A Moratorium on Murder?

Russia and Britain are in the latest throes of their dustup over the nuclear assassination of Alexander Litvinenko in central London. The latest chapter is a TV report detailing apparent British conclusions that the Russian state -- and not just individuals or rogues -- were responsible for the poisoning. The Russians have demanded an official British "explanation," meaning a refutation, which the British have refused to provide.

What seems lost in all of this noise is a strange quiet elsewhere -- there have been no sensational murders or state-assisted slaughter involving Russia in well over a year, since Litvinenko's slaying in November 2006.

Even if one counts the mysterious death of journalist Ivan Safronov in March 2007, when he fell five floors from his apartment building, it is still a relatively long time.

Vladimir Putin and his successor Dmitri Medvedev have put up an impassive face toward international outrage toward the string of murders and deaths during Putin's time in power. Earlier this week, Medvedev is said to have rejected British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's face-to-face renewal of Britain's request for the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, whom Britain has charged with Litvinenko's murder.

Yet, one wonders whether the persistent global opprobrium cast on Russia and the Kremlin has had some impact.

Yet it's one matter to call an effective moratorium on murder. It's another to have decisive judicial action on prior cases. Wednesday was the fourth anniversary of the murder of Paul Klebnikov, the crusading editor of Forbes Russia, who was gunned down near his office as he walked to the Metro. His family marked the date by insisting that the Russians find and try Klebnikov's assailants.

Britain's Brown said that he told Medvedev at the G-8 summit in Japan that the U.K. will not drop the Litvinenko case. Murder carried out in the U.K. must be adjudicated. So far, it's not clear that the Russians get that point.

Photo: lilibethjanuary
Rights: Creative Commons

Brits Go Home

The latest in the fracas between the U.K. and Russia would be amusing were its origin not so serious. Here it is in a nutshell: Russia, angry that Britain won't let bygones be bygones in the London poisoning murder of Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, has sent a message to that effect by closing down Britain's cultural arm in cities outside Moscow. Britain, angry that Russia presumes to have control over its own territory, says these British Council offices will remain open. As one might expect, we now have a farce involving the St. Petersburg police, the son of a lord (yes this country still calls grown men "lord") and fears of "provocative games."

This all goes back to Litvinenko's assassination in November 2006 by a rare nuclear isotope called polonium-210. Britain rapidly tracked back the polonium to Moscow, and specifically to two former Russian intelligence officers who, for reasons unproven as yet in a courtroom, apparently had this alpha-emitting isotope all over their clothes, and left traces in Hamburg and London. Britain has filed murder charges against one of them, a recently elected member of the Russian Duma named Andrei Lugovoi. Vladimir Putin has chosen to treat the case similar to a traffic violation, and argue (innaccurately) that he's constitutionally barred from extraditing Lugovoi. Britain says rightly that the case is anything but run-of-the-mill, and that Putin should send Lugovoi to Britain post-haste.

Meanwhile, Britain has expelled some Russian diplomats, and Russia has ordered the British Council offices in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg closed. For reasons known only to God, Gordon Brown and perhaps the Queen, Britain has rejected Russia's right to close these offices, and left its staff there. So yesterday you had the spectacle of Putin upping the stakes by having the FSB (successor to the KGB) summoning some Russian employees of the British Council for questioning, and detaining the head of the St. Petersburg office, Stephen Kinnock (whose father is Lord Neil Kinnock, a British politician), for an hour on an alleged traffic violation. In the case of the FSB questioning, the intelligence agency said it was acting to prevent them being from used by Britain as an "instrument in provocative games" by Britain, according to the Bloomberg account.

I'm sympathetic with the U.K.'s case. You are right to pursue the Litvinenko murder. But you don't have a leg to stand on in this latest turn. In the world of diplomacy, you have to pack up those offices.

Photo: Laertes
Rights: Creative Commons

Nikolai Khokhlov: 1922 - 2007

Khokhlov (right) and Okolovich

Nikolai Khokhlov, a KGB defector who survived the world's first known assassination attempt by a nuclear isotope, died last week. He was 85.

Khokhlov, who recounted his story in the classic memoir "In the Name of Conscience," first gained fame in 1954 when he defied a Kremlin order to organize the assassination of an anti-Soviet dissident named Georgi Okolovich. Heading a three-man unit operating in Frankfurt, Khokhlov walked up alone to Okolovich's apartment, and informed him just what he was sent to Germany to do. With that, the murder was sabotaged.

The heroic tenor of the event turned tragedy, however, when the CIA failed to rescue Khokhlov's wife, Yana, and son, Alek, in Moscow, as the agency had promised as part of his defection. The wife and son were arrested, and Khokhlov saw them again only 38 years later, in 1992, when Boris Yeltsin pardoned him. He and Yana had meanwhile divorced, and Khokhlov had remarried.

In 1957, Khokhlov again attracted international attention. While he was attending an anti-Communist conference in Frankfurt, someone slipped a dose of a radioactive isotope of thallium, a metal, into his coffee. Khokhlov's doctors were certain he was going to die -- his hair had fallen out, his skin was covered with bloody splotches, and his body seemed to be working against him. Instead, Khokhlov somehow came out of it.

In the 1960s, Khokhlov went on to begin an entirely new career as a tenured psychology professor at California State University at San Bernardino. He became known as an exceedingly articulate defender of parapsychology, and conversely a critic of Freud and Jung.

Interest in Khokhlov became renewed in November, when another defector from Moscow -- Alexander Litvinenko -- was poisoned by a nuclear isotope in London. Litvinenko displayed almost identical symptoms to those suffered by Khokhlov. It turned out that he was poisoned by polonium, another radioactive isotope. Litvinenko died in November. Khokhlov gave several interviews in which he pinned the blame on the Russian spy services.

Khokhlov leaves his wife, Tanja, a son, two daughters and five grandchildren.