‘The intimate relationship that will be proved to exist between the Kremlin and Russian organised crime syndicates around the world are so close as to make the two virtually indistinguishable. The startling truth, which is going to be revealed in public by the evidence in this inquiry, is that a significant part of Russian organised crime around the world is organised directly from the offices of the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a mafia state.’
Next, he addressed motive. Litvinenko was liquidated ‘partly as an act of political revenge for speaking out, partly as a message of lethal deterrence to others, and partly in order to prevent him giving evidence as a witness in a criminal prosecution in Spain’.
Litvinenko was about to expose the ‘odious and deadly corruption among the cabal surrounding President Putin’. He had given information to Spanish and Italian officials about links between Russian organised crime groups and the Kremlin. Therefore: ‘He had to be eliminated, not because he was an enemy of the Russian people, but because he had become an enemy of the close-knit group of criminals who surrounded and still surround Vladimir Putin and keep his corrupt regime in power.’
Litvinenko’s killing, it appeared, wasn’t about ideology, as in Soviet times. Moscow spymasters used to believe that the murder of enemies – both domestic and foreign – could be justified on the grounds that the Soviet Union was waging a life-and-death struggle to defend communism, a noble experiment. And that they were surrounded by hostile forces: Hitler, the west, etc.
Here, there could be no appeal to what you might term Leninist ethics. Communism was gone. Rather, Litvinenko’s modern assassination was about money. He threatened the revenue streams of some very powerful people. So they killed him.
According to Emmerson, there was no doubt who gave the order – Russia’s president. He dismissed alternative theories proposed by the Kremlin as outlandish and absurd. There wasn’t the ‘slightest doubt’ that Lugovoi and Kovtun were the assassins. The forensic evidence confirmed this, Emmerson said. So did what had happened since 2006: Lugovoi’s unexplained wealth and his successful career in Russian politics, none of which would have been possible without a Kremlin leg-up.
The ‘cold, hard facts’ said that Litvinenko’s murder was a political crime. It bore all the hallmarks of a state-sponsored assassination, the QC asserted.
The polonium used to murder him came to London from Russia. It was very expensive, Emmerson said. ‘The scientific evidence shows that the quantity of polonium of the purity used in the assassination of Mr Litvinenko would have cost tens of millions of dollars if it was purchased by end users on the commercial market. Just the amount that was used for the assassination. Well, obviously, a commercial transaction of that magnitude … would have to be recorded, and if it had happened, the authorities would know about it. It is, we say, moreover, unlikely in the extreme that any private individual or purely criminal enterprise, a pure bunch of hoodlums involved in an organised crime gang, why on earth would they choose such a costly method of assassination, tens of millions of dollars, when they could simply put a bullet in someone’s head?’
For the Russian state, on the other hand, the costs were by no means prohibitive. It just had to divert some of the material it was producing already. Polonium was selected ‘in order to leave no clear trace as to how death was sustained’. It very nearly worked.
Emmerson’s conclusions were blunt, and framed in highly personal terms: ‘We say, sir, that when all of the open and closed evidence is considered together, Mr Litvinenko’s dying declaration will be borne out as true: that the trail of polonium traces leads not just from London to Moscow but directly to the door of Vladimir Putin’s office and that Mr Putin should be unmasked by this inquiry as nothing more than a common criminal dressed up as a head of state.’
The barrister’s opening statement was bold and provocative – an accusation against a major world leader expressed in language not usually heard in a court.
The Russian government had ostensibly paid little attention to the inquiry, viewing it as biased, unreliable and the latest manifestation of an anti-Russian campaign waged by the west and its puppet media. From Moscow, Lugovoi dismissed it as a ‘judicial farce’. Traditionally, Russian officials were insouciant in the face of what they dubbed ‘provocations’.
On this occasion, though, someone was watching. That someone was irritated.
Two days after the inquiry began, RAF controllers noticed two dots moving at high speed towards the south coast of Britain. The dots kept going. These were Russian Tupolev Bear bombers – giant, lumbering, Soviet-era aircraft capable of carrying nuclear bombs on long-range missions, their bright red communist stars still visible on a gleaming silver fuselage. The Bear bombers were heading directly towards the Channel. Downing Street scrambled two RAF typhoons to intercept them.
Since the war in Ukraine, the Russian airforce had dispatched Bear bombers on similar probing missions to European countries and to the Pacific coast of the US and Canada. They had buzzed military and civilian aircraft. There were repeated forays into the airspace of the Baltic republics. In one incident in April 2015, a Russian SU-27 fighter missed a US military jet flying above the Baltic Sea by a few metres.
These sorties were a crude expression of displeasure. And a reminder that the Russian government presides over a nuclear arsenal and isn’t to be messed with. Even David Cameron, a prime minister who showed little interest in international affairs, got the memo. ‘Russia is trying to send some kind of message,’ he said.
In the weeks before the inquiry began, I met Anatoly Litvinenko at University College London. In the spring of 2015 he was a second-year student of politics and East European studies; his last piece of coursework an essay on Putin. His choice of university was a nod to his father, who died just across the road in University College Hospital.
Anatoly is quiet, low-key and speaks with a typical London student accent. He seems mature for a twenty-year-old – something his friends attribute to his close relationship with his mother, a loving and affectionate parent. ‘I’m so glad we can still hug,’ Marina told me. ‘After it happened, I realised I couldn’t just be strict. I remember Sasha saying: “Be soft on him.” I try and tell him every time that I love him.’
The UCL café was crowded, so we descended past the stuffed body of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham to an empty basement bar. Anatoly was dressed in a quilted overcoat and wearing fashionable lightweight black specs, bought in Berlin when his last ones broke.
We talked about his expectations of the inquiry. ‘I’m pretty sure there will be some kind of closure for me and my mum,’ he said. What would it bring? ‘Probably a chance for us to move on. To move on past the whole thing, which has been central to my life for eight years.’ He paused. ‘I want to remember him as Dad, to have a chance to grieve properly.’
Anatoly recalled visiting his father in hospital nearby, and his last words to him: ‘If I do die from this, take care of your mum, look after yourself and study hard.’ He said he didn’t recognise his father at the end: ‘It wasn’t my dad at all.’ Alexander’s death put him in a strange place; he coped by immersing himself in schoolwork (‘I got a bunch of stupidly good marks’) and shutting out his grief. ‘There was a huge media storm. For a while I was lost in the chaos,’ he said.
Anatoly had brought along some old family photographs. One from 1997 shows a grinning, small Anatoly lying above Alexander on a sofa at their Moscow home. It’s a happy symmetry. The photo was taken at his parents’ apartment in the Moscow suburb of Chertanovo. Like many Russian kids, Anatoly spent the long summer vacation at a dacha 25 miles (40 km) outside Moscow that belonged to Marina’s parents. There was a vegetable plot and a pagoda.