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"Plot against Russia"

Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW: The Kremlin has nothing to do with the radiation death of former security agent Alexander Litvinenko, which was probably a provocation against Russia, the country's spy chief said on Wednesday. "There are grounds to believe that Litvinenko was eliminated in order to stage a political provocation against Russia," head of Russia's SVR Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Lebedev said in an interview with the national tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda. He dismissed allegations of the involvement of Russian secret services in the killing of Mr. Litvinenko as "complete nonsense." "The SVR has never been involved in any `wet [killing] act'," Mr. Lebedev said. "Units that used various `daggers' [in the Soviet Union] were disbanded in the 1950's." Mr. Litvinenko, who fled to London in 2000, died in a London hospital on November 23 from poisoning by radioactive isotope polonium-210.

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