In part two of this three-part mini-series on "Putin & Poison", we'll explore the chilling tale of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent poisoned in London with a rare radioactive substance.
We'll learn about the bold accusations he made against Vladimir Putin and how his tragic death reveals the extreme lengths to which the Russian state might go to silence its critics.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part two of our three-part mini-series on the theme of “Putin and Poison”.
[00:00:30] In part one, we got an overview of the life of Vladimir Putin, his unlikely rise to power, and how he has consolidated that power to be one of, if not the, most powerful men in the history of Russia.
[00:00:45] In parts two and three, this episode and the next episode, we are going to look in detail at two incidents widely believed to have been approved, if not ordered personally, by the man himself.
[00:00:58] The first is the murder of his critic and former colleague, Alexander Litvinenko, and the second is the attempted and unsuccessful murder of a former Russian military intelligence officer, Sergey Skripal.
[00:01:12] They are both fascinating and terrifying incidents that give us an insight into the mind of Vladimir Putin and the lengths that he is prepared to go to.
[00:01:21] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:01:26] If you have ever travelled to Japan, or been to a place with exceptionally fresh fish, you will probably have tasted the difference between average and fantastic sushi.
[00:01:39] Sushi, when fresh that day and prepared properly, is on a completely different level.
[00:01:46] And bad sushi, well, it can leave more than an unsatisfactory taste in your mouth.
[00:01:52] It can make you feel pretty unwell indeed.
[00:01:56] And on the 1st of November, 2006, a man went for sushi at a well-known sushi chain in London called itsu.
[00:02:06] Later that day, he started to feel stomach pain, he started vomiting and had diarrhoea.
[00:02:14] As the hours passed, the pain worsened.
[00:02:17] He began sweating profusely and felt an overwhelming sense that something was very wrong.
[00:02:24] The pain didn’t let up, it didn’t die down, and in fact, it got so bad that he asked his wife to call him an ambulance.
[00:02:33] He was whisked away to hospital and treated for suspected gastroenteritis.
[00:02:40] He spoke with a foreign accent, but he told the doctors his name was Edwin Carter.
[00:02:47] Mr Carter’s gastroenteritis showed no signs of getting better. In fact, it got worse, much worse.
[00:02:56] It got so bad that he was transferred to a larger, specialised hospital, University College London Hospital.
[00:03:04] Five days later, he was dead.
[00:03:08] The man’s name, as you might have guessed, was not really Edwin Carter.
[00:03:13] It was Alexander Litvinenko.
[00:03:17] And this wasn’t gastroenteritis.
[00:03:20] In fact, it had nothing to do with sushi at all.
[00:03:25] He was poisoned by a radioactive substance called Polonium-210, a substance that it is thought could only have come from a highly secure nuclear facility in Russia and been administered to him, right slap bang in the centre of the capital of the UK, on the orders of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
[00:03:47] On his deathbed, surrounded by his wife and doctors, as he knew he had but hours to live, he had a powerful message to the man he believed had ordered his assassination.
[00:04:02] “…this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present condition. You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed. You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilised value. You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilised men and women. You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.” End quote.
[00:04:58] To understand how it got to this point, we must go back in time, to the early 1990s.
[00:05:05] Alexander Litvinenko was, in fact, an indirect colleague of Vladimir Putin at the KGB and then its successor, the FSB.
[00:05:16] He had first been assigned to investigate a failed assassination attempt on a man called Boris Berezovsky, who was one of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs and had made a fortune importing cars, amongst other things.
[00:05:32] Berezovsky immediately liked Litvinenko.
[00:05:36] He was honest, diligent, and hard-working. Berezovsky suggested that the young man go and meet Vladimir Putin.
[00:05:45] Berezovsky had helped Putin rise to power, and knew that he was someone worth knowing in modern Russia.
[00:05:53] This was 1998, and Putin had just been made head of the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB.
[00:06:03] Litvinenko thought that Putin, as head of the FSB, would be interested in hearing about the widespread corruption that Litvinenko had discovered at the bureau.
[00:06:15] In particular, Litvinenko had been investigating the FSB protecting Uzbek drug barons in exchange for money.
[00:06:24] When Litvinenko first met Putin, he reported on these discoveries.
[00:06:30] Putin was utterly uninterested and closed down the investigation.
[00:06:36] Later that year, in November 1998, Litvinenko and several colleagues at the FSB held a press conference in which they claimed that they had received orders to kill several prominent Russian businessmen, including Boris Berezovsky.
[00:06:55] Litvinenko was immediately sacked from his position at the FSB.
[00:07:01] He was ordered not to leave Moscow, but he fled the country, fearing for his life.
[00:07:08] He knew that when you got on the wrong side of Vladimir Putin, you didn’t go to work quietly in a library or spend your days tending your garden.
[00:07:18] It was, in all probability, a death sentence.
[00:07:23] He first tried to claim political asylum in Turkey. It was rejected.
[00:07:30] He then bought a plane ticket back to Moscow, but importantly, the ticket involved a stop in London.
[00:07:39] When he arrived at London Heathrow Airport, he claimed political asylum, and this time it was granted.
[00:07:48] He lived in exile in London, but he didn’t shy away from publicity, he didn’t spend his days painting watercolours or teaching piano to schoolchildren.
[00:07:59] He continued to publicly criticise Putin from what he might have thought was a suitably safe distance.
[00:08:08] And the intensity of his criticism only increased as time went by.
[00:08:15] It wasn’t criticism only of the corruption that Putin allowed on his watch, of which there was more than enough to complain about, but it became personal.
