On Sunday, the British press exploded with reports about the poisoning in London of KGB defector Colonel Alexander Litvinenko (pictured above, circa 2002), who had been in the process of investigating the murder of Anna Politkovskaya to see whether the KGB (now called the FSB) was involved. The Associated Press reported that ???????Toxicologist Dr. John Henry, who has been treating Litvinenko, told the BBC that the former agent had been poisoned by thallium — a toxic metal commonly found in rat poison. ???????It points to that in his blood stream,???????? he said.??????? The Times of London reported that the symptoms appeared just after a meal at a restaurant with a former friend who ate nothing and had promised leads on the investigation. The New York Times explains:

The Sunday Times of London said the former agent had met Nov. 1 with an Italian contact identified only as Mario in a central London sushi bar. Last week, Mr. Litvinenko told reporters he began to feel sick within hours of the meeting with Mario. ???????I ordered lunch, but he ate nothing,??????? Mr. Litvinenko said, according to The Sunday Times, which apparently interviewed him after he began to feel ill but before his condition deteriorated. ???????He appeared to be very nervous. He handed me a four-page document which he said he wanted me to read right away.??????? ???????It contained a list of people, including an F.S.B. officer, who were purported to be connected with the journalist????????s murder,??????? he said. The F.S.B., or Federal Security Service, is the successor to the K.G.B. ???????I do feel very bad,??????? Mr. Litvinenko told The Sunday Times. ???????I????????ve never felt like this before ???????? like my life is hanging on the ropes.???????

The Times continued:

Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned on the direct orders of the Kremlin because of his biting mockery of President Putin, according to a former Soviet spy now living in Britain. Oleg Gordievsky, the most senior KGB agent to defect to Britain, said that the attempt to kill Mr Litvinenko had been state-sponsored. It was carried out by a Russian friend and former colleague who had been recruited secretly in prison by the FSB, the successor to the KGB. The Italian who allegedly put poison in Mr Litvinenko????????s sushi ???????had nothing to do with it???????.
???????Of course it is state-sponsored. He was such an obvious enemy. Only the KGB is able to do this. The poison was very sophisticated. They have done this before ???????? they poisoned Anna Politkovskaya (the campaigning journalist murdered on October 7) on a plane last year. Who else would know where she was sitting and could poison her food? Probably also it was the KGB that shot her.??????? Mr Litvinenko, who fled to Britain in 2001, was a target because of the Kremlin fury at his sarcastic attacks on President Putin, Mr Gordievsky said. ???????There are three people they hate: Boris Berezovsky, Akhmad Zakayev and Sasha (Alexander) Litvinenko, who was writing article after article for the Chechen press, laughing at Putin.??????? Mr Gordievsky, a former KGB station head in London, who still refers to the FSB by its former name, insisted that he did not know the identity of the Russian would-be killer. But he assumed that the man was a former associate of Boris Berezovsky, the former oligarch and Yeltsin confidant, who has been granted political asylum in Britain. ???????He used to be in Mr Berezovsky????????s entourage and was imprisoned in Moscow. Then suddenly he was released, and soon after that he became a businessman and a millionaire. It is all very suspicious. But the KGB has recruited agents in prisons and camps since the 1930s. That is how they work.???????

Russia has a way of humiliating American presidents. From FDR????????s foolhardy hobnobbing with Stalin at Yalta to Jimmy Carter kissing Leonid Brezhnev full on the mouth, any president that tries to befriend Russia always pays a heavy price for it. And so it has occurred that the Kremlin has sought to liquidate yet another foe (remember the similar attack on pro-West Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko which left his face permanently scarred) at the very moment when George W. Bush was inking a deal for Russian entry into the World Trade Organization, merrily thumbing his nose at the recent Democratic electoral victory, to say nothing of the counsel of conservatives like Charles Grassley and John McCain.

