Litvinenko succeeded

Radioactive polonium is being found all over London.

Less than a few days have passed since the death of Alexander Litvinenko, and the number of theories about who could have killed the former FSB officer and why began to increase in alarming progression. In addition to the main one concerning the “hand of Moscow,” opinions were expressed that Chechen separatists, the owner of the Chelsea football club Roman Abramovich, businessman Boris Berezovsky, who actually sheltered Litvinenko in London, people who did not share something, could be behind the murder from Berezovsky’s entourage and even the secret organization of former KGB employees “Dignity and Honor”.

In addition, there were suggestions that Litvinenko killed himself, either on purpose, or by accident, that Litvinenko was sick with something, but hid it, that it was not Litvinenko who wanted to kill, and so on and so forth. Everyone, however, was surpassed by the British tabloid The News of the World, which stated that it had complete information about the identity of Litvinenko’s killer. According to the journalists of this publication, the poison was planted on the former security officer by a “veteran of the deadly Russian special forces Spetsnaz” named Igor, who is fluent in English and Portuguese and is a “judo master.” Moreover, it was this Igor, according to the tabloid, who shot journalist Anna Politkovskaya on October 7 in Moscow.

The head of the British Home Office, John Reid, tried to calm passions when, speaking before a parliamentary commission, he urged not to draw hasty conclusions from Litvinenko’s death. The minister emphasized that the police have not yet come to a clear conclusion about the causes of death of the former FSB officer, and the criminal case is not being conducted on the basis of murder, but on the fact of his death from unknown causes.

University College Hospital staff at a press conference called the day after Litvinenko's death refused to talk about what led to the death. According to British law, doctors at the hospital where a patient died only confirm the fact of his death. Its reasons must be determined by a special expert - the coroner. He handles cases of violent or questionable deaths and conducts his own investigation. It usually results in a trial with a jury, who must agree or disagree with the coroner's findings.

Reid said a coroner's inquest into Litvinenko's death should begin before the end of this week. According to some reports, it will most likely begin on Thursday, November 30, when the necessary material for the coroner’s work will be collected. Meanwhile, it is not known for certain where Litvinenko’s body is now. According to London tabloids, it is kept in some top-secret and carefully guarded place.

Everything according to the plot

Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko

Such precautions may not be superfluous, given that even the doctors who treated Litvinenko sounded the alarm when they discovered an increased concentration of the radioactive substance polonium-210 in their patient’s tests. Specialists at London's University College Hospital suggested that Litvinenko could have received a lethal dose of radiation from natural causes, although they considered this unlikely. At the same time, some sources claim that damage to the body, similar to the one from which Litvinenko died, could only occur if polonium was ingested.

Already on the evening of November 24, police reported that they had discovered polonium-210 in the house in north London where the Litvinenko family lived, in the Itsu sushi bar where the deceased met with Italian security specialist Mario Scaramella and in the bar of the Millennium Hotel, where Litvinenko had meetings negotiations with Andrei Lugovoi, a former FSB officer who is part of Boris Berezovsky’s entourage.

These two meetings took place on November 1st. It was after them that Litvinenko felt unwell and was hospitalized at Barnet Hospital in London. Let us recall that the version of the poisoning of the former FSB officer by the Russian special services appeared only on November 11, and on November 17 his condition worsened sharply, after which he was transferred to the University College Hospital, where he died a few days later. Before his death, he allegedly managed to dictate a strange farewell message, in which he once again blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for his death.

Polonium-210 is a radionuclide with a half-life of 138 days. This means that after 138 days it becomes exactly half as much, and after a year it becomes six times less, and after two years it becomes 36 times less. This immediately indicates that it needs to be transported more or less quickly, it cannot be accumulated for a long time, and so on. This is an alpha decayer. Almost pure alpha decayer. Its alpha decay energy is 5.3 MeV. ... Polonium itself is a toxic substance. But there is so little of it that it certainly acts mainly as a radioactive substance. Purely formally, it is, let’s say, that polonium is about as harmful as lead, like bismuth, like thallium. But the amount used is much larger there, and here it’s two tenths of a microgram. This is minuscule, almost exclusively radioactivity, alpha activity, acts there.

Boris Zhuikov - head of the radioisotope laboratory of the Institute of Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the Russian Society "Nuclear Medicine" in an interview with the radio station "Echo of Moscow"

Meanwhile, the police announced their intention to check all the people with whom Litvinenko had contact shortly before his illness, as well as to review footage from CCTV cameras, which were widely installed on the streets of the British capital, especially in its center. Scotland Yard intends to establish in this way the circle of persons involved in the contamination of the deceased with polonium, and to discover other victims of radiation.

In addition, British investigators are tasked with establishing which countries and organizations may even have access to polonium-210, which is an extremely rare and very toxic isotope. To synthesize this substance, obtained by irradiating bismuth, it is necessary to use a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator.

On Saturday, November 25, information leaked from the police regarding one of the versions of the poisoning. The Sun tabloid wrote that polonium was sprayed at a sushi bar, resulting in "radioactive material getting into Litvinenko's food and clothing, which he wore to a meeting at the hotel and later home." Despite the obvious absurdity of this assumption, since as a result of such actions both the poisoner himself and many uninvolved people would have suffered, which would have immediately attracted the attention of the police, Scotland Yard called on everyone who was in the same places where Litvinenko visited to undergo radiometric testing examination.

One of the first to wish to be tested was the already mentioned Scaramella, who expressed a desire to come to London and at the same time give the police comprehensive testimony about his meeting with Litvinenko and about the documents handed over to him. According to the new version outlined by the Italian, he showed Litvinenko a “hit list”, where, in addition to Scaramella and Litvinenko himself, Boris Berezovsky and the Italian senator Paolo Guzzanti, who headed the parliamentary commission that investigated the activities of the KGB in Italy during the Cold War, were also listed.

Scaramella arrived in London on Tuesday and was taken under the protection of British police. He became the fifth person to undergo radiometric examination in the Litvinenko case. In addition, a reporter from the tabloid publication The Daily Mirror, who interviewed Scaramella in Italy, and three other unnamed individuals will undergo similar tests. In total, more than 500 people called the hotline organized by the national Health Protection Agency, but only about twenty people were considered worthy of attention, including Litvinenko’s wife and son and businessman Berezovsky. No traces of radioactive contamination were found on them.

The list of places where radiation emitted by polonium-210 has been detected has also been expanded to include two office buildings in central London. One of them houses the British headquarters of Berezovsky, the publishing house Metro International, consulting and energy companies. Another building houses the offices of two firms specializing in business information security, Titon International and Erinys. One of them is headed by the former head of one of the British intelligence services.

According to the latest reports from the British capital, an autopsy will be performed on the body of the deceased on December 1, during which experts will officially establish a diagnosis that led to death.

Andrey Kuznetsov

Litvinenko succeeded

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