[00:08:26] Litvinenko wrote an article on his blog alleging that Putin was a paedophile and that there was video footage of him having sex with young boys from his early days in the KGB.
[00:08:41] Putin, Litvinenko alleged, had destroyed all of this evidence when he became head of the FSB.
[00:08:49] This deeply inflammatory blog article was published in July of 2006, and Litvinenko chose to push it live after a video emerged of Putin kissing the stomach of a young boy in a crowd.
[00:09:05] It is a real video, it’s on YouTube and is very unsettling. Putin is visiting a crowd. There’s a young boy, who’s probably 5 or 6, and Putin pulls up the boy’s shirt and kisses him on the stomach.
[00:09:23] Litvinenko took this as supporting evidence of his theory, and decided to publish this article on a website called Chechenpress, which is the news agency of the Chechen separatists.
[00:09:37] The allegation was unsubstantiated, there was no evidence for it.
[00:09:43] And it didn’t make much of a dent abroad.
[00:09:47] But it was most definitely noticed by the Kremlin. Shortly afterwards there was a new law passed that made defamation of the President a federal crime.
[00:10:00] Now, before we continue, let’s just remind ourselves of exactly what’s going on in Russia and with Vladimir Putin during this period.
[00:10:11] In 1999, he was made Prime Minister, and a year later, in 2000, he became the president.
[00:10:20] By the time this article was published, he had cracked down on the oligarchs, making it clear that they could get rich in Russia but it was with his blessing, and playing by his rules.
[00:10:33] He was also re-elected by a large majority in 2004.
[00:10:40] He was the undisputed modern tsar, and had taken steps to silence anyone who had the tenacity to question him.
[00:10:49] So, let’s move forward to November the 1st, 2006.
[00:10:56] For much of his time in London, Litvinenko had been pretty happy to meet with journalists, other dissidents, and former colleagues without any formal private security. He was an enemy of the Russian state, but on the streets of London, he behaved just like any normal citizen.
[00:11:18] And in the morning of the 1st of November, he met an Italian security consultant called Mario Scaramella, at Itsu, a sushi restaurant in Piccadilly, in London.
[00:11:31] He ordered sushi and green tea, and then went on his way.
[00:11:36] Later that afternoon, at 4.30 to be precise, he went to the Millennium Hotel in London Mayfair, where he met two former associates: Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun.
[00:11:50] Both had ties to Russian intelligence, but they were keen to chat about potential business opportunities while they were in town. The reason for them being in London, by the way, was to watch the UEFA Cup match between Arsenal and CSKA Moscow, which was taking place later that evening.
[00:12:10] The match ended 0-0, and by all accounts was a pretty dull game.
[00:12:17] While this unexciting 0-0 draw was unfolding, Litvinenko was at home feeling awful. It was like no other sickness he had felt before, and he immediately said to his wife that he had been poisoned.
[00:12:33] At first, doctors couldn’t figure out what it was. Nothing seemed to be working, and his condition continued to worsen.
[00:12:44] He was transferred to University College London Hospital, but by this point he was deathly weak, and tufts of his hair had started to fall out.
[00:12:56] Now, if you have seen a picture of Alexander Litvinenko, the most recognisable one is probably of him in his hospital bed in a green smock, with all sorts of medical drips attached to him.
[00:13:11] And he is completely bald, there is no hair on his head.
[00:13:16] Litvinenko was not a bald man, at least he wasn’t until the last few days of his life.
[00:13:24] Losing your hair, as well as your skin falling off, is a common symptom of radiation poisoning.
[00:13:33] But when the British doctors tested Litvinenko for signs of radiation, they found nothing out of the ordinary.
[00:13:41] It wasn’t until samples of his blood were sent to a specialist nuclear research facility that scientists noticed something unusual. There were extraordinarily high levels of a particular type of radiation that they knew could only come from a substance called Polonium-210.
[00:14:02] Now, this is not a poison you can buy in a shop or make by ordering the right compounds online and brewing up in your kitchen.
[00:14:11] It needs to be made in a nuclear reactor, and is one of the rarest and most expensive substances on Earth.
[00:14:20] It is also one of the most deadly.
[00:14:23] To give you an idea of how potent it is, just one microgram – a millionth of a gram – is enough to kill an adult human.
[00:14:35] The production of Polonium-210 is limited to highly secure nuclear facilities, and all signs pointed to one specific source: Russia.
[00:14:47] As Litvinenko lay dying in hospital, British investigators began piecing together how the Polonium-210 had been administered.
[00:14:57] It was, in all probability, slipped into Litvinenko’s green tea at the Millennium Hotel, where he met Lugovoy and Kovtun on the afternoon of November 1st.
[00:15:09] And sure enough, the teapot he used had extremely high levels of radiation.
[00:15:16] This was where the radioactive trail started, but further traces were found on the chairs the two likely assassins sat on, in their hotel rooms, and everywhere they had gone.
[00:15:29] Traces were even found on the plane they had flown into the UK on and on the plane they used to travel back to Russia, both commercial planes, by the way.
[00:15:40] Everywhere the Russians had gone, they left behind a poisonous trail, leaving little doubt about who was responsible.
[00:15:49] The sheer amount of Polonium-210 that investigators found suggested that it had not been handled very carefully—perhaps the operatives were sloppy, perhaps they didn’t know quite how dangerous the substance they were handling was, or perhaps they simply didn’t care about covering their tracks.
[00:16:10] Lugovoy and Kovtun denied any involvement, but the evidence was damning.
[00:16:17] Now, the Polonium-210 poisoning was no ordinary assassination attempt.
