169. The Murder of Litvinenko: Poisoned in London (Ep 1)

17:24David:Yeah, I wouldn't say I knew him that well, but I did visit him and meet him face to face in his office. And we'll come back to that because actually that's going to form part of that story and what he was talking to me about at that point. Really interesting, really important character, super smart, brooding, intense, ambitious, pugnacious, a plotter who is going to play a key role, as we'll see in the rise of Vladimir Putin, but will then become his enemy. Berezovsky had gone into business in the late 80s as the economy is being liberalised. He starts with a car dealership, then he moves into broadcasting, TV channels, airlines, oil industry.

18:02Gordon:None of that makes sense, by the way. No, as a conglomerate. You wrote it all together like it somehow makes sense as this natural rise.

18:09David:But I think it's fair to say you buy what you can get hold of in these years in Russia. They're like privatising industries, which had all been state controlled. And it's just like, yeah, I'll try and buy that. I'll get hold of a bit of that. And I think that's what they're doing. These oligarchs, as they become known, are making huge fortunes by being aggressive in how they buy some of these companies, which have been state owned. And he's going to become first among equal of the oligarchs, Berezovsky, which also means that he's going to move into politics because that's what happens is business and politics emerging because that's where power lies it's the nature of oligarchy and and that means he's going to have enemies and enemies will want to kill him so the first time he really sees that and we're going to come back because there's going to be a lot of plotting on people's lives but Berezovsky's first plot there may be more comes on the evening of June 7th 1994 when he's getting into his Mercedes car to drive away from his office and a remote control bomb placed under the car explodes his driver is killed reportedly decapitated sorry for the grisly detail but Berezovsky himself is injured but survives and it's front page news in Russia it's a big deal big businessman the arrival of car bombs as a way of settling business disputes but the crucial thing is that a sandy head, serious-minded 31-year-old FSB officer is assigned to investigate the assassination attempt, and that's Alexander Litvinenko.

19:43Gordon:And Litvinenko is ordered also to spy on Berezovsky, isn't he? So this gives you a sense of maybe some of the tensions in the organization, which is trying to navigate this chaotic, really violent world of post-Soviet Russia, while also ostensibly trying to bring perpetrators of these kinds of crimes to justice. But Litvinenko is sort of a fascinating element of the man that he's given this job, which is both go solve the crime, but also spy for us on the victim, who is a really important businessman. And I guess it makes sense if you're the FSB, you want to know what's Berezovsky up to. And you probably want leverage over this guy.

20:29David:Yeah. So Litvinenko is going to accompany Berezovsky on a trip to Switzerland but using an FSB passport. What's interesting is that Litvinenko will end up becoming closer to Berezovsky and in many ways more loyal to Berezovsky than he is to the FSB, the security services employers. Very interesting progression. There's a story where a TV presenter on the channel Berezovsky owns is murdered. Police come to talk to Berezovsky about it. Berezovsky gets a message to Litvinenko that they're coming and Litvinenko arrives and draws his gun and stops the police taking Berezovsky away because the fear is that this was somehow the whole thing was a pretext to get hold of Berezovsky and maybe get rid of him and bump him off using the police which gives you an idea of how much plotting and uncertainty there was in Russia at the time but Berezovsky as a result starts to feel indebted to this security service officer.

21:28Gordon:Was Litvinenko being paid by Berezovsky at this point in time? No.

21:33David:I think there might be an element of friendship or loyalty, but the signs are he really does just attach himself. The two men, very different power relations, start to become... I mean, friends is perhaps the wrong word. Allies, maybe that's a better way of putting it because they both have uses for each other. Berezovsky's powerful, Litvinenko's in the FSB. And Berezovsky's power is going to grow because at one point it looks like Yeltsin's going to lose, Yeltsin being the president of Russia at this time, might lose the 1996 election to a communist. So Yeltsin needs money. So he does a secret deal with the oligarchs where they're going to throw their money and influence behind his campaign.

22:15David:And in return, they're going to get a bigger stake in some of the industries, so even more economic power. Berezovsky brokers this deal. And as a result, he's going to end up becoming deputy head of the National Security Council in the wake of the election. So you can see Berezovsky is moving closer and closer to power and Litvinenko is to some extent with him in that journey.

22:35Gordon:But then there is this very interesting interlude for Litvinenko. And I think it really does cast a long shadow over this story for him personally, which is that he ends up going to Chechnya, where in 94, this absolutely brutal conflict breaks out. Now, Chechnya, of course, had been one of the Soviet republics. It's largely Muslim. It had been seeking independence. And Litvinenko is sent there to work on counterterrorism.

