Dmitry Kovtun, one of two Russian men accused of assassinating former spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London, died on Saturday because of the Covid in a Moscow hospital.
Litvinenko died in 2006, weeks after drinking tea with radioactive isotope polonium 210 in a London hotel, where he met Kovtun and the other suspect, Andrei Lugovoi. Since then, the case has weighed heavily on relations between Britain and Russia.
After Litvinenko’s death, detectives found polonium in every room of the hotel where Kovtun and Lugovoi had stayed in London, as well as in the seat of Lugovoi’s plane from Moscow and many other places. such as Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium.
Kovtun’s death at the age of 56 was first reported by Lugovoi, a former KGB bodyguard who is now a Russian MP, who wrote on his Telegram page on Saturday: “This is an irreplaceable and difficult loss for us.”
“Sad news has arrived today, as a result of a serious illness associated with a coronavirus infection, my close and faithful friend has died suddenly,” Lugovoi added.
A British investigation in 2016 concluded that Litvinenko’s assassination was an operation by the Russian spy agency FSB and that the assassination was “probably” approved at the time by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
One of the key findings of the British investigation led by Sir Robert Owen was the telephone records showing that Kovtun called another colleague of the FSB saying that he was looking for a cook to put “a very expensive poison” to Litvinenko’s food or drink.
Last year, the European Court of Human Rights also ruled that Russia was responsible for Litvinenko’s assassination, and ordered Moscow to pay 100,000 euros (£ 85,000) in non-pecuniary damage to his widow, Marina.
In a statement on the deathbed, Litvinenko accused Putin of being behind his assassination.
The Kremlin has always denied the charges and refused to extradite the two suspects for trial.
Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, Kovtun is believed to have served the Eastern Communist Party in the ninth leadership of the KGB, which was responsible for protecting senior Kremlin officials. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, Kovtun and his then-German wife, Inna Hohne, moved to Hamburg and applied for political asylum, with him working as a waiter. He eventually moved from Germany to Russia where he was involved in various businesses.
In contrast to Lugovoi, who became a prominent politician after Litvinenko’s poisoning, Kovtun kept a low profile in Russia and little is known about his private life.
Hohne previously told German detectives during the investigation into Litvinenko’s death that Kovtun was a heavy drinker who switched to low-paying jobs and dreamed of becoming a porn star.
Litvinenko, who was fired from the FSB after publicly criticizing the security service’s connection to organized crime, is believed to have been killed for his work for British intelligence agencies and for his claims that The FSB was responsible for the bombing of apartment blocks in Moscow and two other cities in 1999.
Litvinenko’s assassination was followed by a series of other poisonings by Kremlin critics that the West blamed on Russia, including the attempted poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal in the UK in 2018 and the leader of the opposition Alexei Navalny in Siberia in 2020.