[00:16:22] The logistics involved in transporting such a deadly substance–on a commercial aeroplane no less–the willingness to deploy it in a foreign country and the utter disregard for potential collateral damage all pointed to state-level involvement.
[00:16:41] And while the Kremlin denied any involvement, Litvinenko himself had no doubt about who was responsible. On his deathbed, as you heard, he directly accused Vladimir Putin of ordering his assassination, a charge that Putin and the Russian government have, of course, always denied.
[00:17:02] In the UK, at least, few believe this.
[00:17:06] In 2016, after a long public inquiry, it was concluded by British authorities that Litvinenko’s murder was “probably approved” by President Putin and the then-FSB head Nikolai Patrushev.
[00:17:23] The inquiry stopped short of saying it was definitively proven but left little doubt about where the responsibility lay.
[00:17:33] So, why go to such extreme lengths to kill Alexander Litvinenko?
[00:17:38] Why use a rare radioactive substance, leaving behind a radioactive trail that, if discovered, pointed directly back to Russia?
[00:17:48] The answer perhaps lies in the nature of Vladimir Putin’s leadership.
[00:17:54] Litvinenko wasn’t just a critic of Putin; he had humiliated him. From accusing Putin of corruption to publicly calling him a paedophile, Litvinenko had crossed a line that few dared to.
[00:18:09] For Putin, this wasn’t just about silencing a critic; it was about sending a message—a message to anyone, at home or abroad, who dared to challenge him.
[00:18:21] Defiance would not be tolerated, and the consequences would be brutal and public.
[00:18:29] And, they would be slow and agonising. Radiation poisoning is a horrific way to die, and perhaps Putin thought that Litvinenko didn’t deserve the quick and more deniable death that a fall from a fifth-floor window or being strangled at home might have provided.
[00:18:49] As you might remember, or could certainly imagine, the murder of Alexander Litvinenko caused an international outcry and severely damaged relations between the UK and Russia.
[00:19:03] The UK expelled several Russian diplomats, imposed sanctions, and called for justice.
[00:19:10] But Russia refused to extradite Lugovoy and Kovtun, who remained in Russia under the Kremlin’s protection.
[00:19:19] Lugovoy, bizarrely enough, even went on to become a member of the Russian parliament, and he is still serving today.
[00:19:29] For Litvinenko’s family, the fight for justice continues.
[00:19:33] His wife, Marina, has become a vocal advocate, demanding accountability and shining a light on the Kremlin’s actions.
[00:19:43] But for the Russian government, Litvinenko’s death was a demonstration of its power—a chilling reminder that critics could be reached, no matter where they were in the world.
[00:19:56] The assassination of Alexander Litvinenko is one of the most brazen and horrifying examples of state-sponsored murder in recent history. It highlighted the lengths Vladimir Putin and his regime would go to silence dissent and protect their image of strength.
[00:20:13] And, unfortunately, it's just one of many, a pattern of poisonings, assassinations, and brutal tactics that have come to define modern Russia under Vladimir Putin.
[00:20:25] A few years after the death of Litvinenko, his former boss, the exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, was found dead in his mansion in the English countryside. It was ruled as suicide, but there have been multiple question marks over whether other factors were at play.
[00:20:45] And moving into the recent past, in 2018, there was another, perhaps even more audacious poisoning attempt—one that failed but was just as brazen: the attempted murder of Sergey Skripal in Salisbury, England.
[00:21:01] And that, my friends, is what we have to look forward to in the next episode.
[00:21:08] OK, that is it for today’s episode on Alexander Litvinenko.
[00:21:12] To state the obvious, this is a tragic and horrifying story, but it’s also a fascinating insight into the way that Vladimir Putin operates and the lengths to which he will go to maintain power and control.
[00:21:27] As a reminder, this is part two of our three-part mini-series on “Putin and Poison”, and in part three, we’ll look at the failed attempt to poison Sergey Skripal and what it reveals about the evolution of Russian tactics under Putin.
[00:21:41] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:21:46] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part two of our three-part mini-series on the theme of “Putin and Poison”.
[00:00:30] In part one, we got an overview of the life of Vladimir Putin, his unlikely rise to power, and how he has consolidated that power to be one of, if not the, most powerful men in the history of Russia.
[00:00:45] In parts two and three, this episode and the next episode, we are going to look in detail at two incidents widely believed to have been approved, if not ordered personally, by the man himself.
[00:00:58] The first is the murder of his critic and former colleague, Alexander Litvinenko, and the second is the attempted and unsuccessful murder of a former Russian military intelligence officer, Sergey Skripal.
[00:01:12] They are both fascinating and terrifying incidents that give us an insight into the mind of Vladimir Putin and the lengths that he is prepared to go to.
[00:01:21] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:01:26] If you have ever travelled to Japan, or been to a place with exceptionally fresh fish, you will probably have tasted the difference between average and fantastic sushi.
[00:01:39] Sushi, when fresh that day and prepared properly, is on a completely different level.
[00:01:46] And bad sushi, well, it can leave more than an unsatisfactory taste in your mouth.
[00:01:52] It can make you feel pretty unwell indeed.
[00:01:56] And on the 1st of November, 2006, a man went for sushi at a well-known sushi chain in London called itsu.
[00:02:06] Later that day, he started to feel stomach pain, he started vomiting and had diarrhoea.
[00:02:14] As the hours passed, the pain worsened.
[00:02:17] He began sweating profusely and felt an overwhelming sense that something was very wrong.
[00:02:24] The pain didn’t let up, it didn’t die down, and in fact, it got so bad that he asked his wife to call him an ambulance.
[00:02:33] He was whisked away to hospital and treated for suspected gastroenteritis.
