And you will find very few people in my country — including his first wife, by the way, and his two children — who are fond of him or who are proud of him.
56. TAKING STOCK
After many weeks working on The Litvinenko File and having spoken to so many different people with conflicting theories, stories and points of view — all propounded to me with the unblinking vehemence that Russians reserve for politics, both pro- and anti-Kremlin — I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get to the bottom of the case. I had started by posing two key questions: who had killed Alexander Litvinenko and what was the motivation of the person or people who ordered his death?
On the first question, a broad consensus seemed to have emerged around two names — Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun — to the point where Scotland Yard apparently felt sure enough of its ground to send a file to the Crown Prosecution Service, and the media and public opinion were proclaiming them guilty. The evidence against the men was circumstantial but seemingly weighty. The name of Vyacheslav Sokolenko had receded a little from the frame, but the spectre of a mysterious and as yet unnamed third man had been raised by sources with close links to the Russian security forces.
As to whether the killing really had been the work of the Federal Security Service, the question remained tantalizingly unresolved. Moreover, even if it was the FSB, it was still completely unclear at what level the operation might have been planned and authorized. Had it been at the top, in the corridors of Vladimir Putin's Kremlin? Or by individual officers (or groups of officers) with their own agenda to pursue? If it had not been an FSB operation at all, could it have been motivated by commercial conflicts Litvinenko had either stumbled into or deliberately stirred up? Had it been the result of blackmail he was carrying out? Was it revenge by criminals he had targeted way back in his anti-mafia years in Russia? Chechen blood vengeance for his actions during the war? Or was it — as strident voices in Moscow were claiming — a 'provocation', a double operation staged by enemies of the Kremlin deliberately to blacken the name of the Russian president? Could Boris Berezovsky have cynically sacrificed his own friend and ally in a demented bid to frame Vladimir Putin? Or was it the result of infighting between clans within the Kremlin itself, trying to destabilize the political situation and influence the selection of Putin's heir apparent before the elections in March 2008?
As I mulled over all these questions I began to empathize with Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke's reaction when he first opened the Litvinenko file back in November 2006. He had reportedly been 'flabbergasted' by the range of activities which could have given rise to a motive for murder, and now I understood exactly what he meant. I knew I was getting close to the point where I would have to follow in the footsteps of Clarke's investigators. I would have to trace the polonium trail back to its source in the capital of the Russian Federation, and I would personally have to interrogate the men and women who knew the truth.
57. TRAVELLING EAST
Aeroflot was a delight. Friendly, smiling crew, a modern Airbus and edible onboard food... it was hard to reconcile this experience with the hundreds of Aeroflot journeys I had taken in the past, many of them internal flights on rickety old Tupolevs and Ilyushins with broken seat backs and missing safely belts, with peasant traders transporting live chickens and, once, a goat. My abiding memory of those days was of a panic-stricken stewardess rushing to stop a brightly clad Uzbek lighting a portable gas stove in the aisle moments before he would have blown the pressurized cabin to pieces.
But it was not just the air travel that had changed. The welcome at Sheremetevo Airport was now courteous and efficient with none of the ritual humiliation foreigners were previously subjected to; there were gleaming glass and steel high-rises along the road into town and a proliferation of neon signs advertising Western commodities as well as coffee shops and designer stores ... something seemed to have changed in the way the city was thinking and acting, something intangible but readily perceptible to anyone who had known the place in the old days. Gorbachev used to talk about 'new thinking' — about rejecting the authoritarianism and arbitrary injustice of Soviet times and adopting democratic principles where the authorities can be held accountable for their actions — but these ideals seemed to get forgotten in the chaos of the Yeltsin years. Was Putin's Russia now escaping from the old Soviet stereotypes and the repressive mentality of the cold war? Was it really emerging into the sunny uplands of democracy, tolerance and a law-governed state? As I re-immersed myself in the city I had known so well, I sensed that finding the answers to these questions would be crucial in my quest to uncover how and why Alexander Litvinenko had met his cruel death.
