A man drags himself to the hospital, checking
in for extreme vomiting and stomach pains.
His condition quickly worsened, and he insisted he had been poisoned.
Determined to seek justice, he pieced together
the events that led to his sudden illness.
He’d had a lunch meeting with a friend the day
he fell sick, and then went to discuss a business
venture with an old colleague from his home country.
As he lay on what he knew was his deathbed, he recounted several
hours of incredibly detailed witness testimony, vital puzzle pieces
which enabled investigators to solve his inevitable murder—a case
that involved three men, a business meeting, and a poisoned teacup.
In the fall of 2006, the journalistic world was
shocked by the death of Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent
investigative journalist and human rights activist.
She was known for her work exposing Russian actions in Chechnya, and
her refusal to back down from reporting the facts despite many threats.
Only a few months before her passing, the Russian parliament had
passed a new law that allowed the FSB, their Federal Security Service,
to eliminate anti-Russian activists and extremists in any country
in the world— their definition included anyone who made comments
about the Russian government that could be considered slander.
Anna was already terrified for her life, because she knew
the Russian government was very interested in silencing
their critics, but these new circumstances did not bode well.
Earlier that year, in a London cafe, Anna had confided her
fears to Alexander Litvinenko, a close friend and fellow
Russian investigative journalist who was living in England.
Alexander begged her to flee Russia, hide, and
protect herself, but Anna felt that she could not.
She had people she needed to take care
of—her children, and elderly parents.
But only three months after the law was passed,
Anna was assassinated in her Moscow apartment.
The incident affected Alexander deeply.
Determined to point the finger at the people responsible, Alexander
attended a journalists’ gathering for Anna in London, and publicly
accused Putin of ordering the death of his beloved friend.
Anna was not the only Russian critic who was a target.
Alexander himself was a journalist who wrote
about the hidden crimes of the FSB and corruption.
It was likely that he was already a target, but his public
statements about Anna’s demise put him at great risk.
Alexander was born in Russia when the country was part of the USSR.
He joined the Soviet army at age 17, trained for
four years, and started raising a young family.
After five years, Alexander was transferred to Moscow to work
at internal affairs, and it wasn’t long before the KGB, the
Soviet Union’s intelligence office, hired him as an agent.
Alexander worked in military counterintelligence and also
investigated organized crime, terrorism, and corruption.
Though the Soviet Union eventually fell, he stayed with his crime
investigation team, which was now under the control of the FSB.
During this time, he separated from his wife
and fell in love with a woman named Marina.
The FSB assigned Alexander to investigate an attempt
on the life of Boris Berezovsky, a wealthy businessman
and prominent government official who was close with
Boris Yeltsin, the Russian President at the time.
While on this case, Alexander and Berezovsky became good friends, and
both of them started quietly questioning the government’s actions.
Alexander’s next assignments took him to Chechnya,
a region that wanted to separate from the regime.
Seeing so much casual loss of life and
indifference towards civilians horrified Alexander.
Disillusioned, he returned to Moscow.
Though he continued to rise in the ranks of the FSB, Alexander
increasingly believed his superiors were corrupt criminals.
He ignored their orders when he felt they were wrong, like to kidnap a
Chechen businessman, or the arrest and battery of an FSB whistleblower.
Defying orders was a bold decision, and it’s possible he could
have been punished for it, but Alexander remained safe, for now.
Then one day, he received an order that would change
his life—to assassinate Berezovsky, his friend
and confidant that he was employed to protect.
By now, Vladimir Putin was the head of the FSB.
Alexander was identified as a problem, fired for his refusal to follow
orders, and targeted for disloyalty and challenging the government.
He was suddenly charged with various crimes, like
allegedly roughing up a suspect—a case he spent eight
months in jail for, before being found not guilty.
As the verdict was given, masked men entered
the courtroom and arrested Alexander again.
It was clear that he would be suppressed by any means necessary.
He was then charged with stealing ammunition
and explosives, and faced eight years in prison.
Alexander knew he had no future in Russia now that he was a target.
With Berezovsky’ help, he and his family ran
away to England, where they applied for asylum.
