Poisoned relations

International | The murder of a high-profile Putin critic raises questions about Moscow’s direction and its intentions abroad | Priya Abraham

The diagnosis was so unlikely, it came too late for Alexander Litvinenko: radiation poisoning by polonium-210, a highly rare and lethal element discovered by Marie Curie. When Litvinenko died on Thanksgiving Day, three weeks after he fell ill, the former Russian spy, 43 had lost all his hair and lay ashen in a London hospital bed.

A minor panic among London residents soon followed, as police found traces of radiation at the sushi bar where Litvinenko ate, a hotel and security firm he visited, and the offices of Russian oligarch and friend Boris Berezovsky. About 1,700 people called in the first week worried about radiation exposure, and authorities deemed at least 18 cases serious enough to examine.

Litvinenko was a former colonel in Russia's Federal Security Service or FSB, the successor to the KGB. After becoming an adamant critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, he fled to the United Kingdom, where he became a citizen just weeks before he died.