The first hint came from my unofficial taxi driver, who drove an old Volga and took payment in euros. He was a grizzled fifty-year-old with a broken nose and a baseball cap. Early in our acquaintance we drove past the building on the Garden Ring where I once lived as the BBC Moscow correspondent. When I told him that I had lived there 'a long time ago' he misunderstood, and jumped to the conclusion that I was a Muscovite who had been taken abroad at an early age by my Russian parents. I didn't disabuse him because the thought seemed to make him immensely well disposed towards me — he called me by the familiar ty instead of the formal vy and lamented the influx of outsiders that had left 'us Muscovites' in the minority in 'our own city'. As he was obviously in a chatty mood, I asked him what he thought about 'that Litvinenko' — as all the Russians I met seemed to refer to him — and he shrugged. 'Akh, it's all politics. I guess it was the spets-sluzhby [special forces] that got him, don't you? He was a traitor. Before this job I was in the Alfa Group' — my ears pricked up; Alfa Group soldiers were the toughest of the very tough spetsnaz troops — 'and I think we would have done the same in my day. We would have done it all a bit simpler, though. We used bullets, not polonium.' It wasn't a great start in my search for the new, caring, sensitive Russia.
Further inquiries produced more encouraging results: talking to a group of younger people on Pushkin Square I heard some sympathy for Litvinenko but widespread scepticism that the Kremlin ordered his death. 'I think twenty years ago maybe it could have been the FSB,' said Igor, a tall, well-spoken physics student. 'That was the old way of doing things. But now I think we are more civilized. Putin is an FSB man, but he is a democrat too. He will not stoop to such things.' The others in the group were equally impressed by the Russian president, saying he had brought order and stability after the stormy seas of the Yeltsin era. But when I pressed them there was a grudging acceptance that some areas of society, including the security forces themselves, may not have moved on from the old ways of behaving. There was agreement that the FSB was a multi-headed Hydra, with cliques and competing interests, so that it was hard to say if its activities were all under the control of the Kremlin or of Putin himself. 'I don't rule out the possibility that FSB were involved,' said Nina, a student of art and design, 'because they have many goals that they pursue, including commercial goals and goals of self-protection. Maybe some FSB were protecting themselves from Litvinenko. But it does not mean that Russia killed him.'
Drawing a distinction between the activities of the FSB and the will of the state was a common reaction among those I spoke to, as was an almost universal admiration for Vladimir Putin. Could a man like Putin really have sent his killers to assassinate a renegade like Alexander Litvinenko? It was a question that could only be answered in the Kremlin.
58. TO THE KREMLIN
It was six o'clock on Monday evening and the snowstorm had set in for the day. Cutting down the side of GUM, the massive iron and brick Victorian department store that stares across Red Square to the Kremlin, I could see barely ten feet in front of me. Compacted ice had left the cobbles treacherous underfoot while a fleet of snowploughs was weaving a moto perpetuo on the Square, trying vainly to keep the snow at bay. I was heading for the Spassky Gate, with its iconic clocktower and illuminated red star looming through the swirling flakes.
The red brick of the Kremlin wall emerged from the gloom and I was unexpectedly transported back to the first time I had come here, twenty years earlier. Then I was a nervous young reporter setting foot in the long-forbidden seat of Soviet power, issued with a coveted pass to attend Gorbachev's groundbreaking Congress of People's Deputies where real debate was happening in Russia for the first time, where democrats like Andrei Sakharov, Anatoly Sobchak and Alexander Yakovlev were slugging it out with the communist dinosaurs.
Now, in 2007, I couldn't help wondering if much had changed. The welcome at the Spassky Gate was pretty much the same: three uniformed guards with rifles and a metal detector. But there was, I thought, a subtle difference: instead of the old silent stare and deliberately sceptical examination of my documents, the guards allowed themselves a welcoming smile and wry comment about the snowstorm. Then from the shadows a figure stepped forward and called my name.
Aleksei was in his late twenties or early thirties, slim, nondescript in dress and appearance, and cheerily informal. We chatted easily as we walked through the courtyard between the Kremlin wall and the State Armoury and then turned into a less than imposing door in the wall of the long yellow-stucco building which houses the presidential administration. This was, clearly, the back entrance to the seat of power. Once inside, the security began again with another metal detector and the surrender of my mobile phone to the guard. In the elevator taking us to the third floor I asked Aleksei how long he had worked in the Kremlin and who he worked for. The answer was a smiling seven years and a somewhat embarrassed, 'Actually I work for the FSB, but don't worry, I'm not a spy.' He was, he said, providing security to the president and other top officials and the thought crossed my mind that he was doing the same job that Lugovoy and Kovtun had once done.
