As yet more London restaurants and hotels are found contaminated with Polonium 210, murder isn’t most likely.
The amount of Polonium needed to leave a month long trail over three countries, four hotels, assorted homes, offices and eateries - not to mention Arsenal football stadium - is simply too much for a simple poisoning.
Especially when [...]

An interesting walk-on part in the Litvinenko drama is that of Andrei Sidelnikov.
So far, he has made few column inches. In the great murder mystery, he is only reported for having had a sandwich in Oxford Street with Litvinenko and later testing negative for Polonium.
But Andrei is one guy you could perhaps genuinely describe [...]

Who needs facts or evidence when you have a libellous rag like the UK Independent?
‘Putin Murdered My Son’ it screams, with another screed of speculative slander - this time from Litvinenko’s father, Valter.
Of course one should have sympathy for Valter. I suppose it can’t be much fun being the father of a traitor who [...]

Whatever the outcome of the Litvinenko affair, the damage to East-West relations has been done. Or perhaps, it has simply exposed the latent Russophobia that still resides in the West.
Day by day, the story of a grisly tyrant taking out a good ole boy scout has fallen apart. But the propaganda machine is still [...]

Since bloggers discovered that Polonium 210 could be bought on the Internet, one of the on-line isotope stores took down its website.
It’s back up today with a new front-page setting the record straight about Polonium. The copy contains this wonderful line: ‘Although it obviously works, Polonium-210 is a poor choice for a poison.’
Reporting hasn’t [...]

Suddenly the whole Litvinenko business is looking more like Austin Powers than James Bond.
Aha. ‘The Trail of Poison Leads To Moscow’ deduced the Spiegel yesterday, as a number of BA flights were grounded. What kind of secret agents leave their dabs everywhere they go? It’s like sticking up a bank while posing in front of [...]

From Erinys website. Kalashnikovs for sale or rent.

The crescendo of Russophobia has climaxed with the international press declaring a new Cold War.
Are we at war with Russia? Well, with Putin, certainly, in case anyone hadn’t noticed. Ever since he started throwing his oil weight around.
It’s a war which puts some very strange bedfellows on the [...]

Tributes to Sasha Litvinenko, the sob story spy, are on all the tearstained pages of the UK tabloids today.
Probably the Daily Mail drivels it best. ‘He was honest, courageous, loving husband . . . etc.’
Blimey. You would never know he was a devious little toe-nail puller from the KGB. Or that his patron, Boris Berezovsky [...]

If I simply stood anywhere near Boris Berezovsky, I’m sure my hair would fall out and my skin would turn yellow.
Litvinenko is simply the last in a long line of stiffs associated with Boris, a line of corpses that stretches back to the mid-nineties. One died from a mysterious nerve toxin applied to the rim [...]