A public inquiry into Litvinenko’s death says President Putin had “probably” personally authorised the 2006 killing.
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Responding to the report, Lugovoi called the judge’s findings “absurd”, according to the Russian news agency Interfax. “Russia was hoping for cooperation with the British in investigating this case”.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron said his country was taking further action as a result of the report into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.
Marina Litvinenko and her legal team pointed the finger at Putin repeatedly in statements to the inquiry that has now concluded.
“The fact that Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium-210 that had been manufactured in a nuclear reactor suggests that Lugovoi and Kovtun were acting for a state body rather than say a criminal organisation”, the inquiry report said.
Toner said the U.S.is evaluating the findings of the report, adding that “these are pretty serious charges obviously”.
The report also names Russian politicians Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun as those who arranged the poisoning.
The 43 year-old Alexander Litvinenko was a former spy who was regarded by Russia as having betrayed its security service, the FSB, by accusing it of bombing Russian apartment blocks in 1999 which the Kremlin blamed on dissident Chechens.
“To us it is not a large surprise, (…) because these suspicions surrounding Litvinenko’s death have been around all the time“, Grybauskaite told the U.S. CNN television channel on January 21, 2016.
Inquiry judge Sir Robert Owen found: “I am sure that Mr Litvinenko did not ingest the polonium 210 either by accident or to commit suicide”.
The Kremlin has always denied any involvement but the claim Putin directly ordered a killing of an opponent with a radioactive isotope in a major Western capital provoked immediate censure from Moscow.
Earlier Britain summoned the Russian ambassador and imposed asset freezes on the two men identified as the perpetrators.
“There was one goal from the beginning: slander Russia and slander its officials”, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zhakarova told reporters.
The murder came against a backdrop of a long running personal feud between Putin and Litvinenko who had accused the Russian President of being a paedophilia. He made clear that the inquiry’s conclusion concerning the Russian State’s probable involvement in this murder was deeply disturbing, demonstrating a flagrant disregard for United Kingdom law, global law and standards of conduct, and the safety of United Kingdom citizens.
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The inquest heard in half a year of hearings from 62 witnesses and was revealed secret intelligence evidence about his connections and Mr Litvinenko with British intelligence agencies.