23:05David:Yeah. And it's partly because it's close to Nalchik, where he grew up. So he knows the terrain. And so he's going to get asked to do interrogation, interviews of people. He's also at some point, certainly going to be involved in combat operations. He's present at one siege, and he's going to see the violence that Russian forces use to subdue Chechen desires and fights for independence. I mean, the Russians are going to flatten Chechen cities.

23:32Gordon:There's kind of a line, I mean, we talked about this when I was working on Syria at the agency. You could kind of draw a line in many ways from the way the Russians acted in Chechnya to what they did in Syria to what they are doing in Ukraine, where Russian counterinsurgency is basically just destroy everything.

23:55David:Yeah, flatten the place. And that's what they're doing in Chechen. It's interesting because the experience there starts to change Litvinenko. There's one example where he's involved in interrogating a 17-year-old Chechen prisoner. And he realizes is all the pupils in that boy's class had taken up arms. And he begins to compare the Chechen defence of their country with the actions of Russians in the Second World War defending their country against an invader. So it's starting to change his mindset to maybe these people are fighting for freedom. So he's idealistic, almost naive, and more open to different ideas about the Russian state.

24:35David:Partly, he's developing this sympathy, I think, with Chechnya. But soon, he's going to be back in Moscow from this interlude. And there, he's going to directly confront Vladimir Putin in a dramatic encounter which will define his life and death.

24:50Gordon:Oh, there's our cliffhanger. Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll see how this encounter plays out.

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25:59David:so welcome back by the summer of 1997 litvon yenko's returned from chechnya back to the fsb back to moscow and he's in a new team in the lubyanka the famous headquarters of the russian security services kgb in the old days now the fsb and it's a team for the investigation and prevention of organized crime known as ERPO, U-R-P-O. But David, are they preventing organized crime or are they part of it? That is the question.

26:32Gordon:The answer is yes, right? They're both preventing it. And then more broadly, the FSB is also part of it. And Litvinenko, I find this fascinating about him, Gordon, is that he's distressed by this. He seems surprised that the FSB is embroiled not just in maybe mundane corruption, but much more serious things like kidnapping, carrying out violent vendettas for both politicians and criminals. It's involved in some cases, most likely in murder. And so Litvinenko, this kind of idealistic, somewhat naive guy who's supposed to be stopping all of this as part of his work with ERPO, is actually seeing it take place on his watch and it's being conducted by his colleagues.

27:21David:Yeah. And he's outraged by it. And then the next thing that happens now is in this unit, he's asked to look into assassinating no less than Boris Berezovsky, the guy he got close to. I mean, which is wild, you know, that there is a discussion about this. Although in true intelligence, you know, service style, the request is given verbally. It's not like a piece of paper going, please assassinate the deputy head of the National Security Council. But that gives you a sense of what people in this organisation were doing. They were fulfilling vendettas and dealing with political agendas and using murder and criminals to do it.

28:01David:It's pretty crazy stuff. And Berezovsky certainly has a lot of enemies. He's just negotiated a peace deal with the Chechen rebels. Hardliners see that as a sellout. He's obviously a powerful figure. But Litvinenko, This is the guy he'd got to know, protecting a few years earlier. So he's shocked. And he goes and tells Berezovsky about the plot, late 97, early 98. And again, he's not being paid at this point by Berezovsky.

28:26Gordon:Is that right? Not as far as we know. It's sort of hard to believe, I have to say. Just because he very much, if you just look at this on the face of it, it very much seems like he's one of Berezovsky's agents inside the FSB. But I guess maybe he's friends with the man, and as a result, because of that friendship, is trying to protect him, is what you're saying.

28:50David:Yeah, I think there's an element of friendship, and there's an element in which they do see themselves as allies against the corrupt hardliners of the FSB. So Levinenko is motivated by this idealism, and Berezovsky is also actually at this point thinking, I want to clear out some of these old KGB hardliners and trying to do it. So you can see that they've got an alignment and this is going to draw them even closer together because Litvinenko and others in the FSB want to be whistleblowers about the corruption. They're nervous. They make a video of their allegations. It's filmed by one of Berezovsky's TV presenters at Berezovsky's dacha.

29:28David:You're looking pained at the idea of doing that. I mean, it's a risky move. It seems like a bad idea.

29:33Gordon:Yeah.

29:34David:Yeah.

29:34Gordon:I guess only in retrospect, perhaps. But at the time, it must have been seen as a risky move in any respect.

