[dfkf]

"Fourth, the causes espoused by Mr Litvinenko – such as the FSB’s alleged responsibility for the apartment bombings, the war in Chechnya, and alleged collusion between President Putin and other members of his administration and organised crime – were areas of particular sensitivity to the Putin administration. "

"Finally, there was undoubtedly a personal dimension to the antagonism between Mr Litvinenko on the one hand and President Putin on the other. The history between the two men dated back to their (only) meeting in 1998, at a time when Mr Putin was the newly appointed head of the FSB and Mr Berezovsky and Mr Litvinenko still hoped that he might implement a programme of reform. In the years that followed,Mr Litvinenko made repeated highly personal attacks on President Putin, culminating in the allegation of paedophilia in July 2006"

That is from the report. Call me a Putin-apologist, an agent from Olgino, but these motives look like garbage. There is an entire industry of "making highly personal attacks" on Putin and blaming all kinds of things on him. The name of these "Putin's critics" is legion, they have been doing it for more than a decade, and they've had zero success... that is, of course, if by "success" you mean making Russians believe what they say, and not just selling shocking stories about the darkest secrets of the KayGeeBee to British tabloids...

[scarmig]

I'll go with "Putin-apologist." Why act like pointing out an obvious motive is the focus or even a main point of the report? What about substantive points like:

"Traces of the isotope were later found in many of the same places where the two alleged killers had visited: The hotel's bathroom, their hotel room, a board room where they conducted an earlier meeting and the plane they traveled aboard."

We're not talking about traces of carbon or lead, here.

[crdoconnor]

There's less doubt about Lugovoy's / Kovtun's than there is Putin's involvement.

[orf]

Of course not, Putin is not an idiot and wouldn't leave a trail to him after ordering someone killed on British soil. There is no doubt about Lugovoy or Kovtun's involvement, but directly or indirectly Putin is responsible for his agents running around poisoning people with polonium (edit: not plutonium!). The fact they are refusing to extradite them is telling as well.

[crdoconnor]

>Putin is not an idiot and wouldn't leave a trail to him after ordering someone killed on British soil.

Perhaps but that's not evidence.

>There is no doubt about Lugovoy or Kovtun's involvement, but directly or indirectly Putin is responsible for his agents running around poisoning people with plutonium.

That's not evidence either. Besides, they were ex-KGB / FSB agents.

>The fact they are refusing to extradite them is telling as well.

Let's reverse this. Would Obama agree to extradite a Republican ex-CIA agent with powerful friends who flew to Moscow and killed Edward Snowden without his knowledge?

Can you imagine what the political fallout would be if he did? He'd be characterized as a mixture of powerless, hypocritical, traitorous and anti-American all at once by both friends and enemies. Political suicide at worst; own goal at best.

[bartread]

Litvinenko was poisioned with polonium, not plutonium. </pedantry>

[dfkf]

"Why act like pointing out an obvious motive is the focus or even a main point of the report?" Because this motive is quoted in articles to link this crime to Putin. I certainly don't care about Lugovoi, Kovtun, their motives, was it even a crime and not an accident, involvement of the British secret services etc. etc. Britain should have known better when it welcomed all the dirty money from Russia...

[ajuc]

People criticize Putin - they die. Who is killing them?

[Ntrails]

Let's be real here, a minuscule proportion of critics die. The vast majority are ignored and a few get sent to prison for some crime they may or may not have had any hand in.

The motivations described are certainly insufficient to withstand scrutiny.

[bartread]

Possibly there's more detail in the report itself (I haven't read it) but, if not, I tend to agree.

[dfkf]

And who killed Paul Khlebnikov in 2004? He was a Putin-apologist and chief editor of Russia Forbes. Unfortunately, a lot of journalists die in Russia every year, and has been for the past quarter of century. Cherry picking some of them proves nothing.