Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Lieutenant-Colonel, who in the last years became one of the most relentless critics of the Russian authorities, died on November 23 night in a London hospital.
Litvinenko was a contradictory figure. One named him a traitor who had betraid his native land and former comrades on service, others considered him almost as a hero, dared to tell «the truth» about Putin's regime. Anyway, Alexander Litvinenko has become one more uncountable victim in the struggle for the future of Russia, yet another aggravation of which becomes more and more obvious as the presidential elections of 2008 approach.
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| Litvinenko before poisoning |
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Alexander Litvinenko was born in 1962 in the Russian city of Voronezh. By his own words, almost all of his patrilineal ancestors and male relatives were military. Alexander’s father served as a doctor in the penal colonies, within the structure of the Ministry of Interior. Having graduated from school in 1980, Alexander Litvinenko was called on service in the army.
In 1985 he graduated from a military school and was enlisted in the elite interior troops division of the Ministry of Interior. According to Litvinenko, during the service he was involved in cooperation with the KGB as an informer.
In 1988 Litvinenko left the Ministry of Interior for the KGB. After graduation from the Higher Courses of Military Counter-Intelligence he served in this body till 1999 (during this period, the names of the body varied five times: KGB – AFB – MB – FSK – FSB).
Litvinenko worked in such divisions as Military Counter-Intelligence, Directorate of Economic Security, and the Antiterrorist Centre. His last place of work, in the second half of the 1990s, was the Directorate for Eloboration and Suppression of the Criminal Groups' Activity (URPO), the top-secret division of the FSB. He specialized in conducting secret-service investigation in the ranks of large criminal and terorist groupings. Litvinenko worked there since autumn 1997.
During his serviceLitvinenko was basically engaged in the issues of the organized crime and terrorism. By his own words, he participated in the operation on release of the hostages seized by the Chechen insurgents in Dagestan (village of Pervomaiskoye) in January 1996. Besides, under orders of his supervisors, Litvinenko established confidential relations with the widow of the first President of the Chechnya, Dzhokhar Dudaev, liquidated in April, 1996.
His acquaintanceship with the businessman Boris Berezovsky played the main role in his further destiny. In the second half of the 1990s, Berezovsky was one of the most influential figures in the Russian leadership. With Vladimir Putin and his former KGB-FSB colleagues coming to power, Berezovsky lost his former positions. In 2000 he had to leave Russia, and, having settled in the UK, he became the most known opponent of the new Russian regime.
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Coverpage of Litvinenko's book |
In his book Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within, Litvinenko describes that he had established personal relations with Berezovsky during the investigation of the July 1994 attempt on the businessman. Then they were meeting periodically, and, according to Litvinenko, he did not informed his supervisors about it. It is marked in the book that by the means of Berezovsky, Litvinenko got acquainted with a number of persons from the closest entourage of the first Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Berezovsky also organized Litvinenko’s meeting with Vladimir Putin in July 1998, after the latter was appointed the FSB head.
Russian observers and the politicians close to the present Russian regime say that Litvinenko and his closest associates on service had been Berezovsky’s “agents of infulence” in the FSB. According to the same sources, Berezovsky aimed at using this group of servicemen in accrued political fight, first of all, with a purpose of strengthening his influence in the FSB. The specified sources pointed out that Litvinenko and his comrades, in 1996-1998, tried to discredit a number of the high-ranking FSB officers, with an aim of their subsequent replacement by people, loyal to Berezovsky. In the book Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within Litvinenko confirms that he collected compromising information on some high-ranking officers and tried to convey it to the top leadership, in particular, to Putin. But as he said, he did it for the sake of suppression of the criminal activity in the ranks of the FSB.
In November 1998, Litvinenko and four of his colleagues held an unprecedented press conference, having accused the FSB and their direct supervisors, of alleged practice of extrajudicial liquidations and physical pressure upon businessmen and political figures. They declared, in particular, that one year prior to that they had received an order on Berezovsky's elimination. Two years later, one of the closest fellows of Litvinenko and a participant of the abovementioned press conference, Viktor Shebalin, publicly announced that it had been “a planned-in-advance action of Litvinenko, under direction of Boris Berezovsky”. In November 2003, another former colleague of Litvinenko, who also participated in the press conference, Andrey Ponkin, announced that «according to mine, though, unchecked information, Litvinenko had received from Berezovsky one and a half million dollars for the press conference».
After the press conference, Litvinenko and a number of his colleagues were employed in the Executive Secretariat of the CIS under the leadership of Boris Berezovsky. Litvinenko filled a post of a councillor of the Department for Security Issues.
In the spring 1999, the Russian authorities, the FSB, in particular, launched a criminal prosecution of Litvinenko. He was arrested twice, in March and November 1999. In total he spent nine months under the arrest. In November 1999 and June 2000, judicial bodies bore a justificatory verdict in his case twice. Already after Litvinenko fled Russia for Britain in June 2000, the court tried him in absentia and recognized him guilty of misuse of the office and illegal purchase and storing of firearms and ammunition (all charges concern 1997).
Litvinenko was given a suspended sentence of three and a half years. In the autumn 2000, together with his family, Alexander Litvinenko secretly left Russia. Through Ukraine and Turkey, he arrived in England. In May 2001, Litvinenko was granted political asylum there and he was under trusteeship of the local law enforcement bodies.
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| Litvinenko in London hospital, days before his death |
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In Britain, Litvinenko begun an active propaganda campaign against the Russian leadership and the FSB. He accused Russia’s secret services of organizing the explosions in apartment houses in Moscow in the autumn 1999, and in ties with the Al-Qaeda, and also in the wide-range criminal activity, such as participation in the international Afghan drug traffic.
In 2001 the first book by Litvinenko (in the co-authorship) was published in the United States, under the title Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within. It was underlined in the foreword: «It is an attempt to show in our book that the basic problems of modern Russia are caused by sabotage, led and implemented by the Russian secret services, not the radical reforms». French cinematographers made a documentary, Attempt at Russia, after this book. In 2002, the second book by Litvinenko, Lubyanka’s Criminal Grouping, was published in the US. It was emphasized in its foreword that «if this book would reach the Russian reader today, it may change a course of events in the country».
Last years Litvinenko often spoke that his life and the life of his relatives had been endangered. He told that the first attempt at him took place in December 1997 after he and his colleagues had refused to carry out the order on Boris Berezovsky's liquidation. After the arrival in England, Litvinenko declared at once that his life was exposed to danger. In March 2002, he announced that «since recently I have been receiving threats of physical violence and had to address the police». In May of the same year, Litvinenko told the journalists that he knew about «an assignment of the Chief Military Public Prosecutor to the Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia on gathering information on me in the territory of the United Kingdom». At the same time, Litvinenko was basically relying on the British law enforcement bodies, and himself behaved rather cautiously.
On November 1, 2006, Litvinenko was poisoned. It is not yet established who did it, how it was done, and what the poisonous substance was. On November 23 night, Alexander Litvinenko died. His death will for certain seem to many as a much stronger argument in favour of the anti-Russian charges he had put forward, rather than his statements, publications, and books altogether.
Related items:
Litvinenko's Poisoning: Detailed Unfolding of Events
Western Secret Serviceman of Putin's Main Rival
Valentin Velichko - Obscure Visage of Modern Russian Regime
Mysterious Personage in Litvinenkos Case
Eurasian Secret Services Daily Review (24.11.06)
Eurasian Secret Services Daily Review (25.11.06)
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