Russia’s restrained reaction to British report on Litvinenko’s death

On 21 January 2016, Judge Robert Owen published a report presenting the results of an independent investigation ordered by the Government of the United Kingdom into the death of the Russian political emigré Aleksandr Litvinenko in 2006. According to the report, Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium-210 by two Russian citizens who were most likely to have been acting on behalf of the FSB, with the approval of President Vladimir Putin.

Russian reaction to the report had been purely verbal, and limited to questioning its objectivity and issuing warnings that if Britain continued to raise the Litvinenko case, bilateral relations would suffer. As Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov stated on 22 January 2016, not “the Litvinenko case” but “the spectacle” around it would “seriously complicate” relations. The Russian Ambassador in London, Aleksandr Yakovenko, said on 21 January 2016 that there would not be any further Russian reaction to the publication of the report, and the presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated that Russia would provide the British with “all the necessary responses” to questions about the Litvinenko case.

• Primary Source

ESO: Background information: President Putin 'probably' approved Litvinenko murder http://www.europeansources.info/record/president-putin-probably-approved-litvinenko-murder/

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