Word: litvinenko
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...even received a better position at the KGB’s successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB), and specialized in infiltrating organized crime syndicates, which proliferated in the post-perestroika Russia. After serving a nine-month sentence for “abuse of power” in 1999, Litvinenko pulled off a spectacular escape from Russia that took him to the United Kingdom via Turkey. His renegade life had begun...
Most famously, Litvinenko wrote Blowing Up Russia, which claimed FSB agents had actually planned the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings that killed over two hundred civilians and lead to the second Chechen war. Supposedly, the Kremlin had handcrafted a causus belli sacrificing hundreds of Russian civilians in order to invade Chechnya and prevent its independence. I wonder how many friends he had left at the FSB after such a thesis...
...official British citizen since the previous month, he met with former KGB contacts and an Italian informant for sushi and tea. Apparently, he was looking into the recent murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who had been a fervent critic of the Kremlin’s actions in Chechnya. Litvinenko fell ill soon thereafter, and less than three weeks later he died of poisoning at the intensive care unit of the University College Hospital in London. His renegade life might have ended but the media frenzy had just begun...
...this story’s mise en scène seems far too obvious. After all, Litvinenko was poisoned with Polonium 210, which is 250 million times more toxic than cyanide. In order to get this obscure substance experts said one needs access to a nuclear laboratory. And the only reference to it as a weapon was found in a 1994 paper only published in, you guessed it, Russian. But even more importantly, why would the quite professional Russian secret services murder someone slowly, giving them over three weeks to blame them, and do it with a substance that could...
...Litvinenko had myriad enemies, and the Kremlin was definitely topping the list. But either Putin has lost the art of subtlety, or the West is actually facing a scarier prospect: Russian leadership is losing even more control over its intelligence services. If that’s the case, then it’s indeed worthy to quote Dame Judi Dench in the latest Bond: “Christ, I miss the Cold...