A second suspect has been accused by the Crown Prosecution Service of murdering the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London, after the discovery of new evidence last year.
Speaking in Moscow, Dmitry Kovtun on Wednesday confirmed he had received a letter from the CPS seeking his extradition to England to stand trial.
The CPS has refused to comment. But Litvinenko's widow described the move as "good news".
Marina Litvinenko said: "I have not received official confirmation of this. The news has only come from Moscow. But it shows that the [British] investigation is being done in a very serious way."
She added: "I never met Kovtun but Sasha [Litvinenko] named him and mentioned him."
Kovtun's name surfaced in connection with the case after Litvinenko was poisoned. Kovtun met Litvinenko in the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in London on 1 November 2006 with Andrei Lugovoi, another former KGB officer.
It was here that Lugovoi allegedly slipped radioactive polonium into Litvinenko's tea. The CPS charged Lugovoi with murder in May 2007, sparking a diplomatic crisis between London and Moscow and the tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats. Kovtun was not charged – seemingly for lack of evidence.
Alexander Goldfarb, a friend of Litvinenko, on Wednesday said the police discovered new evidence concerning Kovtun early last year. They had informed Litvinenko's widow about the discovery but refused to give her details, he said. The "packet of evidence" was submitted to the CPS in the autumn, he added.
German investigators found a trail of radioactive polonium-210 left by Kovtun in northern Germany, shortly before he flew to London before the meeting with Litvinenko. They discovered it at his former mother-in-law's house, where he slept the night on the couch, as well as in his BMW and in a government office he visited.
Kovtun and Lugovoi have both vigorously denied Litvinenko's murder. According to reports from Russia, Kovtun said: "The fact that they have presented this [extradition demand] now, after five years have gone past, speaks for itself. It's suspicious. What new clues can possibly appear?"
Goldfarb told the Guardian he believed both men contaminated themselves during an earlier botched assassination attempt on 16 October 2006, two weeks before Litvinenko's poisoning. From London, the contaminated men travelled back to Moscow, and then to London again, with Kovtun flying in via Germany, he said.
There is no realistic prospect of Kovtun being extradited to the UK. Vladimir Putin derided then foreign secretary David Miliband's original request in 2007 for Lugovoi to be handed over, saying it was indicative of Britain's "no brains" colonial mentality. For its part, Moscow wants Britain to extradite the fugitive oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
Goldfarb speculated that Kovtun might welcome the CPS action. Since being fingered by the British, Lugovoi has become a celebrity in Russia and a deputy in the Duma – a platform that has allowed him to make lots of money, Goldfarb suggested. Kovtun, by contrast, was – until today — a "nobody", he said.
Russia is days aways from an election which will see Putin return to the Kremlin for a third presidential stint. The country is paying little attention to British-Russian relations and is instead gripped by the unprecedented street protests against Putin's rule, and the question of whether Russia is heading towards another revolution.
The fact that Kovtun revealed the CPS move himself is interesting, and suggests the Russian government sees the Litvinenko affair as a plus rather than a negative. "It shows that Putin is a tough guy who can reach far to eliminate his enemies. This is the image he wants to project," Goldfarb said. "The Brits, by contrast, have been much quieter."
There is no doubt the Kovtun move will exacerbate Anglo-Russian tensions. An inquest into Litvinenko's death this autumn is likely to reveal evidence showing that his murder was a state-sponsored plot, carried out by Russia's spy agencies and authorised at the highest levels. The evidence is believed to include witness statements, CCTV footage and a forensic analysis of the polonium trail.
Kovtun and Lugovoi had known each other since childhood, were neighbours, and both came from military families. They trained in the 1980s together at the elite Soviet military command academy in Moscow, afterwards joining the KGB's ninth directorate, responsible for protecting top Kremlin officials. After the Soviet collapse they joined the security business.
