...as court rules Kremlin DID kill Litvinenko
RUSSIA was responsible for the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and must pay his widow damages, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.
In a day of humiliation for the country yesterday, the court declared that Russia should pay Marina Litvinenko £85,600 in damages and £19,300 in costs and expenses after finding the poisoning of the Russian spy with a rare radioactive substance was state-sponsored. Russia has always denied any involvement in Mr Litvinenko’s death in the UK.
The ruling comes after a case brought by Mrs Litvinenko, who had vowed to get justice for her husband and pursue the Kremlin through the international courts.
A British public inquiry concluded in 2016 that the killing of Mr Litvinenko in 2006 had ‘probably’ been carried out with the approval of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
An outspoken critic of Mr Putin, he died after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210.
The inquiry found that two Russian men – Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun – had poisoned Mr Litvinenko by putting polonium-210 into his drink at a London hotel, leading to an agonising death. It said the use of the radioactive substance – which could only have come from a nuclear reactor – was a ‘strong indicator’ of state involvement and that the two men had probably been acting under the direction of Russia’s FSB security service.
Mrs Litvinenko said yesterday was a ‘very important day’ as the findings highlighted Russia’s ‘brutal regime’. She added: ‘We must not give up the fight against this antidemocratic regime in Russia.’