United Kingdom judge: 2 Russians killed ex-agent Litvinenko

The report concludes that the operation was “probably approved” by Putin, a former K.G.B. officer himself, pointing to “strong circumstantial evidence that the Russian state was responsible for Mr. Litvinenko’s death” and the fact that the killers had no personal reason to want him dead.

David Cameron has promised tougher action against Russian Federation after a public inquiry found that President Vladimir Putin probably ordered the murder of former spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.

Britain summoned the Russian ambassador for a dressing-down and imposed an asset freeze on the two main Russian suspects: Andrei Lugovoi, now a Russian lawmaker, and Dmitry Kovtun.

43-year-old Litvinenko – who had accused the Russian president on his death bed – was killed by two FSB spies who slipped radioactive polonium 210 into his tea pot at a Mayfair hotel in central London, Judge Robert Owen said in a damning report. A judicial report released indicates that Putin may have known a lot about the death of Alexander Litvinenko.

His meeting at the Foreign Office lasted less than an hour.

Beyond those limited expressions of protest, it is unclear how the British government will respond to the inquiry’s findings, especially as Western powers court Russian Federation for its help in resolving the civil war in Syria.

Kovtun, who has kept a lower public profile, told Interfax on Thursday he did not want to comment until he had the chance to read the report thoroughly.

Judge Robert Owen, who led the inquiry, has described the operation as “probably approved” by Mr Putin.

“Such terminology is not allowed in our judicial practice nor is it allowed in the judicial practice of other countries and certainly can not be deemed by us as a verdict in any of its parts”, the spokesman said. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the inquiry was politicized and overshadowed Moscow-London relations.

May called the actions “a blatant an unacceptable breach of the most fundamental tenets of worldwide law and civilised behaviour”. “The process… was not transparent… the final outcome was therefore the result of a “politically-motivated and extremely opaque process”.

Litvinenko passed away in late November of 2006 a few weeks after having drinking tea containing Po-210 isotope in a London hotel.

The report looked at Litvinenko’s “highly personal attacks” against the Russian president that reached a “climax” with a July 2006 article on the Chechenpress website, four months before he was poisoned.