Who on earth could think the Kremlin was behind the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian intelligence officer, poisoned by a dose of radioactive polonium-210?
A few cold warriors, perhaps, buried in the bowels of MI5 and the FBI's counterintelligence department, and a handful of exiled enemies of Russia living the good life in London. Probably the sort of people Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, had in mind this week when he said: "This is a completely new Russia, although some people are still thinking of the country as the empire of evil."
The cold warriors are the sort who would point to the rocket Mr Putin is said to have given a year ago to the head of the Russian Federal Security Service for the agency's poor performance. Not to speak of the decision in July from the Duma, the Russian state parliament, to approve a new law allowing Russia's "special services" to kill enemies of the state anywhere on the planet. Mr Peskov says not to worry: the FSB is concerned only with domestic affairs and the new law is aimed only at terrorists.
Those not up to date with the new Russia might also point out that the KGB, Mr Putin's alma mater, and its predecessors had a nice line in assassination of exiles. Being a mere founder of the Soviet Union, they might say, was not enough to save Trotsky and he was not alone. In 1957, the agency had a go at the defector Nikolai Kholkhov, probably poisoned by radioactive thallium while attending a conference in Frankfurt. According to Jeffrey Richelson, the spy-watcher, Kholkov survived after suffering symptoms that included hideous brown stripes and black and blue swellings on his body, and blood seeping through his pores.
Further insight into old Russian practices, now obviously abandoned, comes from a CIA memo of 1964, now declassified: Soviet Use of Assassination and Kidnapping. The memo looks into the techniques known in the KGB as "liquid affairs", carried out by the agency's Department 13, which was indeed unlucky for some. Within it were two secret installations, one producing special weapons and explosive devices and the other developing drugs and poisons.
"The large numbers of former citizens of the USSR (and of imperial Russia) living abroad in protest against the Soviet regime have been a continuing cause for concern to the Soviets since the early twenties," the memo said. "Emigré leaders who participate in anti-Soviet activities have been primary targets of Soviet abduction or assassination operations. Such operations are sometimes designed to demonstrate that the Soviet regime can strike its enemies anywhere in the world. The Soviets hope thereby to create fear, unrest, confusion and dissension within emigré organisations and at the same time deter other emigrés from joining their ranks."
Fortunately, things are much different today in the completely new Russia. Aren't they?
By Stephen Fidler
The writer is the FT's defence and security editor
Source: FT
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