British Police Take Poisoning Inquiry to Moscow
Despite Pledge of Cooperation, Russian Officials' Irritation Revealed in Remarks

By Mary Jordan and Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 5, 2006

LONDON, Dec. 4 -- A team of British police investigators arrived in Moscow on Monday to begin questioning people about the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who had recently become a British citizen, in a case that is straining relations between the two governments.

Home Secretary John Reid, speaking at a European Union meeting in Brussels, said the Scotland Yard officers in Moscow would "follow the evidence wherever it goes."

Although Russian officials have pledged to cooperate in the inquiry, their irritation over the case showed through in official comments. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Monday against "politicizing this issue" and "speculations on this subject." The Interfax news agency also quoted him as saying, "This is, of course, harming our relations."

In Russia, a jailed former intelligence officer made a plea Monday through his lawyers for British investigators to talk to him. Mikhail Trepashkin, who used to work in the Federal Security Service, or FSB, said an FSB officer had told him that Litvinenko was being targeted and "won't escape Trotsky's ice pick," a reference to the 1940 murder of Bolshevik figure Leon Trotsky by a Soviet agent in Mexico City.

Alex Goldfarb, a friend of Litvinenko's, said he hoped British investigators would be allowed to interview Trepashkin in jail because he would be able to tell them about "rogue elements within the FSB," the domestic successor to the KGB.

Litvinenko, 43, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, accused Putin of ordering his killing, according to a statement Litvinenko's family and friends said he dictated on his deathbed. The Kremlin has called those allegations absurd, and Reid has cautioned against making assumptions about the case before the facts are known.

Scotland Yard detectives in Moscow are treading on delicate ground as they look into the business and personal relationships of former members of Russia's secretive intelligence services. A central focus of the investigation in Moscow will be interviews with three men, at least one of them a former KGB officer, who met with Litvinenko on Nov. 1, hours before he fell violently ill from poisoning by radioactive polonium-210.

In comments to Russian news organizations, the three men -- Andrei Lugovoy, Dmitry Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko -- have denied any involvement in Litvinenko's death. All three met Litvinenko in the Millennium Hotel in London, across the street from the U.S. Embassy. Police later detected traces of radiation at the hotel.

Police are investigating whether there are also links between any of the men and traces of polonium-210 found in London hotel rooms and on British Airways planes that flew from London to Moscow, among other destinations.

The three Russians met in the 1980s at the Supreme Council Military School in Moscow, according to a recent joint interview with Echo Moskvy radio. Lugovoy is a former KGB agent -- as was Litvinenko -- but the backgrounds of Kovtun and Sokolenko are less clear. Sokolenko said he runs an association of security companies called the Ninth Degree, and Kovtun described himself as a business consultant.

Many private security companies in Russia are stocked with former officers of the KGB and FSB, according to Olga Kryshtanovskaya, head of the Center for the Study of Elites at the Institute of Sociology in Moscow. She said the former agents provide physical security and gather political and economic intelligence for corporations.

"They are very valuable to employers of private security firms," agreed John Barber, an expert in modern Russian history at Cambridge University, especially because of their connections.

Sokolenko told the radio station that he was in London on Nov. 1 to join Lugovoy at a soccer game between British and Russian teams. Sokolenko said he "didn't have a meeting" with Litvinenko at the Millennium but merely "exchanged greetings" with him as Litvinenko spoke to the other two.

Kovtun said he first met Litvinenko in London with Lugovoy on Oct. 16, then again on Nov. 1. Kovtun said on Echo Moskvy that Litvinenko had "serious contacts with serious British companies which wanted to get into the Russian market, but had experienced difficulties with this."

Lugovoy described himself as an owner of a factory producing wine and nonalcoholic drinks made from herbs and honey. "This is my main business now," he said. "This factory is the largest in the country, 50,000 square meters, 500 employees. The company is very successful."

After graduating from the military academy, Lugovoy said, he worked in a KGB Kremlin regiment that provided security for VIPs. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he provided security in 1992 and 1993 for then-Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar -- who himself fell mysteriously ill recently during a visit to Ireland. He was released from a Moscow hospital Monday evening.

After leaving government service, Lugovoy spent several years as head of security for ORT, a national television channel once controlled by Boris Berezovsky, a billionaire now living in self-imposed exile in London. Berezovsky was a friend of Litvinenko's and is another harsh critic of Putin, who arranged a state takeover of ORT.

Lugovoy, like Litvinenko, spent time in prison in Russia. Lugovoy was charged with trying to help an official of the Russian airline Aeroflot, in which Berezovsky was a major shareholder, escape from police custody.

Litvinenko, for his part, angered his superiors when he publicly accused them of ordering him to kill Berezovsky. He was jailed on several charges of abusing his authority before he was released and fled the country, arriving in Britain in 2000.

Finn reported from Moscow.