Another suspect, Andrei Lugowoj, who is a member of parliament in Russia, confirmed the death on his news channel Telegram. “My close and loyal friend Dmitry Kovtun passed away prematurely. This is an irreplaceable and difficult loss for us,” Lugovoy said. He and Kovtun are suspected by the British judiciary of having killed former Russian secret service agent Litvinenko in 2006 with the radioactive substance polonium 210. From his bed, Litvinenko accused President Vladimir Putin of being behind the assassination. He died in November 2006 in the worst torment as a result of radiation.
Photos of the visibly scarred radiation victim went around the world at the time. Kovtun, Lugovoy and Russian authorities denied having anything to do with the death. Former intelligence agent Lugovoy and Kovtun met Litvinenko for tea at the Millennium Hotel in London’s fashionable Mayfair district. According to a British investigative report, Litvinenko, who was considered a traitor in the Kremlin, was poisoned there.
Before the attack, Kovtun visited his German ex-wife in Hamburg and, as it turned out, left a trail of polonium across the city. The officer applied for asylum in Germany in 1991. Like Lugovoy, he returned to Russia after the crime and escaped British justice. The British arrest warrants against him and Lugovoy could never be carried out.
Litvinenko was one of the Kremlin’s harshest critics. Among other things, he accused the FSB domestic secret service, for which he worked, of being responsible for bombings of residential buildings in Russia, which was supposed to provide a pretext for the second Chechen war in 1999.