by Luke Harding
and Berezovsky vs Abramovich 1, 2
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and Bush 1
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Emmerson on 1
GDR post of 1
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and Ivanov 1
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Litvinenko fired by 1
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question of culpability of 1
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rising ratings of 1
and Sobchak 1
suggested assassination of 1
TASS post of 1
‘totally amoral’ 1
UK visits of 1, 2
and Ukraine crisis, see Ukraine
US suspects complicity of 1
Quirke, Daniel 1
Rabinowitz, Laurence 1, 2, 3
Raduyev, Salman 1
Reilly, Tim 1
Reiman, Leonid 1
Renko, Arkady 1
Reznik, Vladimir 1
Rifkind, Sir Malcolm 1
RISC 1, 2, 3, 4
Rondini, Giuliana 1
Rotenberg, Arkady 1
Rotenberg, Boris 1
Royal, Richard 1
Ruslan and Lyudmila 1
Russia (see also Putin, Vladimir; Soviet Union): access to information in 1
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author expelled by 1
Bear bombers head for UK from 1
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elimination of ‘extremists’ sanctified by 1
fatal polonium alleged made by 1, 2
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AL passes information on 1, 2;
and Colombia 1;
and Kremlin connection 1;
and Spain 1, 2
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other state-sanctioned killings by 1
prima facie case against 1
and public inquiry, see under Litvinenko, Alexander; Owen, Sir Robert
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Serpico 1
Service, Prof. Robert 1, 2
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Alexander Litvinenko, at home in Moscow, Russia, with his small son Anatoly. A year later, in 1998, Vladimir Putin would fire him from the FSB after Litvinenko exposed corruption inside the agency. Putin, the FSB’s then boss, soon to be prime minister and president, viewed Litvinenko as a traitor.
Litvinenko in exile in the UK with his wife Marina and Anatoly. He escaped from Russia in 2000, slipping into Georgia and fleeing to Turkey on a false passport. On his arrival at Heathrow airport he asked for political asylum, and said: ‘I am KGB officer.’
Litvinenko never mastered English but quickly took to his new home. Here, he poses with Anatoly and two bobbies in Hyde Park. He became a
journalist – and part-time consultant with MI6, the British spy agency, which paid him £2,000 a month.
Litvinenko in Cambridge visiting Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet dissident. Bukovsky became Litvinenko’s guru and educated him about the evils of the Stalin era. With him are Anatoly and his mother-in-law.
Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun’s first attempt to poison Litvinenko, in a Grosvenor Street boardroom in October 2006 (above), failed. The killers put polonium in his cup – the area marked in purple by Scotland Yard – but he didn’t drink.
The two killers on 1 November 2006 at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair, London. CCTV captures them on their way to the gents’ toilets, where they prepared the poison in a cubicle.
Litvinenko (above) in the hotel lobby, dressed in a denim jacket with fawn collar, minutes before his fateful meeting with Lugovoi and Kovtun in the Pine Bar.
Kovtun or Lugovoi stirred radioactive polonium-210 into a pot of green tea. Litvinenko drank just ‘three or four sips’. Hours later he fell violently ill.
Lugovoi murdered with a certain breezy style. As well as the deadly tea, he ordered gin, champagne and a cigar. The bill, paid on his credit card, came to £70.60.
Litvinenko’s symptoms baffled doctors. Transcripts of his interviews (left) with Scotland Yard’s officers are remarkable. Litvinenko helps solve a chilling murder mystery: his own.
Litvinenko in the critical care unit of University College Hospital, London, three days before he died. The photo shows him bald, gaunt and defiant. Released with his permission, it went round the world.
In a deathbed statement Litvinenko accused Russia’s president of ordering his murder. Putin denied the claim and responded with macabre levity, remarking, ‘Mr Litvinenko is, unfortunately, not Lazarus.’
(Top left) Boris Berezovsky, Litvinenko’s mercurial patron, led a campaign to overthrow Putin. He fought a billion-pound legal battle with his one-time friend Roman Abramovich (right) … and lost. He was found dead in 2013 in Berkshire.
Alexander Perepilichnny (left), a Russian whistleblower, collapsed and died in November 2012 outside his home in Surrey. A rare Himalayan fern, Gelsemium elegans, used by Chinese and Russian assassins, was found in his stomach: the likely cause of death.
The Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov at a rally. Nemtsov was a fearless critic of Vladimir Putin. He exposed official corruption and the president’s covert war in Ukraine in a series of dissenting pamphlets.
… And lying dead. In February 2015 a Chechen assassin shot Nemtsov a few hundred metres away from the Kremlin, as he walked home with his Ukrainian girlfriend. Fifty thousand mourners came to his funeral, filling Moscow’s embankment.
In spring 2014, Putin seized Crimea and choreographed a pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine. He sent tanks, weapons and undercover soldiers to help rebels – and a Buk anti-aircraft missile system, seen (circled in red) trundling through the Ukrainian countryside.
On 17 July 2014, the Buk’s crew shot down Malaysian Airlines MH17, en route to Kuala Lumpur, with 298 people on board. They mistook it for a Ukrainian military aircraft. All perished. It was a terrible mistake, and one that flowed from Putin’s contempt for Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Marina Litvinenko (above) arriving at the High Court in London for the much-delayed public inquiry into her husband’s murder. Britain’s Conservative-led government initially opposed the inquiry, fearing it would annoy Putin. There were sixty-two witnesses. Much of the evidence, which ran to 10,000 pages, had been kept secret for eight years.
In September 2015, Putin bombed Syria and (below, in December) opposition-controlled parts of Damascus in support of his ally President Bashar al-Assad. It was the first time since the Cold War that the Kremlin had launched a major military action outside the borders of the ex-Soviet Union.
About the Author
Luke Harding is a journalist, writer and award-winning foreign correspondent with the Guardian. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the Guardian’s bureau chief in Moscow. The Kremlin expelled him from the country in the first case of its kind since the Cold War, in part because of his reporting on Alexander Litvinenko’s murder.
He is the author of four previous non-fiction books: The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man; Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia; WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy; and The Liar: The Fall of Jonathan Aitken (the last two co-written with David Leigh).
Two have been made into Hollywood movies. Dreamworks’s The Fifth Estate, based on WikiLeaks, was released in 2013. Director Oliver Stone’s biopic of Edward Snowden, adapted from The Snowden Files, is due in 2016. In 2014, Luke was awarded the James Cameron prize. His books have been translated into twenty-four languages.
Luke lives near London with his wife, the freelance journalist Phoebe Taplin, and their two children.
Copyright
First published in 2016
by Guardian Books, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1 9GU
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This ebook edition first published in 2016
Copyright © Guardian News and Media Ltd, 2016
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ISBN 978–1–78335–095–7
