They are the only suspect!

He does care. Everyone against Putin these days is dying - assasination style.

Can't believe you guys. It is all supposition, rumour and blown out of proportion.

There is no prrof. I ttook the doctors three weeks to try and figure out what was killing him and then whoops, within 12 hours of his death it turns out to be polonium. Why did it take 3 weeks to figure this one out.

The whole way he was killed has been so convoluted even for a spec ops assasination.

They guy had been in the UK for 5 years. Previous to that he'd written his book. Why now? Hardly anyone in the UK knew who this guy was until a week ago, it wasn't like his stuff was doing the rounds in the general public in the news every few days.

I think this has got more to do with the Russian mafia than the Kremlin. I'd even go so far as saying that maybe it was done because whoever did it new the fingers would immediately jump to point at Putin. Now who in the UK has an axe to grind against Putin, Berezovsky, I woldn't put it past that sum'bitch to do something like that.

Litvinenko may not have had dirt on Putin, but he obviously P.O.'d someone in the FSB (KGB)- then again, how many Russian journalists have been assassinated since Putin took power?
Due to it's toxicity and relatively short half life, I'm not surprised of it's use by an FSB operative.
I'll guarantee that AWE, MI-5, etc., will find out the source. :up:

Yours, Mike

And someone at the CIA will say, "Do any of you guys remember when we had people who could find this kind of thing out?"

Or of when the CIA knew about an incident before CNN did?

Anyway, it does raise the question as to who the assasin is trying to intimidate into silence or flush out of their hole. It'd be far less messy and avoid any PR problems by making the death appear to be of natural causes, not many would suspect the death of an ex-spy via natural causes to be an assasination by a foreign agent (unless somebody in the intelligence division had a few hackles raise on the back of their necks).

No - it is not blown out of proportion by any means. You have a man who is ordered to kill opposition members of Putins party leave the KGB for that very reason and seek assylum in the UK. You have an ex-KGB agent who is investigating the assasination of a female journalist who was investigating the Putin administration herself. You now have a dead ex-KGB agent poisoned and dead from something that could 'only' come from a nuke reactor since it is not found in nature in significant quantities, and is still 'rare' in a nuke reactor. It is not something your mob person can buy you might say.

The high profile of the case and the poison used was not meant to be secret, but it was meant for other opposition people to get a message - this will happen to you if you speak negatively about Putin. Plain and simple.

It doesn't take rocket science to figure out that the fallout from this little manuver is going way out further than the Putin administration had figured however. This is the part that you are saying is blown out of proportion. It is the same part the Putin administration didn't bank on.

Such is the way of life - unpredictable. Sorry for not being politically correct - I gave up on PC long ago, and maybe this is what Putin was banking on - the West to be 'PC' about it and for it all to go away.

-S

Well, his publisher certainly has a motive, but those businesses usually don't own nuclear reactors or neutron sources :hmm:

armchair detectives let loose. Of course it was Putin. :roll:

I have to say, I only found out about the man when he fell ill. I felt quite bad for him, but as a human being, being sick and then dying. that's the human side of it.

There is the other side, which is his connection or alleged connection to Berezovski, the oligarch who run away from Russia, promised to incite a revolt, took up a new name, is searched by INterpol and is living in UK. That is the crux of the matter - UK is a heaven for all people who run away from Russia, notably Zakaev - the Chechen murderer, who is walking on London streets wearing suits and ties. UK is letting in everyone without ever giving them back to RUssia and I dont know if the now deceased mr. Litvinenko had reason to RUN or a reason to HIDE. We say dont' speak ill of deceased, or speak nothing at all. So I won't say anything, as I said, I only found out about him 1 week ago.

BUt troubling is the reaction or HYSTERIA OF THE WESTERN MEDIA. Financial times, writes 'dead probably because of poisoning by FSB' and the next sentence is 'of course, no proof is available'. So what kind of phucking journalism is this? But people read it, and believe it.

