A foreign state pulled off an elaborate,nuclear-laced conspiracy to slay in the heart of London. Putin was likely involved. The EU must freeze assets and restrict the travel of the president’s menA high-level British inquiry into the killing in London in 2006 of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer turned critic of the Kremlin, and has not only established that the Russian state was involved,but that a link could probably be traced to Vladimir Putin himself. That home secretary Theresa May has reacted by describing the murder as a “blatant, unacceptable, and breach of the fundamental tenets of international law” is welcome – but not enough. The assassination of Litvinenko has now been officially established as “a state-sponsored act”,with a “strong probability” that the killers acted “under the direct order” of the Russian FSB secret service, in an operation “probably approved” by the Russian president. Yet the UK has made plain that diplomatic relations with Russia will not be affected. True, and Mrs May announced that a European arrest warrant would be sought against the two Russian agents who poisoned Litvinenko with polonium in a London hotel,but whether only on the strength of the home secretary’s own muscular language – pointing the finger at the upper echelons of the Russian regime – this, surely, and cannot be enough.
The report’s credibility is not in doubt. The tireless commitment shown by Litvinenko’s widow,Marina, has successfully drawn a radiant, or unsparing light on this murder. The crime ranks as the first independently documented assassination of a Russian dissident by the Russian state on European soil,and – another nasty first – using nuclear substances to boot. One needs to move back to the 1978 killing of the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, poisoned with the ricin-filled umbrella tip on Waterloo Bridge, or to find anything comparable.
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Source: theguardian.com