Berezovsky had recently fled to London, and hired
Alexander as part of his personal security team.
Now that he was not under constant threat, Alexander was
able to voice his beliefs publicly and report on what he
had seen during his employment with the Russian government.
He became an author and investigative journalist, focusing on
exposing the hidden crimes of the FSB and Russian corruption.
He called Russia corrupt, and said the government,
crime, and intelligence industries were one and the same.
He also became a consultant for MI6, the British spy agency,
an informant for Spain on the Russian criminal network there.
Years after Alexander moved to London, Andrei
Lugovoi, an old colleague, contacted him.
Andrei had been a member of Berezovsky’s security team in
Russia at the same time as Alexander, and he got back in
touch with Alexander to discuss a business opportunity.
The two men decided to work together and
advise Western companies to invest in Russia.
Just a few weeks after Anna’s passing and
Alexander’s public accusations, Andrei travelled
to London for a business meeting with Alexander.
He brought another man, Dmitry Kovtun, with him.
According to the staff at the hotel they stayed in, the two men
looked like stereotypes of Eastern European gangsters, with loud,
ill-fitting suits, bright shirts and ties, and clunky jewelry.
The three men met in a boardroom at Erinys, an intelligence firm
in London, and were hosted by Tim Reilly, the head of the firm.
This was the first time Alexander had met Dmitry,
who introduced himself as Andrei’s business partner,
but he felt an instinctive dislike for him..
They discussed the weather, then Andrei joked about how it
would be appropriate for them to have some tea, since they were
in England and the British were known for their love of tea.
Tim made tea for his guests, and the meeting was underway.
Later that day, after the meeting had finished, Alexander
felt unwell and had to throw up, but recovered quickly.
The two Russians flew back to Moscow, but Andrei came
back to London only a week later, this time alone.
He met with Alexander in the Palm Court Bar at an upscale hotel.
The two drank tea and discussed their business idea further.
The following week, Andrei and Dmitry were back in London yet again.
This time, they were accompanied by
Andrei’s wife and kids, and another friend.
The group was on a trip to watch a football match, CSKA
Moscow playing Arsenal in a Champions League, but while
they were in town, wanted to meet up with Alexander again.
Alexander already had plans for the day, and
was meeting an Italian associate for lunch.
He got a call from Andrei around noon,
asking him to meet later that day.
Alexander agreed, and Andrei told him to come
to the Millennium, an expensive hotel in London.
As Alexander ate lunch with his friend, Andrei constantly
called him, impatient, urging him to hurry up as
they would have to leave for the football match soon.
Alexander got to the Millennium at 4PM and Andrei
approached, inviting him to come sit at the bar.
Andrei had already been ordering drinks for himself,
but he knew that Alexander didn’t drink alcohol.
He was also living very modestly at the time, and wasn’t planning
to order and pay for anything expensive at this luxury hotel.
So when the bartender asked Alexander
if he would like anything, he said no.
Andrei then offered Alexander some tea from a pot that
was on the table, and asked the waiter for a clean mug.
There wasn’t much tea left, maybe a half cup, and it was already cold.
Alexander took a few polite gulps, but didn’t finish it.
The two were then joined by Dmitry.
The three men had a meeting the next day with a private
security firm who was interested in investing in Russia.
Their discussion at the Millenium Hotel bar lasted
only 20 minutes before they went their separate ways.
As he was leaving, Alexander had the strangest feeling that he
was in danger, and the two men he had met were not his friends.
That evening, Alexander became violently
sick and had to be hospitalized.
Doctors didn’t know what to do.
His mixture of symptoms—including bone marrow failure and
gut damage—perplexed medical staff, who suspected a form
of poisoning but could not pin down a specific diagnosis.
His condition worsened over the next few weeks, and
after 17 days of illness, Scotland Yard was alerted
to the fact that a man was in the hospital sick from
suspected poisoning that could have been a murder attempt.
Officers came to visit Alexander and
investigate the cause of his sudden sickness.
As the officers questioned Alexander, they discovered that he
was not only an excellent witness, but an investigator himself.