[00:02:40] He spoke with a foreign accent, but he told the doctors his name was Edwin Carter.
[00:02:47] Mr Carter’s gastroenteritis showed no signs of getting better. In fact, it got worse, much worse.
[00:02:56] It got so bad that he was transferred to a larger, specialised hospital, University College London Hospital.
[00:03:04] Five days later, he was dead.
[00:03:08] The man’s name, as you might have guessed, was not really Edwin Carter.
[00:03:13] It was Alexander Litvinenko.
[00:03:17] And this wasn’t gastroenteritis.
[00:03:20] In fact, it had nothing to do with sushi at all.
[00:03:25] He was poisoned by a radioactive substance called Polonium-210, a substance that it is thought could only have come from a highly secure nuclear facility in Russia and been administered to him, right slap bang in the centre of the capital of the UK, on the orders of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
[00:03:47] On his deathbed, surrounded by his wife and doctors, as he knew he had but hours to live, he had a powerful message to the man he believed had ordered his assassination.
[00:04:02] “…this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present condition. You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed. You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilised value. You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilised men and women. You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.” End quote.
[00:04:58] To understand how it got to this point, we must go back in time, to the early 1990s.
[00:05:05] Alexander Litvinenko was, in fact, an indirect colleague of Vladimir Putin at the KGB and then its successor, the FSB.
[00:05:16] He had first been assigned to investigate a failed assassination attempt on a man called Boris Berezovsky, who was one of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs and had made a fortune importing cars, amongst other things.
[00:05:32] Berezovsky immediately liked Litvinenko.
[00:05:36] He was honest, diligent, and hard-working. Berezovsky suggested that the young man go and meet Vladimir Putin.
[00:05:45] Berezovsky had helped Putin rise to power, and knew that he was someone worth knowing in modern Russia.
[00:05:53] This was 1998, and Putin had just been made head of the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB.
[00:06:03] Litvinenko thought that Putin, as head of the FSB, would be interested in hearing about the widespread corruption that Litvinenko had discovered at the bureau.
[00:06:15] In particular, Litvinenko had been investigating the FSB protecting Uzbek drug barons in exchange for money.
[00:06:24] When Litvinenko first met Putin, he reported on these discoveries.
[00:06:30] Putin was utterly uninterested and closed down the investigation.
[00:06:36] Later that year, in November 1998, Litvinenko and several colleagues at the FSB held a press conference in which they claimed that they had received orders to kill several prominent Russian businessmen, including Boris Berezovsky.
[00:06:55] Litvinenko was immediately sacked from his position at the FSB.
[00:07:01] He was ordered not to leave Moscow, but he fled the country, fearing for his life.
[00:07:08] He knew that when you got on the wrong side of Vladimir Putin, you didn’t go to work quietly in a library or spend your days tending your garden.
[00:07:18] It was, in all probability, a death sentence.
[00:07:23] He first tried to claim political asylum in Turkey. It was rejected.
[00:07:30] He then bought a plane ticket back to Moscow, but importantly, the ticket involved a stop in London.
[00:07:39] When he arrived at London Heathrow Airport, he claimed political asylum, and this time it was granted.
[00:07:48] He lived in exile in London, but he didn’t shy away from publicity, he didn’t spend his days painting watercolours or teaching piano to schoolchildren.
[00:07:59] He continued to publicly criticise Putin from what he might have thought was a suitably safe distance.
[00:08:08] And the intensity of his criticism only increased as time went by.
[00:08:15] It wasn’t criticism only of the corruption that Putin allowed on his watch, of which there was more than enough to complain about, but it became personal.
[00:08:26] Litvinenko wrote an article on his blog alleging that Putin was a paedophile and that there was video footage of him having sex with young boys from his early days in the KGB.
[00:08:41] Putin, Litvinenko alleged, had destroyed all of this evidence when he became head of the FSB.
[00:08:49] This deeply inflammatory blog article was published in July of 2006, and Litvinenko chose to push it live after a video emerged of Putin kissing the stomach of a young boy in a crowd.
[00:09:05] It is a real video, it’s on YouTube and is very unsettling. Putin is visiting a crowd. There’s a young boy, who’s probably 5 or 6, and Putin pulls up the boy’s shirt and kisses him on the stomach.
[00:09:23] Litvinenko took this as supporting evidence of his theory, and decided to publish this article on a website called Chechenpress, which is the news agency of the Chechen separatists.
[00:09:37] The allegation was unsubstantiated, there was no evidence for it.
[00:09:43] And it didn’t make much of a dent abroad.
[00:09:47] But it was most definitely noticed by the Kremlin. Shortly afterwards there was a new law passed that made defamation of the President a federal crime.
[00:10:00] Now, before we continue, let’s just remind ourselves of exactly what’s going on in Russia and with Vladimir Putin during this period.
[00:10:11] In 1999, he was made Prime Minister, and a year later, in 2000, he became the president.
[00:10:20] By the time this article was published, he had cracked down on the oligarchs, making it clear that they could get rich in Russia but it was with his blessing, and playing by his rules.
[00:10:33] He was also re-elected by a large majority in 2004.
[00:10:40] He was the undisputed modern tsar, and had taken steps to silence anyone who had the tenacity to question him.
[00:10:49] So, let’s move forward to November the 1st, 2006.
[00:10:56] For much of his time in London, Litvinenko had been pretty happy to meet with journalists, other dissidents, and former colleagues without any formal private security. He was an enemy of the Russian state, but on the streets of London, he behaved just like any normal citizen.
