Ex-Russian spy dismisses Litvinenko inquiry
A former Russian spy has rejected as nonsense a new British inquiry saying he was one of the state-directed murderers of dissident Alexander Litvinenko.
Andrei Lugovoi dismissed the findings of the inquiry that said President Vladimir Putin “probably” approved the assassination of Litvinenko in London in 2006.
“I’ve seen the nonsense conclusions of your judge who has clearly gone mad. I saw nothing new there. I am very sorry that 10 years on nothing new has been presented, only invention, supposition, rumors...and the fact that such words as ‘possibly’ and ‘probably’ were used in the report, means there is no proof, nothing concrete against us,” he told the state-funded BBC.
The inquiry said Russian President Vladimir Putin “probably approved” the killing of Litvinenko. He died in 2006 aged 43, three weeks after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium at an upmarket London hotel.
The British inquiry said Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, two Russians identified as prime suspects by British police, are likely to have carried out the poisoning on the instructions of the Russian security services.
Prime Minister David Cameron called the killing a "state-sponsored action" but his government did not announce sanctions in response, instead just summoned Moscow's ambassador to London for talks.
Russia sharply dismissed the inquiry.
"Maybe this is a joke.., More likely it can be attributed to fine British humor, the fact that an open public inquiry is based on the classified data of special services, unnamed special services," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
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