You guys (you who read BBC, CNN, SKY) will believe in this regardless, because the story is so good, it's so perfect and even rides on the new bond film wave, i mean it's excellent for you to follow. It is degrading Russia once's again, at a time when a lot is at stake with an energy charter, with Meat obcessed Poland, ultra Nationalist Riga hosting NATO summit, and all is aimed at putting pressure on Russia to open up it's resources to foreing companies. I mean EU wants only ONE THING from Russia - its resources, and as free as possible. Trouble is - Russians are not indians - you can't cut them out like it was done in NA. So you must push russia somehow to give in to your demands. It will not work (I really hope) and unfortunately it makes things so much worse for EU.


Anyone with a brain and who doesn't have the sheep mentality, can analyse the situation and judge for themselves. Like why would Russia kill the man who is out of the country for 5 years, a UK citizen and do it at a time when there are all sorts of negotiations underway. Why is it that a private citizen of UK, is 'killed because he was investigating murder of his friend Politkovskaya'. Why was he investigating?? Has anyone just accepted that as normal? I mean to me that sounded very strange, unless he is in police or a PI. Which I don't think he was. So this whole thing is very strange. there are all these former KGB agents meeting, some Italian SS guys meeting, I mean comon, this is becoming rediculous and who ever is in charge of homeland security in UK, i gotta say, is doing a very shi!!y job in protecting its own citizens.

But opinion is already made up. The world belives in what they want to believe, because they feel insecure of their own future, because they don't want to be dependent on Russian oil and gas and try to descredit Russia and beat it down, make it give in to their demands. Oh, it's a very big game going on, and I think this is only the beginning. I have a feeling there is much more of these things prepared for Russia to deal with. It's only the beginning. But watch CNN, you'll learn first about it there.

On a personal note: if there is a professional I would be ashamed of - that's a journalist.

OH and one more thing: if you wonder who is this Berezovski oligarch is, he's the man who financed the Chechen terrorists in the war, who was tied to Yeltsin, and generally a despikable human being and deserves what I will not say. And it is disgusting UK is harbouring this terrorist.

Type 941 has summed up exactly what I was going to write in reply to SUBMAN1.

Leaves us with the question of the polonium? :cool:
Rusian maffia?


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/wo...ed=1&th&emc=th

The Use of Polonium to kill Litvinenko is an unsual choice, as ther are other poisons around that would have done the job more effectivley. Putin is been touted as the majour culprit, due to the dislike of him by Litvinenko and others.
The Russians have shown great use of posions to get rid of people who have crossed them in the past. Not all of the uses of posion have been cleared by Moscow, Georgi Markov was killed by the Bulgarian Secret Police, despite Moscow not wanting it to go ahead.
Let the investigation find out who did it, there maybe someone else who acted on the own will, who also had a wish to see him dead.

Can anyone point me towards examples of this HYSTERIA OF THE WESTERN MEDIA I'm hearing so much about? And possibly something from BBC/CNN-type sources. Obviously when a man says he has been poisoned by order of Vladimir Putin the gutter press will react in a ridiculous fashion; they know it, we know it. But the mainstream media are usually different.


this kind of stuff....

Sure Tchcoky.

Whoever is responsible, his death underlines that Russian-style assassinations have been imported into Britain along with London’s sizeable Russian exile community.

a week ago, few westerners or Russians had heard of Alexander Litvinenko. Yet his gaunt and sallow face, splashed across newspapers this week, threatens to become a defining image of Vladimir Putin's Russia. His deathbed charge that the Russian president was responsible for his demise may dog Mr Putin for the rest of his presidency and beyond.Strangely, however, Mr Litvinenko was neither the Kremlin's most damaging critic nor Russia's most high-profile defector. And despite the alarming nature of the former KGB officer's death - by poisoning with radioactive polonium-210 - intelligence experts say there is no concrete evidence Russian agents were involved, let alone Kremlin-sanctioned.



Russian secret services may finally have decided to dispense justice to someone they saw as a traitor, with or without higher authority. Former colleagues, no longer in the services, could have decided to do the same.
But there are other scenarios. Mr Litvinenko's support for Chechen rebel causes and friendship with Akhmed Zakayev, the exile who sits in Chechnya's rebel "government", made him an enemy of the separatist republic's current pro-Moscow leadership. Forces connected to Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen prime minister, were also seen as possible suspects in Ms Politkovskaya's shooting.