[00:11:18] And in the morning of the 1st of November, he met an Italian security consultant called Mario Scaramella, at Itsu, a sushi restaurant in Piccadilly, in London.
[00:11:31] He ordered sushi and green tea, and then went on his way.
[00:11:36] Later that afternoon, at 4.30 to be precise, he went to the Millennium Hotel in London Mayfair, where he met two former associates: Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun.
[00:11:50] Both had ties to Russian intelligence, but they were keen to chat about potential business opportunities while they were in town. The reason for them being in London, by the way, was to watch the UEFA Cup match between Arsenal and CSKA Moscow, which was taking place later that evening.
[00:12:10] The match ended 0-0, and by all accounts was a pretty dull game.
[00:12:17] While this unexciting 0-0 draw was unfolding, Litvinenko was at home feeling awful. It was like no other sickness he had felt before, and he immediately said to his wife that he had been poisoned.
[00:12:33] At first, doctors couldn’t figure out what it was. Nothing seemed to be working, and his condition continued to worsen.
[00:12:44] He was transferred to University College London Hospital, but by this point he was deathly weak, and tufts of his hair had started to fall out.
[00:12:56] Now, if you have seen a picture of Alexander Litvinenko, the most recognisable one is probably of him in his hospital bed in a green smock, with all sorts of medical drips attached to him.
[00:13:11] And he is completely bald, there is no hair on his head.
[00:13:16] Litvinenko was not a bald man, at least he wasn’t until the last few days of his life.
[00:13:24] Losing your hair, as well as your skin falling off, is a common symptom of radiation poisoning.
[00:13:33] But when the British doctors tested Litvinenko for signs of radiation, they found nothing out of the ordinary.
[00:13:41] It wasn’t until samples of his blood were sent to a specialist nuclear research facility that scientists noticed something unusual. There were extraordinarily high levels of a particular type of radiation that they knew could only come from a substance called Polonium-210.
[00:14:02] Now, this is not a poison you can buy in a shop or make by ordering the right compounds online and brewing up in your kitchen.
[00:14:11] It needs to be made in a nuclear reactor, and is one of the rarest and most expensive substances on Earth.
[00:14:20] It is also one of the most deadly.
[00:14:23] To give you an idea of how potent it is, just one microgram – a millionth of a gram – is enough to kill an adult human.
[00:14:35] The production of Polonium-210 is limited to highly secure nuclear facilities, and all signs pointed to one specific source: Russia.
[00:14:47] As Litvinenko lay dying in hospital, British investigators began piecing together how the Polonium-210 had been administered.
[00:14:57] It was, in all probability, slipped into Litvinenko’s green tea at the Millennium Hotel, where he met Lugovoy and Kovtun on the afternoon of November 1st.
[00:15:09] And sure enough, the teapot he used had extremely high levels of radiation.
[00:15:16] This was where the radioactive trail started, but further traces were found on the chairs the two likely assassins sat on, in their hotel rooms, and everywhere they had gone.
[00:15:29] Traces were even found on the plane they had flown into the UK on and on the plane they used to travel back to Russia, both commercial planes, by the way.
[00:15:40] Everywhere the Russians had gone, they left behind a poisonous trail, leaving little doubt about who was responsible.
[00:15:49] The sheer amount of Polonium-210 that investigators found suggested that it had not been handled very carefully—perhaps the operatives were sloppy, perhaps they didn’t know quite how dangerous the substance they were handling was, or perhaps they simply didn’t care about covering their tracks.
[00:16:10] Lugovoy and Kovtun denied any involvement, but the evidence was damning.
[00:16:17] Now, the Polonium-210 poisoning was no ordinary assassination attempt.
[00:16:22] The logistics involved in transporting such a deadly substance–on a commercial aeroplane no less–the willingness to deploy it in a foreign country and the utter disregard for potential collateral damage all pointed to state-level involvement.
[00:16:41] And while the Kremlin denied any involvement, Litvinenko himself had no doubt about who was responsible. On his deathbed, as you heard, he directly accused Vladimir Putin of ordering his assassination, a charge that Putin and the Russian government have, of course, always denied.
[00:17:02] In the UK, at least, few believe this.
[00:17:06] In 2016, after a long public inquiry, it was concluded by British authorities that Litvinenko’s murder was “probably approved” by President Putin and the then-FSB head Nikolai Patrushev.
[00:17:23] The inquiry stopped short of saying it was definitively proven but left little doubt about where the responsibility lay.
[00:17:33] So, why go to such extreme lengths to kill Alexander Litvinenko?
[00:17:38] Why use a rare radioactive substance, leaving behind a radioactive trail that, if discovered, pointed directly back to Russia?
[00:17:48] The answer perhaps lies in the nature of Vladimir Putin’s leadership.
[00:17:54] Litvinenko wasn’t just a critic of Putin; he had humiliated him. From accusing Putin of corruption to publicly calling him a paedophile, Litvinenko had crossed a line that few dared to.
[00:18:09] For Putin, this wasn’t just about silencing a critic; it was about sending a message—a message to anyone, at home or abroad, who dared to challenge him.
[00:18:21] Defiance would not be tolerated, and the consequences would be brutal and public.
[00:18:29] And, they would be slow and agonising. Radiation poisoning is a horrific way to die, and perhaps Putin thought that Litvinenko didn’t deserve the quick and more deniable death that a fall from a fifth-floor window or being strangled at home might have provided.
[00:18:49] As you might remember, or could certainly imagine, the murder of Alexander Litvinenko caused an international outcry and severely damaged relations between the UK and Russia.
[00:19:03] The UK expelled several Russian diplomats, imposed sanctions, and called for justice.
