Death of a Londoner

ON NOVEMBER 1st 2006 Marina Litvinenko cooked a special dinner for her husband, Alexander, to mark the sixth anniversary of their arrival in Britain from Russia (and their first since becoming citizens). In the early hours of November 2nd the spy-turned-dissident started vomiting. In hospital his condition deteriorated: his hair fell out, his skin turned yellow and he threw up parts of his stomach. After 20 days of agony he composed a statement blaming his poisoning on Vladimir Putin. He died of heart failure shortly afterwards.

Almost a decade later, on January 21st, a judge-led inquiry concluded that two Russian agents had most likely spiked Litvinenko’s tea with polonium-210, a radioactive isotope, at a meeting in London. They were “probably” acting on Mr Putin’s orders. Sir Robert Owen’s report also indicates that the murder was about more than bumping off an enemy. Its particulars—from the use of a slow-working poison to the trail of radiation through London and the decoration awarded to one of the suspects last year—amounted to an ostentatious sneer at the British state. They sent a message to other opponents: don’t think that Moscow’s jurisdiction is limited to Russia’s borders, or its citizenry.