Analysis: Who killed Alexander Litvinenko?

BERLIN, Nov. 27 (UPI) -- The mysterious poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko has cast a dark shadow on the Kremlin, as he had investigated two high-profile affairs that have the potential to seriously embarrass the Russian government.

One of the last photographs taken of the former KGB and FSB spy foreshadowed what was soon to come: Lying on a large white pillow in a London hospital with tubes attached to his chest, his head bald and eyes barely open, Litvinenko resembled a cancer patient in his final hours.

When he succumbed last Thursday to the radioactive and thus poisonous isotope polonium-210 that unidentified individuals had managed to feed into his body, doctors lost a relentless fight to save the 43-year-old's life.

The case has now been turned over to Scotland Yard, and it is one of the most high-profile spy killings in the country's history since the man whom Litvinenko charged with his murder sits at the helm of the Russian government.

"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," said Litvinenko's statement, read out by fellow dissident and friend Alex Goldfarb last Friday. "May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people."

The Kremlin has of course denied any involvement in the killing, calling such allegations "absolute nonsense."

Before his mysterious poisoning, Litvinenko probed the assassination of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Moscow has come under attack after Politkovskaya, one of the most fiercely anti-Kremlin Russian media figures, was found shot dead on Oct. 7 in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow.

But evidence in the Politkovskaya case may not have been Litvinenko's hottest material: The London Times reported Monday that he had also drawn up an extensive dossier -- which is now in the hands of Scotland Yard -- dealing with the Kremlin's forced takeover of oil firm Yukos.

Litvinenko had given the dossier to Leonid Nevzlin, the former deputy head of Yukos, who fled to Israel after Moscow sold off his company.

"Alexander had information on crimes committed with the Russian Government's direct participation," Nevzlin told the London Times after he had given the file to the authorities.

Investigators confirmed rumors that Litvinenko had managed to uncover "startling" new material in the affair, which has seen several former Yukos officials disappear or die in mysterious circumstances while the company's former head and the most prominent Yukos victim, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has been jailed.

Litvinenko, in the hours and days before his death, apparently passed on the names of a number of people linked to the Kremlin that have targeted him.

"At present we have a bewildering number of theories and names put to us, and we must establish some firm evidence," one individual close to the investigation told the London Times.

The long list of enemies comes at no surprise: Litvinenko for the past six years has repeatedly published criticism of Putin and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor to the KGB; he wrote a book called 'Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within,' alleging that the Russian spy service orchestrated the 1999 apartment block bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people and were later used to justify military offensives in Chechnya. At the time, the former spy was already in seemingly safe London, where in 2000, he sought political asylum after he had left Russia because he faced prison time there because of spectacular allegations against the FSB.

In 1998, Litvinenko, then a FSB specialist who fought terrorism and organized crime, announced at a news conference that his superiors had ordered him to kill Boris Berezovsky, who at the time was one of Boris Yeltsin's top security officials.

Litvinenko was arrested and imprisoned, and fled to Britain soon after his release; Berezovsky did the same.

In the past years, the Kremlin has tried to polish Russia's image; with the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, Moscow managed to up the government's standing abroad. The two recent murders, however, have severely tarnished Russia's image and could significantly cloud EU-Russian relations.

In light of the latest spy killing, politicians in Western Europe have urged their governments to press Moscow with their concerns.

Menzies Campbell, a British opposition politician, according to the London Times said the government should have been "much tougher" on Putin and added that British-Russian relations would have to be re-considered if Litvinenko's killing was due to "state terrorism."

Government officials in Britain and in Germany are much less aggressive, and critics say this is due to Europe's growing dependence on Russian energy supplies. Russian-EU relations have recently been quite rocky in the wake of bilateral tensions with Poland and Georgia.

But Andreas Schockenhoff, responsible for German-Russian relations for German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, said the reasons were different. "We must not put Russia under general suspicion," he told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.

Observers note it wouldn't make much sense for Moscow to go to great lengths and risk internationl isolation to eliminate a man who, despite his fierce and numerous anti-Kremlin writings, never managed to destabilize Putin.

On the other hand, polonium-210, the radioactive isotope found in Litvinenko's body, points to either a state-sponsored assassin or at least one who is able to pull some strings: A very rare element in nature, polonium is found in uranium ores at very low quantities and getting your hands onto it is extremely difficult, Andrea Sella, a chemistry professor at University College London, told the London Times.

"This is not the sort of thing that amateurs could have cooked up in a bathtub. You would have to go to a nuclear lab such as Oak Ridge, Los Alamos or Harwell -- or to one of the Russian ones."