A British judge could denounce Vladimir Putin as mastermind of the murder of an ex-spy. The verdict could put British-Russian diplomatic relationships at risk.
British investigations on the murder of a former KGB agent could accuse Russian president Vladimir Putin as the brains behind the crime, reported News.com.au. Before he died, ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko pointed to Putin and his associates as the murderers. Litvinenko was poisoned with tea laced with radioactive polonium back in 2006 at London's Millennium Hotel.
Sir Robert Owen, the judge handling the inquest, could hold Putin responsible for the murder. Igor Sutyagin, a member of the Royal United Service Institute, said, "It is most expectable that Russia will be connected somehow to this crime."
Bloomberg reported that Litvinenko was a former Russian intelligence whistleblower who later worked for the British MI6 after fleeing his home country. At the day of the murder, Litvinenko was drinking tea at the hotel with Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, the ones suspected of administering the poison. Lugovoi, Kovtun, and Putin, however, strongly denied any involvements with the assassination.
It was believed that Litvinenko was poisoned twice, as per lawyer Robin Tam. The first attempt, two weeks before the killing, contained a smaller dose of the toxin which failed to slay him. In 2007, British prosecutors said that Lugovoi and Kovtun should be charged with murder.
British diplomats fear that the verdict on Litvinenko's murder could jeopardize Britain's relationship with Russia. They urged UK Prime Minister David Cameron not to impose economic penalties or travel bans on Russia, said Mother Jones. Reporters Patrick Wintour and Luke Harding said, "The Foreign Office is eager to avoid a full blown row partly because Putin's cooperation is badly needed to create a unified front against Islamic State in Syria."
Litvinenko fled Russia after he revealed assassination plots of the KGB which later formed into the Federal Security Service. In the 1990s, Litvinenko exposed the secret service's plan to kill his billionaire friend Boris Berezovsky, who was found dead in London in 2013. His comrades at the FSB said that what Litvinenko did was a "gross betrayal".
"You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life," said Litvinenko in his death bed. Litvinenko's wife, Marina, said that her husband might have been killed because he intended to expose Putin's connections with a national crime syndicate.
Litvinenko was a known critic of the Russian president. Before he died, he said that Putin was responsible for the death of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