[00:19:10] But Russia refused to extradite Lugovoy and Kovtun, who remained in Russia under the Kremlin’s protection.
[00:19:19] Lugovoy, bizarrely enough, even went on to become a member of the Russian parliament, and he is still serving today.
[00:19:29] For Litvinenko’s family, the fight for justice continues.
[00:19:33] His wife, Marina, has become a vocal advocate, demanding accountability and shining a light on the Kremlin’s actions.
[00:19:43] But for the Russian government, Litvinenko’s death was a demonstration of its power—a chilling reminder that critics could be reached, no matter where they were in the world.
[00:19:56] The assassination of Alexander Litvinenko is one of the most brazen and horrifying examples of state-sponsored murder in recent history. It highlighted the lengths Vladimir Putin and his regime would go to silence dissent and protect their image of strength.
[00:20:13] And, unfortunately, it's just one of many, a pattern of poisonings, assassinations, and brutal tactics that have come to define modern Russia under Vladimir Putin.
[00:20:25] A few years after the death of Litvinenko, his former boss, the exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, was found dead in his mansion in the English countryside. It was ruled as suicide, but there have been multiple question marks over whether other factors were at play.
[00:20:45] And moving into the recent past, in 2018, there was another, perhaps even more audacious poisoning attempt—one that failed but was just as brazen: the attempted murder of Sergey Skripal in Salisbury, England.
[00:21:01] And that, my friends, is what we have to look forward to in the next episode.
[00:21:08] OK, that is it for today’s episode on Alexander Litvinenko.
[00:21:12] To state the obvious, this is a tragic and horrifying story, but it’s also a fascinating insight into the way that Vladimir Putin operates and the lengths to which he will go to maintain power and control.
[00:21:27] As a reminder, this is part two of our three-part mini-series on “Putin and Poison”, and in part three, we’ll look at the failed attempt to poison Sergey Skripal and what it reveals about the evolution of Russian tactics under Putin.
[00:21:41] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:21:46] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part two of our three-part mini-series on the theme of “Putin and Poison”.
[00:00:30] In part one, we got an overview of the life of Vladimir Putin, his unlikely rise to power, and how he has consolidated that power to be one of, if not the, most powerful men in the history of Russia.
[00:00:45] In parts two and three, this episode and the next episode, we are going to look in detail at two incidents widely believed to have been approved, if not ordered personally, by the man himself.
[00:00:58] The first is the murder of his critic and former colleague, Alexander Litvinenko, and the second is the attempted and unsuccessful murder of a former Russian military intelligence officer, Sergey Skripal.
[00:01:12] They are both fascinating and terrifying incidents that give us an insight into the mind of Vladimir Putin and the lengths that he is prepared to go to.
[00:01:21] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:01:26] If you have ever travelled to Japan, or been to a place with exceptionally fresh fish, you will probably have tasted the difference between average and fantastic sushi.
[00:01:39] Sushi, when fresh that day and prepared properly, is on a completely different level.
[00:01:46] And bad sushi, well, it can leave more than an unsatisfactory taste in your mouth.
[00:01:52] It can make you feel pretty unwell indeed.
[00:01:56] And on the 1st of November, 2006, a man went for sushi at a well-known sushi chain in London called itsu.
[00:02:06] Later that day, he started to feel stomach pain, he started vomiting and had diarrhoea.
[00:02:14] As the hours passed, the pain worsened.
[00:02:17] He began sweating profusely and felt an overwhelming sense that something was very wrong.
[00:02:24] The pain didn’t let up, it didn’t die down, and in fact, it got so bad that he asked his wife to call him an ambulance.
[00:02:33] He was whisked away to hospital and treated for suspected gastroenteritis.
[00:02:40] He spoke with a foreign accent, but he told the doctors his name was Edwin Carter.
[00:02:47] Mr Carter’s gastroenteritis showed no signs of getting better. In fact, it got worse, much worse.
[00:02:56] It got so bad that he was transferred to a larger, specialised hospital, University College London Hospital.
[00:03:04] Five days later, he was dead.
[00:03:08] The man’s name, as you might have guessed, was not really Edwin Carter.
[00:03:13] It was Alexander Litvinenko.
[00:03:17] And this wasn’t gastroenteritis.
[00:03:20] In fact, it had nothing to do with sushi at all.
[00:03:25] He was poisoned by a radioactive substance called Polonium-210, a substance that it is thought could only have come from a highly secure nuclear facility in Russia and been administered to him, right slap bang in the centre of the capital of the UK, on the orders of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
[00:03:47] On his deathbed, surrounded by his wife and doctors, as he knew he had but hours to live, he had a powerful message to the man he believed had ordered his assassination.
[00:04:02] “…this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present condition. You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed. You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilised value. You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilised men and women. You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.” End quote.
[00:04:58] To understand how it got to this point, we must go back in time, to the early 1990s.
[00:05:05] Alexander Litvinenko was, in fact, an indirect colleague of Vladimir Putin at the KGB and then its successor, the FSB.
[00:05:16] He had first been assigned to investigate a failed assassination attempt on a man called Boris Berezovsky, who was one of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs and had made a fortune importing cars, amongst other things.
[00:05:32] Berezovsky immediately liked Litvinenko.
[00:05:36] He was honest, diligent, and hard-working. Berezovsky suggested that the young man go and meet Vladimir Putin.
[00:05:45] Berezovsky had helped Putin rise to power, and knew that he was someone worth knowing in modern Russia.
[00:05:53] This was 1998, and Putin had just been made head of the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB.
