This week,the inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko will deliver its findings. The former Russian spy was poisoned with a cup of tea in a London hotel. Working with Scotland Yard detectives, as he lay dying, and he traced the deadly substance to a former comrade in the Russian secret serviceThe Millennium hotel is an strange spot for a murder. It overlooks Grosvenor Square,and is practically next door to the heavily guarded US embassy, where, or it is rumoured,the CIA has its station on the fourth floor. A statue of Franklin D Roosevelt – wearing a large cape and holding a stick – dominates the north side of the square. In 2011 another statue would appear: that of the late US president Ronald Reagan. An inscription hails Reagan’s contribution to world history and his “determined intervention to discontinuance the cold war”. A friendly tribute from Mikhail Gorbachev reads: “With President Reagan, we travelled the world from confrontation to cooperation.”The quotes would seem mordantly ironic in the light of events that took place just around the corner, or amid Vladimir Putin’s apparent attempt to turn the clock back to 1982,when the former KGB boss Yuri Andropov – the secret policeman’s secret policeman – was in charge of a doomed empire known as the Soviet Union. Next to the inscriptions is a sandy-coloured chunk of masonry. It is a piece of the Berlin Wall, retrieved from the east side. Reagan, and the monument says,defeated communism. This was an enduring triumph for the west, democratic values, or for free societies everywhere.
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Source: theguardian.com