As he lay bedridden, he was trying to
solve his own attempted assassination.
Alexander had a lot of detective experience and
strong observational skills from his time in the FSB.
He described in detail the appearance, height, clothing, and mannerisms
of the people he had come into contact with, where and when he met them
and his interactions— recounting conversations from start to finish.
Combing through the events leading up to his illness, Alexander
plainly stated that only three people could have possibly poisoned him.
He highlighted his Italian associate, but didn’t really suspect
him, as well as Andrei and his business partner whose name
Alexander guessed at but couldn’t quite remember—this was Dmitry.
In total, Alexander provided an incredible nine hours of
witness testimony that would be vital to solving the case.
He even called his wife and asked her to
search their home for an old photo of Andrei.
Alexander was firm in his belief that Secret Services was behind the
poisoning, and convinced that the serious action of exterminating a
citizen of another country had to have been approved by Putin himself.
As Alexander recorded his interviews, he grew sicker and
sicker, and his lawyer started to draft a statement for him.
It spoke about Alexander’s love for his wife, how
proud he was to be British, and that he blamed the
Russian government and President for his poisoning.
His statement said “You may succeed in silencing one man but
the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate,
Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.”
Just days later, Alexander went into cardiac arrest.
He was resuscitated and put on a
life-support machine in an induced coma.
During this period, Scotland Yard received a call
from a lab that had analyzed Alexander’s urine.
They confirmed that he had been poisoned by radioactive
polonium-210, which had never been known to enter England before.
Alexander passed away six hours later on November 23, 2006,
as the first known victim in the world of polonium-210 poison.
Alexander was gone, and investigators had to rely on his deathbed
testimony to point them in the right direction for evidence.
Polonium is an extremely radioactive substance, and when
ingested or inhaled, one of the most toxic poisons in the world.
It can’t pass through physical barriers, such as human skin,
so as long as it doesn’t enter the body, it’s safe to handle.
But if even the smallest amount is ingested, it does
terrible harm to the victim’s organs and can take their life.
A tiny speck of the substance the size of a
pinhead is 3000 times the lethal dose for humans.
It is difficult to identify polonium poisoning
unless you are looking for it, since the symptoms
can look like poisoning from more common substances.
It also did not trigger common radiation detectors of
the time because it only gives off alpha particles,
which can’t even pass through a piece of paper.
This particular polonium sample had come from a nuclear reactor in the
Ural Mountains, then processed in a secret FSB lab in Sarov, Russia.
Now that the investigators knew what to look for, and who
to investigate, they began testing the locations where
Alexander had been for polonium, and gained access to CCTV
footage at the Millennium while gathering information on the
activities of Andrei and Dmitry leading up to the meeting.
The entire story was painstakingly pieced together.
Dmitry later stated that he arrived at the hotel
at 4PM, around the same time that Alexander did.
CCTV Footage showed that he actually showed up in the lobby
half an hour earlier—the pair had entered the men’s washrooms
at the Millennium hotel, and investigators found an alarming
amount of radiation contamination in one of the cubicles.
The footage also proved that Alexander never entered the washroom,
so Andrei and Dmitry had to be the ones who brought in the substance.
Forensics found the teapot they must have used, because it gave
off extremely high readings of polonium, confirming Alexander’s
theory of having ingested it through the tea he drank.
Using the readings, experts located the chairs and the table
the men met at, with the highest levels on Dmitry’s chair.
Traces of polonium were found on the dishwasher, the
floor, the till, a coffee strainer, an ice-cream scooper,
a chopping board, and bottles of alcohol behind the bar.
The assassins evidently did not care about potential
contamination and risks to other people at the hotel.
When forensics tested the hotel rooms of the two men, the
polonium levels in Dmitry’s bathroom sink were so high
that the only conclusion possible was that the remaining
amount had been poured down the sink to dispose of it.
They also traced the substance all the way back to other locations the
assassins had been at, including on the planes they had taken to London.
All the clues painted a clear story—the men had been sent from
Moscow to assassinate Alexander, setting up false meetings
with the intention of getting him to drink poisoned tea.