We were strolling down a series of long wide corridors, the same corridors that Kremlin leaders had trodden for the last ninety years. With their brown wood panelling, rows of doors, parquet floors and worn strips of carpet, they would have been as familiar to Lenin and Stalin, to Khrushchev and Brezhnev as they now were to Putin. At the end of one corridor I was ushered first into an anteroom where a couple of officials sat typing and then into a very large corner office, four-square with a conference table and twelve chairs. At the head of the table a wide desk was covered in papers, and behind it a full-size Russian flag and a map of the world covered most of the wall. Dmitry Peskov enjoys the confidence of the president and the perks of the responsible position he occupies. He is a sprightly man in his early forties, a career diplomat who became close to Putin from the moment the president was first elected, impressing him with his energy, intelligence and knowledge of the world. Putin appointed Peskov head of information for his administration and takes him with him wherever he goes. On the day I came the two were between trips to Sochi and Volgograd. Over a cup of hot Georgian tea I tried to gauge if his boss really could have been involved in the Litvinenko poisoning, or if the accusations against Putin were merely the fabrications or wishful thinking of enemies at home and abroad. Peskov is indignant about the allegations and their timing. He and Putin were together at the Russia-EU summit in Helsinki the day Litvinenko died, and he feels the Berezovsky camp deliberately stage-managed events to embarrass Putin in the spotlight of the world's media.
When we heard that it was serious and that his life was in danger, we were already in Helsinki. And then it was announced that he had died just one or two hours before the [president's] press conference. So from that point of view the timing was indicating that it was a frame-up, that it was an attempt to frame Putin. The attention of all the media, especially the European media, was focused on that event and there was some suspense over whether the new negotiation agreement [with Russia] would be accepted or not, so the timing for framing Putin was actually excellent.
Peskov is an earnest, sophisticated man, far removed from the bullying, stonewalling Kremlin officials I was used to in the 1980s and 90s. He comes across as reasonable, and sincere in his love for his country and his faith in his president. He knows Putin intimately — he works with him every day — and feels personal resentment on behalf of his boss.
The whole story when Mr Litvinenko was in hospital was well orchestrated; it was spread into the media in a very talented way. What pushed the trigger for the entire anti-Russian, anti-Putin hysteria was that mysterious note [Litvinenko's alleged dying statement]. I say mysterious because the note was announced about thirty or forty minutes before the Helsinki press conference. We had heard that for the last couple of days Litvinenko was not conscious, but suddenly a note appeared that was said to be written personally by him. Before the note we were not commenting on the story. He was very sick, and when he was about to die I doubt he would want to write something. And I'll be frank with you, we know that some PR companies were involved in that case and they were communicating that story to the media. And given the style of the text of that note, I can presume that it is the joint effort of someone who hates Russia — who hates Putin personally — and that degree of hatred is a characteristic of a very few people living in London, of Russian origin and also very talented communicators who know how to use wordings in order to burn the flame of hatred. In my opinion, that was the aim and from the point of view of starting that hysteria they lit the torch.
When I asked Peskov if he was accusing Berezovsky, his answer was reasonably clear: 'I'm not naming him personally, but from the description of course it gives you the possibility to guess.'
I knew that Dmitry Peskov had discussed the Litvinenko case with Putin at great length and given him advice on how to respond to the accusations against the Kremlin, on how to remain calm and measured in the face of what the president believed to be an unjustified personal affront against himself.
You know, I would never discuss that [advice] in public. But nevertheless, what is obvious is that the president felt himself necessary to express his condolences to the family of Litvinenko. He accepted that that it was a human tragedy — a man died — but he never tried to camouflage, to hide the fact that he was not fond of Mr Litvinenko. And you will find very few people in my country — including his first wife, by the way, and his two children — who are fond of him or who are proud of him. This is not the case in my country.
It was a strange sensation, sitting in the heart of the Kremlin, discussing the personal feelings of the most powerful man in Russia. Through two large windows I looked out over the distinctive crenellations of the Kremlin wall at the snow blowing through Red Square beyond. Would the previous occupants of these quarters have been so open with a foreigner?
