought of as a traitor by the FSB. After all, he had claimed the FSB was responsible for the 1999 apartment bombings in Russia that contributed to the Chechen war. It was also known that Litvinenko was working for MI6 and rubbed shoulders with Russian critics Boris Berezovsky and Akhmed Zakayev, a Chechen leader living in exile. The report also noted that the tension between Litvinenko and Putin was personal. In July, 2006, Litvinenko publicly described Putin as a pedophile who destroy tapes of himself having sex with underage boys, and shortly before he died Litvinenko accused Putin of being behind Anna Politkovskaya's murder in October 2006. The inquiry report notes that Putin and the Kremlin have since rewarded Lugovoy a medal for "services to the fatherland."
	+ Lugovoy reportedly claimed that MI6 had framed him. According to the inquiry report, Lugovoy protested, saying, "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." However, the inquiry report explains that a set up like Lugovoy was describing would've required the conspirators to contaminate a variety of places around London with a radioactive substance, putting an enormous amount of people in danger. Owen goes on to say, "I will simply say that in all the oral evidence that I have heard during this process, in all the many thousands of pages of documents that I have seen, I have not come across anything that would even begin to substantiate the claims of a set up made by Mr. Lugovoy."
	+ Moreover, Litvinenko's death seemingly fits into a pattern of strange deaths in the UK that have since been linked to Russia. In 2013, Boris Berezovsky was found dead in his home in the UK. The authorities said there was no sign of a struggle, making it seem like a suicide could be an explanation; however, Berezovsky had plenty of enemies in the Kremlin. In 2012, Alexander Perepilichny, a financier who demonstrated evidence that Russian tax officials had allegedly committed fraud, died unexpectedly while running in Surrey. According to US spies, there's intelligence that indicates he was likely "assassinated on direct orders from Putin or people close to him." In March, 2018, a British spy and former Russian official and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent that left them in critical condition.
	+ Perhaps the most striking part of this case lies in Litvinenko's own certainty in who was responsible for his death. In an interview with the Metropolitan Police Service, Litvinenko said, "I have no doubt whatsoever that this was done by the Russian Secret Services. Having knowledge of the system I know that the order about such a killing of a citizen of another country on its territory, especially if it is something to do with Great Britain could have been given by only one person. That person is the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin." Litvinenko's confidence in knowing his own killer would lead the Guardian to title an article about the case, "Alexander Litvinenko: The Man Who Solved His Own Murder".
* **Litvinenko's death could have been in the interest of those in the UK who wanted to avoid being extradited to Russia.** Lugovoy even suggested that Boris Berezovsky was involved in Litvinenko's death while denying his own culpability. Others have speculated that Berezovsky could've been responsible for the murder as a means of sullying Putin's image.
	+ The inquiry report acknowledges that some accused Berezovsky of ordering Litvinenko's death out of fear that Litvinenko could potentially blackmail him. The report also concedes that Livinenko had, at times, spoken about "taking some form of action against Mr. Berezovsky." Though the report also notes that it doesn't appear he ever took any of these actions. The report says, "it was not unusual for Mr. Litvinenko to propose courses of action in conversation with friends and associates that never subsequently came to anything. Mr. Litvinenko and Mr. Berezovsky remained friends until the end of Mr. Litvinenko's life. There was no blackmail, and therefore no motive for Mr. Berezovsky to have Mr. Litvinenko killed." In addition, the report notes that it was Lugovoy who actively canvassed the idea that Berezovsky was behind Litvinenko's death.
* **Litvinenko could have killed himself if he was suffering from a terminal illness of some kind.** It said, "if he knew he was dying, he may have taken poison and signed whatever papers his allies brought to him." Lugovoy's lawyer also asked that the inquest into Litvinenko's death consider, "death by misadventure and suicide."
	+ However, the inquiry report explains how Marina Litvinenko, Alexander Litvinenko's widow, provided evidence that Litvinenko was active around the time of his poisoning, not suffering from depression. She noted that as long as she had known her husband, she had never known him to consider killing himself. Friends supported Marina's views on this matter. The report also notes that it seems as though Litvinenko had no access to Polonium 210 before he was poisoned.