Mr Litvinenko could also have fallen foul of the tangled politics of London's expatriate Russian community. He became part of a loose alliance of exiled oligarchs - including the now London-based Mr Berezovsky, Chechens, Soviet-era and more recent defectors - united by loathing for Mr Putin's government. His poisoning certainly provided a propaganda boost - skilfully manipulated by Mr Berezovsky's associates and public relations advisers - for the campaign the one-time oligarch is waging for Mr Putin's political overthrow.



By Neil Buckley, Arkady Ostrovsky and Stephen Fidler
Published: November 25 2006 02:00 FT

Mr Putin expressed doubts as to the authenticity of Litvinenko's declaration. He said he was "unclear" why, if the statement had been written while Litvinenko was alive, it had not been reported at that time. "Mr Litvinenko is not Lazarus," he said.
FT again.


7 OCTOBER
Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a critic of the Russian government and in particular the war in Chechnya, is shot dead in Moscow. Mr Litvinenko begins to investigate amid claims she was killed because of her work.

1 NOVEMBER
Mr Litvinenko meets two Russian men at a London hotel - one a former KGB officer.
He also meets academic Mario Scaramella at a sushi bar where he is said to have received documents about the journalist's death.
Several hours after his meetings, Mr Litvinenko complains of feeling sick and is admitted to Barnet General Hospital, north London.
saturday, 25 November 2006, 23:34 GMT BBC


Look how this is put together. There are more examples, like the Guradian, Times, etc, but I have really little time to plought through 5 days old electronic newspapers. But the whole speculative tone, the implications, the presentation of the info (Politkovskaya death in the same timeline ) and so on, is very much sensationalist journalism. I mean I have no illusions about FT (i read it at work every day anyway) but the way it has been picked up on the news is rediculous.

Alas, BBC published this piece which is quite interesting and deals with opinions on the story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6183704.stm

Another FT Piece.

Berezovsky link draws Lord Bell into action

By Jimmy Burns
Published: November 25 2006 02:00 | Last updated: November 25 2006 02:00

The mystery surrounding the death of Alexander Litvinenko has stirred claims and counter-claims about who might be responsible, drawing in one of Britain's most successful and experienced public relations experts on behalf of some of the key players linked to the controversy.
Lord Bell has been representing Boris Berezovsky for four years, and fielding media inquiries on his behalf because of his friendship with Mr Litvinenko. The PR executive also confirmed yesterday that since the poisoning saga broke last week, his involvement had grown to offering advice to others - relatives of Mr Litvinenko and Alex Goldfarb, the former Russian spy's spokesman during his dying days in a London hospital.
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In addition to offering his Russian clients advice on how to handle the aggressive British media, Lord Bell has also helped in distributing the harrowing photograph showing Mr Litvinenko with no hair and physically wasted in his final hours.
Last night Lord Bell, who played a critical role in promoting Margaret Thatcher towards Downing Street in 1979, was co-operative in answering media inquiries as the Litvinenko case took a new twist with suggestions of a conspiracy involving the use of radioactive material responsible for his death.
He denied categorically the thinly veiled accusations emanating from the Kremlin against Mr Berezovsky, alleging a plot to embarrass President Vladimir Putin.
"It was inevitable that the Kremlin should try and blame Boris for this, they are always trying to blame him for something. But the idea that Boris did this to embarrass Putin is potty," Lord Bell said, insisting that anyone who knew his client knew he would be incapable of killing anyone.

Ah poor Boris.

Very interesting stuff 941.

There are so many Russian expats in London, more than I think many UK citizens are aware of. Also a lot of unsavoury types.

Now the former Prime Minister has been poisoned.

After visiting my university, no less

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6159343.stm

Why is it that so many 'undesirables' (only word I could think of, not correct for all) in Britain? Since Churchill you've had the likes of Philby, escaped to the USSR, Rushdi, and what should have been a wake-up call to the danger Islam poses, cameras on every street corner, your right to defend yourself gone, STEED complaining about the PC madness. What is going on in GB?

PC madness is hand in glove with Islam. :nope:

Back to the story, this really is becoming a very strange situation indeed.

Is it fear of Islam or lack of national feelings which is driving the PC issue? The UK used to be a proud nation (the sun never sets over the British Empire), and when did empire become a bad thing.