I recalled the words of Akhmed Zakayev who was convinced that Vladimir Putin had personally ordered the killing of Litvinenko: 'His former teacher once described Putin as small-minded, malevolent and unforgiving,' said Zakayev. 'I believe that Putin personally hated Litvinenko and couldn't forgive him that he had betrayed the homeland and the system.' I pressed Dmitry Peskov for his views; I asked him to tell me how President Putin felt about the allegations levelled at him personally, how it felt to be accused of murder. Peskov said he would not discuss such things in public, but I later spoke to another source close to Putin who knew about his feelings.
'The president is very upset by this,' he told me. 'He is upset by these accusations made personally about him. He simply can't believe that people are saying these things about him as a person. He's very angry about the way the British press has named him as a murderer — that's why he won't speak about it any more.' I asked my source why, if this was the case, Putin had refrained from expressing his anger and hurt. He told me, 'The president doesn't like his feelings being discussed in public'. It was, I thought, quite a revealing moment.
St Basil's Cathedral and GUM loomed out of the snow and the gloom. The clock on the Spassky Tower chimed its distinctive peal for seven o'clock. I put it to Dmitry Peskov that even if President Putin had not personally ordered the Litvinenko killing, it could still have been the unauthorized work of the Russian security services. Had the president ordered an inquiry to make sure the FSB was not involved? 'Look, I don't know. I am being very frank with you now. It's not a question of Putin not being sure if such an involvement was possible or impossible. It is hard for us to imagine that there is the slightest idea that such a possibility could exist. For us the tiniest possibility is out of the question. There is not even the tiniest possibility, not even a hypothetical possibility of our special services being involved.'
Up to now I had been convinced by what I had heard. On the balance of evidence I was coming to the conclusion that Putin himself had had no hand in the murder. But this was something different: despite Peskov's assertion that the FSB had not been involved, he could offer no evidence that ruled out the possibility of a freelance operation, or that suggested Moscow had even tried to rule it out. When I pressed him he told me, 'For that purpose [checking the possibility of an FSB involvement] our prosecutor's office has opened its own investigation.' It was clear where I would have to go next.
59. THE PROSECUTOR
The Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation is at number 15A Bolshaya Dmitrovka, a sharply ascending street that runs from the back of the Bolshoi Theatre. On the morning I was due there, temperatures had plummeted to — 20°C and walking up the sloping ice-covered pavement I found it a struggle to stay upright. The high building set back behind a courtyard planted with tall fir trees is visible from a distance but the street entrance is small, an anonymous-looking wooden door in a blank wall.
The prosecutor's office is a powerful institution in Russia, combining oversight of policing, investigation and prosecution. According to its charter it has ultimate responsibility for 'bodies that conduct detective and search activity, inquiry and pre-trial investigation'; it oversees the 'interests of a citizen or of the State in court cases determined by law'; and it carries out 'prosecution in court on behalf of the State'. It thus partly performs the roles of both Scotland Yard and the British Crown Prosecution Service. This is where the Metropolitan Police's finest had come just weeks before, seeking the cooperation of Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika and looking for clues in the Litvinenko case. I was determined to follow their lead.
As in the Kremlin, my reception was warm and friendly. Two young detectives, Sasha and Kolya, took me through the usual security and a lengthy examination of my documents before walking me to the other side of the tree-lined courtyard and upstairs to a cosy, overheated second-floor office. The first surprise of the day was that the person who had been given the task of responding to my inquiries was not some grizzled old policeman but an attractive woman in her mid-thirties who introduced herself as Marina Gridneva, senior legal counsel and head of Yuri Chaika's information division. Before getting down to business she introduced another detective who would be sitting in on our conversation and together they produced a teapot and a large sponge cake topped with apricot jam. It was, explained Marina, home-made and she was sure I would like it. With a cup of a very unusual, aromatic tea, I ate two slices. The charm offensive seemed genuine and they laughed when I said journalists would certainly not get similar treatment from Scotland Yard.
But hospitality did not mean they were going to answer my questions. All my inquiries about the possibility of FSB involvement in Litvinenko's murder were met with a steely 'That is part of an ongoing investigation so we cannot comment.'
