Digging Up a Spy

It would have been easy to miss the latest installment of the death investigation of Alexander Litninenko, which the Russians claim was suicide, because there has not been much press coverage of it in the U.S.  There should have been.  Mark White, SkyNews is one of many British reporters covering the story in London [see Litvinenko Killed 'After Second Poisoning' 30 July 2015].

Litvinenko was a spy at one time - for Russia.  Nobody is saying that is an honorable profession, or that turning himself into a defector who criticized Putin directly, made him a better person.  He might have been, but I have never been one to trust a person who defects.  But, that doesn’t mean killing him was justified. 

White says the inquiry indicates he was poisoned twice, with a radioactive substance, polonium 210, dropped into his tea at the Millennium hotel in London's Mayfair.  The second time, in 2006, being successful.  Ten years after the event, Scotland Yard says it was done by two accused citizens of Russia they would like at trial, Andrei Lugavoi and Dmitry Kovtun.   

It was probably not suicide because polonium is a rare substance that is hard to come by and not the first choice of most seeking their own death.  It took three weeks to kill him, and proves that radiation poisoning is really ugly.  The pain and loss of the ability to fight infection eventually makes the body susceptible to any kind of disease. It is kind of like your doctor saying, “You have stage 4 cancer and we can’t operate.  Get your affairs in order.”   It was the worst kind of death they could think of. 

This kind of case draws out the difference between a democracy and the kleptocracy in Russia.  They still operate like a Mafia family bent on protecting their reputation in the world of crime.  If somebody defects to another family, their chance at a long life is going to drop.  The British remind us of the willingness to murder a man on another government’s territory and give the man who did it a medal.  This is the kind of in-your-face diplomacy that we have come to expect from the Russians, especially in the Ukraine.