Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was an officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and its Soviet predecessor, the Committee for State Security (KGB), until he left the service and fled the country in late 2000, defecting to the UK. In 1998, Litvinenko and several other Russian intelligence officers said they had been ordered to kill Boris Berezovsky, a Russian businessman. After that, the Russian government began to persecute Litvinenko. He fled to the UK, where he criticised the Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government. In exile, Litvinenko worked with British and Spanish intelligence, sharing information about the Russian mafia in Europe and its connections with the Russian government. On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko was poisoned and later hospitalised. He died on 23 November, becoming the first confirmed victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome. Litvinenko's allegations about misdeeds of the FSB and his public deathbed accusations that Putin was behind his poisoning resulted in worldwide media coverage. Subsequent investigations by British authorities into the circumstances of Litvinenko's death led to serious diplomatic difficulties between the British and Russian governments. In September 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Russia was responsible for the assassination of Litvinenko and ordered Russia to pay Litvinenko's wife €100,000 in damages plus €22,500 in costs. The ECHR found beyond reasonable doubt that Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun killed Litvinenko. The Court's decision is in line with the findings of a 2016 UK inquiry. The UK concluded that the murder was "probably approved by Mr. [Nikolai] Patrushev, then head of the FSB, and also by President Putin."
Background
Alexander Litvinenko was a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) who escaped prosecution in Russia and received in the United Kingdom political asylum in spring 2001. In his books, Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within and Lubyanka Criminal Group, Litvinenko alleged that the FSB organized the bombing of apartment buildings in Moscow and other Russian cities in 1999 to pave the way for the Second Chechen War, which brought Vladimir Putin to power. He accused Russian secret services of having arranged the Moscow theater hostage crisis, through their Chechen agent provocateur, and having organised the 1999 Armenian parliament shooting. He also claimed that the Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was under FSB control when he visited Russia in 1997. Upon his arrival in London, he continued to support the Russian oligarch in exile, Boris Berezovsky, in his media campaign against the Russian government. Just two weeks before his death, Litvinenko accused Putin of ordering the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist and human rights activist.
Illness and poisoning On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill. Earlier that day he had met two Russian ex-KGB officers, Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun, at the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in London. Lugovoy is a former bodyguard of Russian ex-Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar (also reportedly poisoned in November 2006) and later the chief of security for the Russian TV channel ORT. Litvinenko had also had lunch at Itsu, a sushi restaurant on Piccadilly in London, with an Italian officer and "nuclear expert", Mario Scaramella, to whom he made allegations regarding Romano Prodi's connections with the KGB. Scaramella, attached to the Mitrokhin Commission investigating KGB penetration of Italian politics, claimed to have information on the death of Anna Politkovskaya, 48, a journalist who was killed at her Moscow apartment in October 2006. He passed Litvinenko papers supposedly concerning her fate. On 20 November, it was reported that Scaramella had gone into hiding and feared for his life. On the evening of 1 November, Litvinenko began vomiting and later developed bloody diarrhea. At one point, he could not walk without assistance. As the pain intensified, Litvinenko asked his wife to call an ambulance, before being hospitalized on 3 November. For several days, Litvinenko's condition worsened as doctors searched for the cause of the illness. Surrounded by friends, Litvinenko became physically weak, and spent periods unconscious. On his deathbed, Litvinenko stated to detectives that he believed President Putin had directly ordered his assassination. Three days before his death, photographs were taken of Litvinenko and released to the public. "I want the world to see what they did to me," he said.
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