Zygoptera on 25/8/2008 at 01:36

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Muzman- I don't have any particular interest in Georgia or the Caucasus, besides thinking it was cool that an ex soviet republic used the English flag back in school, and, er, having played them in Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings. I do have a tendency to waste time researching things that interest me but are of no practical benefit rather than watch TV, and a good memory.


A little knowledge gained from Wikipedia is a dangerous thing. Still, since you want disputation and our Russian Comrades tend to get a little excitable:

0) Ex-KGB agents = current KGB agents is a total non sequitor, unsurprising considering where you got that quote from, ex oligarch Georgians are unlikely to be particularly unbiased. Litvinenko himself was ex KGB every bit as much as his supposed assassins ffs (can't really blame you here, it's a typical wiki neutrality loltasm that all "good guys" are ex FSB, all "bad guys" are ex KGB)
1) Litvinenko had already done his damage, six years prior. There were already plenty of accusations of FSB involvement re Anna Politkovskaya (who most certainly had plenty of enemies other than Putin and the FSB) and in any case...
2) Most of Litvinenko's later accusations were clearly... well. Putin = paedophile, Russia running al-Zawahiri as if al-qaeda wasn't up to its eyeballs in Chechen militia and v/v, Prodi as a KGB plant. Real Bush 9/11 conspiracy class stuff.
3) As I said previously, Polonium is a shit tool for assassination, because:
3a) It's too persistent leading to:
3b) It's too detectable, both in terms of being able to detect Po once you know what you are looking for and in terms of having fairly obvious symptoms plus:
3c) It isn't necessarily lethal quickly. It's lethal enough all right, if you expose someone to much of it at all it'll kill them, but there are enormous variations in effect for both acute and radiological toxicity between individuals. If you're going to poison someone, generally as a spy agency you don't want to either be caught or leave unnecessary evidence, or have the victim showing obvious signs of acute exposure.
4) Given the above, it's obvious who would get the blame after its inevitable discovery. More to the point, the FSB would know that it would be detected and they would be blamed, and would have 'better' alternatives at hand.
5) Contrary to many reports, Polonium is 'made' in places other than Russia.
6) There are other people who would benefit from Litvenenko's death.

Basically, it's pretty obvious that if you didn't get caught outright you'd get caught eventually. That doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't the FSB, but if they did it they knew they'd get caught, there wasn't much benefit to silencing Litvenenko as his accusations were getting progressively more bizarre and they had very little to gain from doing it.

As for the two assassins? The information available on Lugavoy is hardly conducive to him being an active agent- he's independently wealthy, associated more with Zhirinovsky and Berezovsky than Putin and has apparently been arrested by Putin's government previously, yet he was also supposedly recruited and managed to contaminate himself repeatedly with a deadly radiological agent he was meant to be using to assassinate someone else with. The other guy was supposedly a chechen thug who you might suspect if Mr L got randomly beaten to a pulp, stabbed or shot but was most likely just a bodyguard.

It is of course not impossible the FSB or some sort of private Kremlin type contacts killed him, not least because we have no idea exactly what evidence the UK government has (nor have they actually supplied it to Russia, so in any sane jurisdiction their extradition attempt on Lugavoy would be thrown out even if it were legal in the first place) but it's hardly the slam dunk some make it out to be. If it was FSB it makes the DGSE blowing up the Rainbow Warrior look like a perfectly executed feat of espionagic awesome in comparison.

clearing on 25/8/2008 at 04:01

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Ok. Silly question, ONLY the US/UK/Israel may meddle in the affairs of other nations?

242 on 25/8/2008 at 09:00

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I.e. you want too, but you've hard feelings that you aren't let just yet, yes? :tsktsk:

Truth is that UK and Israel don't meddle nearly as much as it do USA and Russia. Russia criticize USA for that, and does nearly THE SAME. The only reason why it doesn't meddle as much is because it's not as powerful. I mean yes, you're a superpower, and have ambitions to rule others, it's somewhat natural after all I guess as natural as Empires eventual break-ups are, but when you start to criticize USA for their ambitions, it's very obvious that it's just a banal contest for world domination and rivalry, no moral issues involved here.

242 on 25/8/2008 at 10:01

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Care to enlighten me why my answer to your question is silly?

Thirith on 25/8/2008 at 10:47

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Could you cut the condescending attitude and answer his question, please? I'd also be interested in it.