Litvinenko poisoning: how events unfolded
The events leading up to the dissident's poisoning by polonium in 2006
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Dimitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy arrive in London on a Transaero Airlines flight from Moscow. The pair meet their fellow former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in Bond Street before all going to the office of Enirys, a security firm, at 25 Grosvenor St. They then eat at Itsu in Piccadilly.
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17 October
Trio meet again
Trio meet again to visit another security firm, RISC Management, in Cavendish Place, then go to Parkes Hotel in Knightsbridge, which later tests positive for polonium 210. Lugovoy and Kovtun return to Moscow the following day on a Transaero flight.
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25 October
Lugovoy returns to London
Lugovoy returns to London on a British Airways plane which later tests positive for polonium. He is visited by Litvinenko at his hotel, the Sheraton Park Lane, where radiation is also later found. According to Lugovoy they met again the following day before he returned to Moscow on a BA flight.
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28-30 October
Kovtun flies to Hamburg
Kovtun flies from Moscow to Hamburg, where he visits his former wife Marina Wall. Traces of radiation are later found in her flat as well as a series of other locations including his mother-in-law’s home, a restaurant, and a car he used. His signature made on a document at the Office of Foreigner Registration also tested positive for radiation.
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31 October
Lugovoy family visit London
Lugovoy arrives in London with his family on a British Airways plane which also later tests positive for polonium. The family were ostensibly visiting to watch CSKA Moscow play away at Arsenal’s ground in north London, where radiation was also later found after their visit.
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1 November
Kovtun arrives in London; Litvinenko falls violently ill
Kovtun arrives in London on a flight from Hamburg.
11.30am: Litvinenko arrives in central London by bus, using an Oyster card to pay for the journey. The card and bus both later tested negative for radiation. According to Oleg Gordievsky, the former KGB colonel, Litvinenko then holds an initial meeting with Lugovoy, Kovtun and an unidentified third man in a fourth-floor room at the Millennium hotel, where Litvinenko is served tea. Gordievsky said Litvinenko spoke about the encounter before he died.
3.30pm: Litvinenko meets Mario Scaramella, an Italian security consultant, at Itsu, and receives documents from him. Itsu later tests positive for radiation, as does Scaramella.
4.30pm: Litvinenko meets Kovtun and Lugovoy in the Pine Bar at the Millennium Hotel, Grosvenor Square. Following the meeting, which lasts only 20 minutes, Litvinenko goes to the offices of his friend Boris Berezovsky in 7 Down Street, to photocopy Scaramella’s documents and hand copies to the oligarch. Radiation is later found on the photocopier.
5.20pm: Litvinenko given a lift home by his friend Akhmed Zakayev, the exiled Chechen rebel leader and a close friend, who lives across the road from him in Muswell Hill, north London. Radiation subsequently found in Zakayev’s car. Litvinenko later falls violently ill.
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4 November
Admitted to hospital
Litvinenko admitted to Barnet General Hospital, north London, under a pseudonym.
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17 November
Transferred to University College Hospital, and placed under armed police guard.
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20 November
Moved to intensive care
Moved to intensive care. Bedside pictures show dramatic weight and hair loss. Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism unit begins investigation into suspected “deliberate poisoning”.
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22 November
Deemed "critically ill"
Litvinenko described as “critically ill”. He has heart attack in the night.
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23 November
Litvinenko dies
Scotland Yard says it is investigating “an unexplained death”.