One of the men accused of murdering Alexander Litvinenko in London has died due to COVID-19.
Dmitry Kovtun, along with Andrei Lugovoy, is believed to have committed the 2006 assassination on behalf of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).
Kovtun died at a Moscow hospital, Russia’s TASS news agency said on Saturday.
Lugovoy, now a prominent member of the Russian parliament, said he was mourning the death of a “close and loyal friend,” the agency reported.
Image: Police officers outside the Millennium Mayfair Hotel in London, one of the places where former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko visited in his last days.
Litvinenko, a British citizen, was a former KGB agent who went to work for MI6 after fleeing to the United Kingdom.
He had also become an open critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He died of an agonizing death after being poisoned in London after his tea was bound with polonium 210, a rare and very powerful radioactive isotope.
From his deathbed, he accused President Putin of ordering his assassination, but the Kremlin has always denied any role.
Read more: Russia responsible for the London assassination, rules of the European Court of Human Rights
A judge in a British investigation into the case concluded in 2016 that the assassination was an operation by the Russian intelligence agency FSB, which was probably approved by its then-director, Nikolai Patrushev, and by President Putin himself. .
The investigation also found that the former KGB bodyguard Lugovoy and his Russian compatriot Kovtun carried out the murder.
British investigators found traces of polonium in places in London where the two men had been, even in offices, hotels, planes and the Arsenal football stadium.
They denied poisoning and Russia refused to extradite them to trial.
Tensions between Litvinenko and President Putin date back to his only face-to-face meeting in 1998, when Putin was head of the FSB and Litvinenko was pushing for intelligence reforms.
Read more: Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko: A Timeline
Litvinenko’s death sparked an international protest and further strained relations between Moscow and the West.
In 2018, the Kremlin was again singled out for intoxication on British soil, when an attempt was made to assassinate former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with a nervous agent novichok.
Three Russian men have been charged with Salisbury poisoning, but British authorities have not yet been able to bring them to justice.