The plot to poison Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB colonel and outspoken critic of the Kremlin, seemed to have a cast of characters from a John le Carre novel. It captured the imagination of the international media and raised unsettling questions about the alleged involvement of the Russian government and its ruthlessness in dealing with political enemies.
On Tuesday, the convoluted tale took another twist as Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service made a formal request for the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, another former KGB agent who had tea in a London hotel with Litvinenko on Nov. 1, 2006, the day Litvinenko fell ill.
But Russia’s response to the extradition request was blunt: “In accordance with Russian law, citizens of Russia cannot be turned over to foreign states,” said Marina Gridneva, a spokeswoman for the Russian prosecutor general’s office.
As a result, Russia’s relations with Europe appear headed for a post-Cold War low.
“We are not talking about a liberal democracy here,” said James Nixey, a Russia analyst at Chatham House, a London research institute.
Tuesday’s extradition request, in which British officials said they had sufficient evidence to charge Lugovoi with “deliberate poisoning” in the “extraordinarily grave crime,” had been expected for weeks.
No surprise
“We knew for some time that Lugovoi looked like the guilty party. We knew the Crown Prosecution Service would have to ask for his extradition — and we knew the Russians would have to refuse,” said Nixey.
A deepening chill between Russia and the West was apparent last week in a summit between President Vladimir Putin and European Union leaders. The two sides traded barbs over energy policy and human rights. Russia also is angered by the Bush administration’s efforts to place missile defense installations in Eastern Europe.
“Relations have been bad for quite awhile. This adds to it,” Nixey said of the extradition request.
Legal experts and diplomats say there is little chance that Lugovoi will ever see the inside of a British courtroom and little that Britain can do about it. But as long as the issue remains unresolved, it will pose a serious impediment to Britain’s relations with Russia.
Lugovoi maintained his innocence Tuesday and called the charges politically motivated.
“I think this decision is a political decision,” Lugovoi told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. “I didn’t kill Litvinenko. I have no relation to his death and I have all the grounds to express my distrust for the so-called evidence that the British justice system has gathered.”
Although the Russian Constitution prohibits the extradition of Russian citizens, the law does allow for the prosecution of a Russian citizen within Russia if there is evidence that the person committed a crime on foreign soil.
Gridneva, the spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, said that Russian investigators would be willing to look at the evidence amassed by British prosecutors against Lugovoi but that they have yet to receive such material.
Yeltsin bodygurad
Lugovoi worked at the KGB and its successor agency, the Federal Security Service, also known by its Russian acronym, FSB, from 1987 to 1996. He spent much of that time as a bodyguard for Russian leader Boris Yeltsin.
His relationship with Litvinenko dates back a decade, when Lugovoi headed up security at ORT, a Russian television channel then owned by Moscow oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who has angered the Kremlin by openly calling for the overthrow of the Russian government by force. Litvinenko and Berezovsky became friends after Litvinenko publicly accused his FSB bosses of asking him to help assassinate Berezovsky.
After leaving the FSB in 1998, Litvinenko was jailed on charges of disclosing classified information. The charges were later dropped, and Litvinenko left Russia with his wife and son, eventually gaining asylum in Britain.
Lugovoi, meanwhile, became a partner in a soft-drinks enterprise and a security company co-owned by Dmitry Kovtun, also a key figure in the Litvinenko investigation. Kovtun accompanied Lugovoi to the meeting with Litvinenko at the Millenium Hotel on Nov. 1.
German investigators also found traces of polonium-210 — the radioactive poison used against Litvinenko — in the apartment of Kovtun’s ex-wife in Hamburg, in two cars he used there and in a government office he visited.
In an interview with Russia’s Ekho Moskvy radio late last year, Lugovoi said Litvinenko had called him in 2005 and offered to introduce him to some new business contacts in London. Lugovoi and Kovtun met with Litvinenko in London on Oct. 16, and again on Nov. 1, the day Litvinenko fell ill.
Shortly after the extradition request was announced Tuesday, Russia’s ambassador to Britain was summoned to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and told that Britain expects “full cooperation.”
That message was backed up by Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office. “Nobody should be under any doubt as to the seriousness with which we are taking this case,” said a spokesman for Blair.
“There are major issues, such as Iran, Kosovo and climate change, where we have to have — given the nature of the world today — serious dialogue with Russia. However, what that doesn’t in any way obviate is the need for the international rule of law to be respected, and we will not in any way shy away from trying to ensure that that happens in a case such as this,” the spokesman said.
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thundley@tribune.com
ajrodriguez@tribune.com