[00:06:03] Litvinenko thought that Putin, as head of the FSB, would be interested in hearing about the widespread corruption that Litvinenko had discovered at the bureau.
[00:06:15] In particular, Litvinenko had been investigating the FSB protecting Uzbek drug barons in exchange for money.
[00:06:24] When Litvinenko first met Putin, he reported on these discoveries.
[00:06:30] Putin was utterly uninterested and closed down the investigation.
[00:06:36] Later that year, in November 1998, Litvinenko and several colleagues at the FSB held a press conference in which they claimed that they had received orders to kill several prominent Russian businessmen, including Boris Berezovsky.
[00:06:55] Litvinenko was immediately sacked from his position at the FSB.
[00:07:01] He was ordered not to leave Moscow, but he fled the country, fearing for his life.
[00:07:08] He knew that when you got on the wrong side of Vladimir Putin, you didn’t go to work quietly in a library or spend your days tending your garden.
[00:07:18] It was, in all probability, a death sentence.
[00:07:23] He first tried to claim political asylum in Turkey. It was rejected.
[00:07:30] He then bought a plane ticket back to Moscow, but importantly, the ticket involved a stop in London.
[00:07:39] When he arrived at London Heathrow Airport, he claimed political asylum, and this time it was granted.
[00:07:48] He lived in exile in London, but he didn’t shy away from publicity, he didn’t spend his days painting watercolours or teaching piano to schoolchildren.
[00:07:59] He continued to publicly criticise Putin from what he might have thought was a suitably safe distance.
[00:08:08] And the intensity of his criticism only increased as time went by.
[00:08:15] It wasn’t criticism only of the corruption that Putin allowed on his watch, of which there was more than enough to complain about, but it became personal.
[00:08:26] Litvinenko wrote an article on his blog alleging that Putin was a paedophile and that there was video footage of him having sex with young boys from his early days in the KGB.
[00:08:41] Putin, Litvinenko alleged, had destroyed all of this evidence when he became head of the FSB.
[00:08:49] This deeply inflammatory blog article was published in July of 2006, and Litvinenko chose to push it live after a video emerged of Putin kissing the stomach of a young boy in a crowd.
[00:09:05] It is a real video, it’s on YouTube and is very unsettling. Putin is visiting a crowd. There’s a young boy, who’s probably 5 or 6, and Putin pulls up the boy’s shirt and kisses him on the stomach.
[00:09:23] Litvinenko took this as supporting evidence of his theory, and decided to publish this article on a website called Chechenpress, which is the news agency of the Chechen separatists.
[00:09:37] The allegation was unsubstantiated, there was no evidence for it.
[00:09:43] And it didn’t make much of a dent abroad.
[00:09:47] But it was most definitely noticed by the Kremlin. Shortly afterwards there was a new law passed that made defamation of the President a federal crime.
[00:10:00] Now, before we continue, let’s just remind ourselves of exactly what’s going on in Russia and with Vladimir Putin during this period.
[00:10:11] In 1999, he was made Prime Minister, and a year later, in 2000, he became the president.
[00:10:20] By the time this article was published, he had cracked down on the oligarchs, making it clear that they could get rich in Russia but it was with his blessing, and playing by his rules.
[00:10:33] He was also re-elected by a large majority in 2004.
[00:10:40] He was the undisputed modern tsar, and had taken steps to silence anyone who had the tenacity to question him.
[00:10:49] So, let’s move forward to November the 1st, 2006.
[00:10:56] For much of his time in London, Litvinenko had been pretty happy to meet with journalists, other dissidents, and former colleagues without any formal private security. He was an enemy of the Russian state, but on the streets of London, he behaved just like any normal citizen.
[00:11:18] And in the morning of the 1st of November, he met an Italian security consultant called Mario Scaramella, at Itsu, a sushi restaurant in Piccadilly, in London.
[00:11:31] He ordered sushi and green tea, and then went on his way.
[00:11:36] Later that afternoon, at 4.30 to be precise, he went to the Millennium Hotel in London Mayfair, where he met two former associates: Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun.
[00:11:50] Both had ties to Russian intelligence, but they were keen to chat about potential business opportunities while they were in town. The reason for them being in London, by the way, was to watch the UEFA Cup match between Arsenal and CSKA Moscow, which was taking place later that evening.
[00:12:10] The match ended 0-0, and by all accounts was a pretty dull game.
[00:12:17] While this unexciting 0-0 draw was unfolding, Litvinenko was at home feeling awful. It was like no other sickness he had felt before, and he immediately said to his wife that he had been poisoned.
[00:12:33] At first, doctors couldn’t figure out what it was. Nothing seemed to be working, and his condition continued to worsen.
[00:12:44] He was transferred to University College London Hospital, but by this point he was deathly weak, and tufts of his hair had started to fall out.
[00:12:56] Now, if you have seen a picture of Alexander Litvinenko, the most recognisable one is probably of him in his hospital bed in a green smock, with all sorts of medical drips attached to him.
[00:13:11] And he is completely bald, there is no hair on his head.
[00:13:16] Litvinenko was not a bald man, at least he wasn’t until the last few days of his life.
[00:13:24] Losing your hair, as well as your skin falling off, is a common symptom of radiation poisoning.
[00:13:33] But when the British doctors tested Litvinenko for signs of radiation, they found nothing out of the ordinary.
[00:13:41] It wasn’t until samples of his blood were sent to a specialist nuclear research facility that scientists noticed something unusual. There were extraordinarily high levels of a particular type of radiation that they knew could only come from a substance called Polonium-210.
[00:14:02] Now, this is not a poison you can buy in a shop or make by ordering the right compounds online and brewing up in your kitchen.