On the BBC flagship radio news program ???????Today??????? Monday morning, Mary Dejevsky, columnist for the British newspaper The Independent, was put up against Alex Goldfarb, a friend and supporter of Litvinenko. Dejevsky was obviously invited on to give balance to the program in spite of the fact that she seems to the only British journalist holding out against the obvious conclusion, which was even being suggested by other writers in her own newspaper, that the Kremlin had struck again. ???????Today??????? is the most influential news program in the UK, compulsory listening for all those within the political world or the establishment. Dejevsky cautioned against presuming that the Russian security services had a hand in the poisoning by remarking that these allegations were being touted by known anti-Putin factions in the UK (implying they are functionaries of exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, and other possible target for a Kremlin it). In other words, she as much as invited the Kremlin to strike again, giving them plenty of helpful cover for doing so. One must remember that exactly these same sorts of cautions were given out by the KGB regarding dissidents like Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov during Soviet times ???????? were they to be discredited simply because they opposed the totalitarian regime?

How could Dejevsky seem so blind to the obvious, or be so keen to rubbish the FSB????????s accusers? Well, for one thing she????????s an avid participant in the infamous Valdai discussion club previously exposed on Publius Pundit. Yevegania Albats (Publius Pundit has reported last week on her heroic work for democracy in Russia) warned at the time that the participants were compromising their integrity (to the group????????s credit, it at least published her article on their website at the time, although it????????s been buried since then.

So it looks like the Kremlin????????s investment is paying off, big time.

The New York Times quoted Goldfarb as follows:

Alex Goldfarb, a friend who had visited Mr. Litvinenko in the hospital, told the BBC that doctors had told him that he had only a 50-50 chance of surviving. ???????He looks like a ghost,??????? Mr. Goldfarb said. Speaking later to reporters outside London????????s University College Hospital, to which Mr. Litvinenko had been transferred, Mr. Goldfarb said the British police interviewed Mr. Litvinenko on Sunday. ???????He is in a fighting mood,??????? Mr. Goldfarb said. Asked why Mr. Litvinenko might have been the target of an attack, Mr. Goldfarb said, ???????He is one of the top public enemies of the Russian F.S.B. and of Putin, particularly because of his book.??????? He added that Mr. Litvinenko belonged to ???????the so-called London ????migr???? circle, which was branded by Russia as a terrorist cell on British soil.???????Mr. Goldfarb called the poisoning ???????very scary ???????? it means there????????s no limit.???????

The net result is that we have a cadre of Kremlin sycophants in the West who are literally helping to place the lives of true Russian patriots at risk, thereby destroying the last vestige of hope for a democratic resurgence there and undermining the security of the West. First Politkvoskaya was cut down amid rumors and indicia of Kremlin complicity (President Putin called her an enemy of the nation only days after her killing), and then when a KGB defector seeks to investigate he too falls. Right now, Russia is a feeble state with a male adult lifespan below 60, an average salary of $300 per month and an economy wholly dependent for subsistence on world energy prices. In other words, the situation is little different from the state Russia was in immediately after the Bolshevik revolution in the early part of the last century. But, then as now, if the world stands idly by watching people die, allowing the Kremlin to consolidate its anti-democratic grip on the nation????????s throat, there will come a time when Russia will once again present the world with a nasty and expensive long-term threat that could have been avoided. That????????s to say nothing, of course, of the simple morality of standing up for those who risk their lives for democracy. The very idea, much less the practice, of erring on the side of allowing the Kremlin to continue its brazen series of attacks, rather than on the side of protecting the victims, is maddening, sure and certain proof that we have not yet learned all we should have from our past relations with Russia.

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UPDATES

Litvinenko’s condition has deterioriated and he’s been moved to intensive care. Click here to see a photo of him in his hospital bed, his hair fallen out due to the poison.

EURONEWS has a closeup before/after picture and a video.

The BBC reports that state-controlled Russian TV is ignoring the events (quoting Yulia Latynina). Click here to read its story.

MORE UPDATES

The website for Britain’s Frontline Club, a journalist organization, has footage of Litvinenko at one of its functions speaking out about the killing of Anna Politkovskaya and the complicity of the Kremlin therein. Watch the video here:

The British paper The Telegraph has a strong op-ed piece also connecting the two events and laying the blame for deteriorating democracy in Russia directly at the Kremlin’s doorstep. Read it here:

FOX News has a story about the Italian who ate with Litvinenko just before his symptoms appeared to provide him information about a “hit list” that included Litvinenko. (And an account from a friend named Goldfarb, along with a denial from the Russians.

SkyNews reports that Litvinenko had a heart attack overnight and is hours from death now -Mora)

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.