Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, a critic of Vladimir Putin who had defected to the United Kingdom, became violently ill in London on 1 November 2006 after being poisoned with polonium-210. He died on 23 November 2006. A British murder investigation identified Andrey Lugovoy, a former Russian Federal Protective Service officer, as the principal suspect and Dmitry Kovtun as a second suspect. The United Kingdom sought Lugovoy’s extradition, but Russia refused, citing its constitutional bar on extraditing Russian citizens.
A public inquiry that began on 27 January 2015 concluded in January 2016 that Lugovoy and Kovtun carried out the killing and were probably acting under the direction of the FSB, with the approval of Putin and then FSB director Nikolai Patrushev. The finding was an inquiry conclusion rather than a criminal conviction, and both suspects remained outside British jurisdiction. In Carter v Russia, decided in 2021, the European Court of Human Rights held Russia responsible for Litvinenko’s death and ordered it to pay his widow €100,000 in damages, leaving the assassination as a lasting symbol of state-enabled transnational violence and the limits of accountability when suspects are protected by a foreign government.