After twenty minutes we seemed to be getting nowhere. I decided to be a little provocative and quoted them Boris Berezovsky's assessment of the Russian prosecutor's office, their office, as 'an absolutely criminal, gangster organization that serves as an instrument of suppressing people and which has essentially the same mentality as Putin and the others sitting in the Kremlin'. But they were prepared for that approach too.
Without batting an eyelid, they replied calmly and evenly, 'There has been some speculation that we might swap Lugovoy and Kovtun for Berezovsky. Russian law prevents the extradition of Russian citizens to a foreign state. But on the other hand we continue to demand the extradition of Boris Berezovsky to allow him to stand trial here for crimes committed on the territory of the Russian Federation ... economic and other crimes, including actions aimed at the forceful seizure of power. Here are all the details of the charges we have brought against him. This is a full copy of the charge sheet and you are very welcome to take it with you.'
It was starting to look like I was in a chess game where my opponent knew all my moves in advance.
I persevered. 'What about the new laws of July 2006?' I asked, glad to be able to quote some legal stuff myself. 'I believe Federal Law №153-F3 of 14 July 2006, passed by the Duma and supported by the Kremlin, allows the president to use the Russian secret services to eliminate "extremists" in Russia and on foreign territory, does it not?' I could see my words were having some effect, so I ploughed on: 'And what about Federal Law №148-F3 of 27 July 2006, which specifically expands the definition of "extremism" to include anyone "libellously critical of the Russian authorities"? It looks like a pretty clear mandate to go out and kill people like Litvinenko, doesn't it?'
The two detectives asked for a moment to consult. They went to tap at the computer on the desk, and they phoned through to Sasha and Kolya to fetch them some documents. My recorder was running the whole time and the recording conveys an air of mild panic. Marina's voice is heard asking me to help myself to some more tea and cake while they sort things out. Then, after a lengthy pause, they are back with the explanation: yes, those laws were indeed adopted but they were not adopted with any evil intent. They were a response to the cowardly abduction and murder of five Russian diplomats in Iraq. President Putin had needed such legislation. Look, the next week he ordered the special forces to hunt down and destroy the killers of our diplomats.
It was an explanation of sorts. But what about the extension of the law to cover 'enemies of the state' and people who are 'libellously critical'? I quoted what Berezovsky had told me about the effect the new law had had on Sasha Litvinenko: 'After Putin signed the decree permitting the special services to kill, without judgement or consequence, so-called enemies of the regime abroad who in fact are simply political opponents, Sasha said to me that we were first on the list — him, Zakayev and me. The hit list didn't stop there, but we were the first.'
Marina Gridneva and her partner were reassuring: 'No, no. It was a law that was aimed at terrorists abroad. Litvinenko wasn't even an "enemy of the state", so it wasn't aimed at him at all.'
It seemed I was going to get nowhere. For forty minutes they had stonewalled me with a charming but immovable double act. So I said, 'OK, thanks very much,' and they clearly thought the interview was over because they started smiling and suddenly became very expansive. Fortunately, my tape was still running to record what came next.
'Look, Martin, do you really think we'd bother assassinating a nobody like Litvinenko? Someone who left the country God knows how long ago? Who was no threat to us and didn't have any secrets to betray?... He just wasn't important enough. He didn't know any secrets that would be a reason for liquidating him ... Do you think we would have mounted such a special operation to eliminate him... with polonium that costs the earth? That we would have spent so much money on him! My God, we could have used the money to increase pensions here at home. If we'd needed to eliminate Litvinenko, we would have done it ages ago.'
I thanked them and switched off the tape recorder. It was the closest I was going to get to an admission that such operations do after all take place. And if they take place, was it not possible that someone had his own reasons to conclude that Litvinenko actually was worth the price of a vial of polonium? Having spoken to the authorities, it was time to speak to the men at the coalface.
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Богослужение
Митрополит Питирим (Нечаев) Основная сущность религии — это стремление установить прямую связь со своим первоначалом. Все древние религии исходили из того, что мир, человек, все проявления жизни имеют божественное происхождение. Контакт может произойти только в непосредственном общении. При этом, в зависимости от того, каков характер божества, этот контакт производился через различные действия: умилостивления — жертвы, выражения покорности — поклоны и т.