[00:14:11] It needs to be made in a nuclear reactor, and is one of the rarest and most expensive substances on Earth.
[00:14:20] It is also one of the most deadly.
[00:14:23] To give you an idea of how potent it is, just one microgram – a millionth of a gram – is enough to kill an adult human.
[00:14:35] The production of Polonium-210 is limited to highly secure nuclear facilities, and all signs pointed to one specific source: Russia.
[00:14:47] As Litvinenko lay dying in hospital, British investigators began piecing together how the Polonium-210 had been administered.
[00:14:57] It was, in all probability, slipped into Litvinenko’s green tea at the Millennium Hotel, where he met Lugovoy and Kovtun on the afternoon of November 1st.
[00:15:09] And sure enough, the teapot he used had extremely high levels of radiation.
[00:15:16] This was where the radioactive trail started, but further traces were found on the chairs the two likely assassins sat on, in their hotel rooms, and everywhere they had gone.
[00:15:29] Traces were even found on the plane they had flown into the UK on and on the plane they used to travel back to Russia, both commercial planes, by the way.
[00:15:40] Everywhere the Russians had gone, they left behind a poisonous trail, leaving little doubt about who was responsible.
[00:15:49] The sheer amount of Polonium-210 that investigators found suggested that it had not been handled very carefully—perhaps the operatives were sloppy, perhaps they didn’t know quite how dangerous the substance they were handling was, or perhaps they simply didn’t care about covering their tracks.
[00:16:10] Lugovoy and Kovtun denied any involvement, but the evidence was damning.
[00:16:17] Now, the Polonium-210 poisoning was no ordinary assassination attempt.
[00:16:22] The logistics involved in transporting such a deadly substance–on a commercial aeroplane no less–the willingness to deploy it in a foreign country and the utter disregard for potential collateral damage all pointed to state-level involvement.
[00:16:41] And while the Kremlin denied any involvement, Litvinenko himself had no doubt about who was responsible. On his deathbed, as you heard, he directly accused Vladimir Putin of ordering his assassination, a charge that Putin and the Russian government have, of course, always denied.
[00:17:02] In the UK, at least, few believe this.
[00:17:06] In 2016, after a long public inquiry, it was concluded by British authorities that Litvinenko’s murder was “probably approved” by President Putin and the then-FSB head Nikolai Patrushev.
[00:17:23] The inquiry stopped short of saying it was definitively proven but left little doubt about where the responsibility lay.
[00:17:33] So, why go to such extreme lengths to kill Alexander Litvinenko?
[00:17:38] Why use a rare radioactive substance, leaving behind a radioactive trail that, if discovered, pointed directly back to Russia?
[00:17:48] The answer perhaps lies in the nature of Vladimir Putin’s leadership.
[00:17:54] Litvinenko wasn’t just a critic of Putin; he had humiliated him. From accusing Putin of corruption to publicly calling him a paedophile, Litvinenko had crossed a line that few dared to.
[00:18:09] For Putin, this wasn’t just about silencing a critic; it was about sending a message—a message to anyone, at home or abroad, who dared to challenge him.
[00:18:21] Defiance would not be tolerated, and the consequences would be brutal and public.
[00:18:29] And, they would be slow and agonising. Radiation poisoning is a horrific way to die, and perhaps Putin thought that Litvinenko didn’t deserve the quick and more deniable death that a fall from a fifth-floor window or being strangled at home might have provided.
[00:18:49] As you might remember, or could certainly imagine, the murder of Alexander Litvinenko caused an international outcry and severely damaged relations between the UK and Russia.
[00:19:03] The UK expelled several Russian diplomats, imposed sanctions, and called for justice.
[00:19:10] But Russia refused to extradite Lugovoy and Kovtun, who remained in Russia under the Kremlin’s protection.
[00:19:19] Lugovoy, bizarrely enough, even went on to become a member of the Russian parliament, and he is still serving today.
[00:19:29] For Litvinenko’s family, the fight for justice continues.
[00:19:33] His wife, Marina, has become a vocal advocate, demanding accountability and shining a light on the Kremlin’s actions.
[00:19:43] But for the Russian government, Litvinenko’s death was a demonstration of its power—a chilling reminder that critics could be reached, no matter where they were in the world.
[00:19:56] The assassination of Alexander Litvinenko is one of the most brazen and horrifying examples of state-sponsored murder in recent history. It highlighted the lengths Vladimir Putin and his regime would go to silence dissent and protect their image of strength.
[00:20:13] And, unfortunately, it's just one of many, a pattern of poisonings, assassinations, and brutal tactics that have come to define modern Russia under Vladimir Putin.
[00:20:25] A few years after the death of Litvinenko, his former boss, the exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, was found dead in his mansion in the English countryside. It was ruled as suicide, but there have been multiple question marks over whether other factors were at play.
[00:20:45] And moving into the recent past, in 2018, there was another, perhaps even more audacious poisoning attempt—one that failed but was just as brazen: the attempted murder of Sergey Skripal in Salisbury, England.
[00:21:01] And that, my friends, is what we have to look forward to in the next episode.
[00:21:08] OK, that is it for today’s episode on Alexander Litvinenko.
[00:21:12] To state the obvious, this is a tragic and horrifying story, but it’s also a fascinating insight into the way that Vladimir Putin operates and the lengths to which he will go to maintain power and control.
[00:21:27] As a reminder, this is part two of our three-part mini-series on “Putin and Poison”, and in part three, we’ll look at the failed attempt to poison Sergey Skripal and what it reveals about the evolution of Russian tactics under Putin.
[00:21:41] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:21:46] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
