Former Russian Security Officer Dies from Poisoning

Alexander Litvinenko was at one time a lieutenant colonel in the FSB, (Federalnaya sloozhba byezopastnosti for those who can read Russian with Latin letters), the post-communist successor to the KGB. He had a falling out with Vladimir Putin in the 1990s when the current president of Russia was just the top spook. In 2000, he fled to Britain and received political asylum. Last night, he died after being poisoned on November 1. Naturally, the Kremlin denies any involvement.

According to a BBC timeline, on November 1 “Alexander Litvinenko meets two Russian men at a London hotel and then meets Italian academic Mario Scaramella at a sushi bar in Piccadilly. Hours later he falls ill and is admitted to Barnet General Hospital.” By the 17th, he was transferred to University College Hospital, where suspicions of thallium poisoning arose. Radioactive thallium was ruled out shortly before he died, but an autopsy is being delayed because of fears for the safety of those who will have to be present during the procedure.

Russian security personnel have a long history of getting their man. The most famous was the murder of Leon Trotsky in Mexico. While less successful, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was also the victim of poisoning right before the Orange Revolution. Konstantin Kosachyov of the Russian Foreign Affairs Committee in the Duma said, “Accusations...that the Russian special services had something to do with his death are completely ungrounded.” Quite. Perhaps, the fugu at the sushi bar made his hair fall out and his immune system fail.

The motive is simple. Mr. Litvinenko forgot that being in the FSB was his primary role in life, just like a great many gangsters forget that the mob comes before all else. Intelligence analyst Glenmore Trenear Harvey said that before he fled Russia, Mr. Litvinenko, “headed up one of the internal investigations branches that were looking into the corruption and coercion that was going on within the Russian intelligence service so he made a lot of enemies way back then.” He was also close to journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead last month in Moscow. Over the years, he aired Moscow’s dirty laundry over Chechnya.

London-based ex-Soviet intelligence officer, Boris Volodarsky wrote in the English-language Moscow Times, that FSB agents have been after Litvinenko for years because of his “fierce and fearless mockery” of President Vladimir Putin. He doubts that the President, who is a dead ringer for Dobby the House Elf in the Harry Potter books, knew anything about the killing. He even doubts if Mr. Putin is in control of his “squabbling entourage.” Probably not. Then again, President Assad of Syria didn’t know in advance about the murder of Pierre Gemayel last week. Security agencies operate on a need-to-know basis.

Once, it was the Tsar’s Okhrana, then Lenin’s Cheka, then, the OGPU, the NKGB, the MGB, the KGB, FSK and finally the FSB. By whatever name, there is an organization that has been part of Russian political culture for almost a century and a half. It is a law unto itself. It operates anywhere in the world. It kills whomever it wants to whenever it can. It has stolen Russia’s wealth, and it is in the process of stealing whatever democracy is left there. Just before Mr. Litvinenko died, he told his friend Andrei Nekrasov, a film-maker, “The bastards got me, but they won’t get everybody.” That requires a great deal of bravery on the part of “everybody.”

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

Home