Fatal radioactive trail leads to Vladimir Putin

The lethal dose of polonium in Alexander Litvinenko’s cup of green tea was tiny, colourless and odourless.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been accused of ordering the killing of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.

The lethal dose of polonium in ­Alexander Litvinenko’s cup of green tea was tiny, colourless and odourless.

But it left a radioactive and indelib­le trail for investigators stretching across the centre of London — in a sushi bar, an up-market Mayfair hotel, two British Airways planes and a soccer stad­ium — that has now been officially traced all the way to the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin.

The politically explosive report­ of a British inquiry into Litvinen­ko’s agonising death by poisoning found Putin “probably approved” the 2006 killing, which was carried out by Russian operatives and directed by Russia’s Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB.

Before he died, Litvinenko accuse­d Putin of ordering his killing, but judge Robert Owen’s repor­t is the first public official statement linking the Russian President to the state-sanctioned crime on British soil.

Litvinenko, a former Russian spy and a vocal critic of the Kremlin, died as a result of ingesting polonium-210, a radioactive ­element 250,000 times more toxic than hydrogen cyanide.

After hearing evidence worthy of a John Le Carre novel, Owen found ex-KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoi and his associate, Dmitry Kovtun, had slipped the polonium into Litvinenko’s tea during a meeting at London’s Millennium Hotel on November 1, 2006.

Later that day, Litvinenko began to feel ill. At first he had ­diarrhoea and vomiting, but later his hair fell out, his immune system broke down and he was vomiting blood. Towards the end, his liver and kidneys began to shut down and he suffered three heart attacks. He was pronounced dead at 9.21pm on November 23 — a ­little over three weeks after the poisoning.

“The operation to kill Mr Litvinenko was probably approved by (Nikolai) Patrushev, then head of the FSB, and also by President Putin,” Owen found.

Putin has long denied involvement in Litvinenko’s murder, and the findings of the official inquiry will further strain Russian relations with Britain and potentially other Western nations.

Yet the report did not surprise Putin’s critics around the world, many of whom fear a similar fate to Litvinekno.

Bill Browder, a US hedge fund manager who exposed corruption in Russia, said the report confirmed in a credible manner that Putin was “a cold-blooded killer”.

“If the British government doesn’t toughen up its current weak response, it basically gives Putin the green light to kill all of his enemies in London with ­impunity,” he said.

Litvinenko had plenty of powerful enemies in Russia.

Before he died, he alleged Putin was a pedophile with links to the Russian mafia and Colombian drug barons. And he claimed the President rose to power on the back of a deliberate bomb attack that killed hundreds of Chechen civilians.

In his findings, Owen referred to these allegations as “powerful motives” for the Kremlin and the Russian President to want Litvinenko silenced. Another factor was a belief that he was working for MI6.

Owen also raised the possibility that Putin’s Russia had authorised the killing of as many as seven other perceived enemies of the state prior to Litvinenko’s murder.

“These cases suggest that ... the Russian state may have been involved in the assassination of Putin’s critics,” he said.

For the British detectives investigating Litvinenko’s death, there had never been clues like it.

The polonium trail and its alpha radiation signature allowed them to trace the movements of Lugovoi and Kovtun through ­hotels, aircraft, cars, stadiums, ­offices and restaurants on their three visits to London in the autumn of 2006.

Despite this, big questions remain about the provision of the polonium-210, not least of which is whether the Russians were given it in London.

Because Moscow had refused British detectives permission to examine the Russian aircraft in which Lugovoi and Kovtun first flew to London, Owen said he could not exclude the possibility that they had obtained the ­polonium-210 “from some source in London” after arriving at Gatwick on October 16.

That was the first of three visits Lugovoi made in the space of three weeks.

Kovtun accompanied him on the first and the third when, the inquiry ruled, they finally got their man.

The premise of the trips had been business. The two former military men, having been waved through immigration, accom­panied Litvinenko to a series of meetings with private security companies based in the capital.

Purportedly, they were assisting Litvinenko in his investi­gations into various dubious individuals and companies connected with Russia.

They had a meeting with the ­directors of the private security company Erinys, in Grosvenor Street, central London.

Substantial contamination was found on chairs and on the green baize covering the boardroom table. Owen found that this was the first assassination attempt.

The three then dined at the Itsu restaurant in Piccadilly before Litvinenko went home to Muswell Hill, north London.

Lugovoi and Kovtun visited the Pescatori restaurant and had a shisha pipe at Dar Marrakesh before returning to the Best Western hotel.

Here, in room 107, the evidence suggested — due to substantial contamination in the U-bend — that they had either poured the polonium-210 down the plughole or had used the sink to prepare the solution.

The two then checked out of this hotel, did some partying at the nightclub Hey Jo, and left for Moscow on October 18.

Lugovoi returned a week later and had a series of meetings with Litvinenko, Badri Patarkatsishvili, a Georgian businessman, and Boris Berezovsky, a Russian oligarch who defected to the West, among others.

He stayed at the Sheraton Hotel where, according to Owen, there was substantial contamination of two towels with polonium-210.

The inquiry had been told this was “consistent with an accidental spillage, perhaps followed by an ­attempt to clean up and/or dispose of the solution”.

Owen said there was no evidence that Lugovoi had attempted to poison Litvinenko during this visit, adding that the evidence was “consistent with Lugovoi having spilt the polonium-210 in the course of handling it and then mopping it up with the towels that were subsequently found in the laundry”. Owen added that during this stay, Lugovoi had added Kovtun to his travelling party for his next visit to London to watch CSKA Moscow play Arsenal a few days later.

He said this was possibly because Lugovoi realised he “would need Mr Kovtun’s assistance on the next attempt to poison Mr ­Litvinenko”.

The action then briefly switched to Hamburg where, Owen found, Kovtun attempted to enlist an Albanian chef “to put poison in Litvinenko’s food or drink”. He was unsuccessful.

The two Russians then returned to Britain on October 31 for what they hoped would be the endgame.

This time, Lugovoi had brought his wife, Svetlana, two daughters and son on the British Airways flight. Contamination was found in row 23, where they had all been sitting.

The following day, Litvinenko visited the Russian market in Piccadilly and met Mario Scaramella, a business contact who also investigated alleged corruption in Russia, at Itsu.

He then walked to the Millennium Hotel’s Pine Bar where ­Lugovoi and Kovtun were waiting.

This was when a white porcelain teapot filled with green tea — with some lemon and honey on the side — became the vessel for what has become one of Britain’s most notorious murders.

What Owen found striking was that after Litvinenko had drunk the tea, Lugovoi had encouraged his eight-year-old son Igor to shake his hand.

He said that this tended to indicate that the two Russians did “not know what they were handling”.

He said that this “explains why it was splashed around in hotel bathrooms and mopped up with hotel towels that were then left in the hotel.

It explains why Mr Kovtun and Mr Lugovoi allowed their families to be contaminated.”

He also referred to Litvinenko’s comments — made after the Pine Bar meeting when he was dying — that he did not believe Lugovoi and Kovtun were responsible.

Owen referred to this as Litvinenko’s “wounded professional pride” because he had not identified his enemy. He had allowed himself to be killed by drinking a cup of tea.

Additional reporting: The Times