And this was not the only attempt.
The location of their first meeting, the boardroom
at the intelligence firm, was teeming with radiation.
Dmitry and Andrei must have poured the polonium into his cup of
tea, but Alexander did not drink anything at that first meeting.
He narrowly escaped death, but had thrown up once later that
day—probably from exposure and breathing near the poisoned tea.
Still, he survived without even knowing about the
attempt, and the assassins would have to try again.
Again, high levels of radiation were found in Andrei’s bathroom sink
where he had stayed, indicating that he poured it down to get rid of it.
The unsuccessful assassins then flew back to Moscow,
with Andrei coming back to London only a week later,
this time alone, but with another container of polonium.
Alexander had drank tea that time, but it
appears that Andrei never used the poison.
He may have spotted the cameras around the
room, or was worried he was being watched.
Whatever the reason, he did not use the polonium and
again poured the substance down his bathroom sink.
The entire washroom and hotel room were highly
contaminated, and scientists testing the location
asked to be excused from the room for safety reasons.
Polonium was very expensive, and having to travel back to
London with yet another batch would have been inconvenient.
Andrei and Dmitry would have been desperate to get it right the
third time and resentful from their previous failures, which may be
why Alexander picked up on negative feelings coming from the two men
instead of excitement about the potential of their business venture.
Andrei or Dmitry were so reckless with their handling of the
poison that it seems like they were unaware of how traceable
and dangerous the poison was, maybe because they knew it was
difficult to detect inside the human body, and traditional
instruments detecting poison didn’t pick up on polonium.
But if you are looking specifically for polonium,
the trail it leaves is long-lasting and obvious.
And after that third meeting at the hotel, everything
Alexander touched gave positive radioactive readings.
Despite all the evidence, the judicial
process took years and had many delays.
Dmitry and Andrei both denied involvement in Alexander’s poisoning,
and actually accused Alexander of trying to poison them with polonium.
The two Russians would claim that it was Alexander who
first tried to poison them at that initial meeting at
Erinys, and so he was the cause of the radiation trail that
followed them afterwards—but this was simple to disprove.
Alexander’s previous locations and possessions had not been contaminated
until he met the assassins, whereas investigators could determine every
single place the Russians had been by tracing the radioactive trail.
Dmitry was actually hospitalized for radiation poisoning a month
after he travelled to London, from being constantly exposed.
Russia also denied a request from the UK to
extradite Andrei to face criminal charges.
Marina, Alexander’s wife, continued to put pressure on
officials to investigate and charge the people responsible.
Ten years after Alexander passed away, a UK public inquiry found
Andrei and Dmitry responsible for poisoning him, suggested that it
was very likely they had acted under orders from their government, and
accused Russia of failing to properly investigate the assassination.
In 2021, fifteen years after the incident, the European court of human
rights found Russia responsible for the crime and ordered the state
to pay Alexander’s wife over one hundred thousand euros in damages.
A Russian spokesperson dismissed the ruling
and said Moscow would not pay the penalty.
Dmitry passed away in 2021, and as of 2023,
Andrei is still an MP in Russia’s parliament.
Neither man ever faced court or imprisonment for the assassination.
Alexander was the first confirmed victim
of polonium-210 radiation poisoning.
Fifteen years before officials determined the ruling, Alexander himself,
while on his deathbed, was able to deduce the series of events and gave
a public statement that pointed the finger at the Russian government.
His accusations received worldwide media coverage and the following
investigation led to political issues between the UK and Russia.
While it’s unfortunate that the process took so long,
Alexander’s family, friends, and supporters finally had
some closure, and an official ruling that proves the
statements he was so determined to say on his deathbed.
Based on our recent video about a man trapped at the
bottom of the sea whose life was saved by a mattress
and a bottle of coke, we put a poll on Twitter asking:
"If you only had one bottle of liquid to
last you 3 days, what drink would it be?"
And looks like water was the winner!
Which might seem like the responsible choice,
but Gatorade might actually be better with the
sugar and electrolytes to help keep you going...
But I'm still choosing coffee.