29:40David:Yeah, I think a lot of what we're going to see him do in this period, in retrospect, looks mad. But at the time, I think there was still this view that Russia was on a path to perhaps cleaning up some of this problem and that that was possible. Now, in hindsight, we know it didn't happen. But at that time, I guess they think it is possible. So he, Litvinenko and Berezovsky go to the head of the FSB, a man called Kovalyev. And the FSB, of course, bosses and others are really unhappy that Litvinenko has told Berezovsky about the plot. It's like, what are you doing? And why are you making these allegations about corruption?

30:17David:That's kind of what we do. And they're saying, you've got to withdraw this. So he's now coming into tension and into these clashes with his bosses. He'll talk about getting beaten up in the street, harassed, bugged.

30:31Gordon:Litvinenko's beaten up in the street? Yeah.

30:33David:Yeah. So he's beaten up by some, I think, some youths on the street. And he takes it as possibly having been arranged by his enemies in the FSB. But I think, you know, he can't be sure about that. And he thinks he's bugged. He gets harassed at work. All this stuff's happening. So it's getting spicy. But President Yeltsin removes the head of the FSB, Kavalyev. So this looks like Berezovsky's clear out drive is winning and he might be able to increase his power.

31:05Gordon:Put a reformer in at the FSB, right, Gordon? Yeah, that's what you do. Someone from the outside who's really going to clean up shop.

31:13David:Someone you can trust, David. That's what you want. Someone you can trust. So Berezovsky himself engineers, it looks like, or has a role in putting this young guy who, well, youngish, looks like he might be the future. Vladimir Putin.

31:30Gordon:Oh, and he is the future. He is the future. He is the future. Not in the way people think.

31:35David:Not in the way people think. So he's the new FSB, Ed. We talked about this in the series we did on the rise of Putin with Mark Gagliotti for our club members. This is, at the time, it was seen as pretty weird because Putin hadn't been a big senior KGB officer. He'd not been very senior. He'd been in St. Petersburg in a mayor's office. And suddenly he's the head of the FSB. He's kind of jumping over lots of other people who should have got that job.

31:57Gordon:He's seen, I think, by Berezovsky as a kind of blank slate that Berezovsky can write his own message on. And he's, you know, Berezovsky can control him is the thought, right? Yeah. We'll see how that turns out, you know. With no spoilers here, but let's see if Berezovsky can keep Vladimir Putin under control.

32:18David:So Berezovsky arranges for Litvinenko to go and see Putin, the new FSB head, July 1998. And this is this pivotal moment for both men, actually, because they're going to have this confrontation. It doesn't last long, maybe 10 minutes, but it is incredibly important for what happens next, particularly for Litvinenko in his life. Putin, of course, is not a tall man, takes up martial arts at school so he can stand up for himself and likes to intimidate. But on this occasion, he's cagey. But we do have an account, don't we, from Litvinenko himself. And it's interesting. Should we read it? Do you want to read it?

32:52Gordon:I'll read it, Gordon. Let me read it. So here's, this is Litvinenko's account of the meeting with Putin. He came out from behind the desk to greet me. Apparently, he wanted to show an open, likable personality. Which, okay, has Putin ever, was there a point in his, this is me now, was there ever a point in Putin's life where he was attempting to show an open, likable personality? Anyhow, back to the Litvinenko account. We operatives have a special style of behavior. We do not bow to each other, do without pleasantries, and so everything is clear. Just look into each other's eyes and it becomes clear.

33:26Gordon:Do you trust the person or not? And I immediately had the impression that he is not sincere. He looked not like an FSB director, but a person who played the director.

33:36David:It's a great description, isn't it?

33:38Gordon:I guess, but doesn't... I mean, maybe this is my American bias, Gordon, but I would presume that most FSB directors are also not sincere, trustworthy individuals. But that's just the former CIA man in me.

33:53David:No one would ever say that about CIA people. So Litvinenko, so this meeting is so interesting because Litvinenko is there to outline his knowledge of corruption in the FSB and the links to organized crime. And he's brought along this dossier that he's drawn up. Oh, dossiers are bad ideas.

34:11Gordon:We've established this in our Rock WMD series. never bring a dossier anywhere.

34:17David:No, and I'm afraid in this case, this dossier is also going to be destined for the rubbish heap of history because it's everything that Litvinenko has collected about links to drug smuggling and organized crime from the FSB. And he offers to hand it over to Putin. And Putin goes, nah.

34:37Gordon:I mean, in retrospect, it seems like such an insane thing to do because Putin is deeply, And this is what, does Litvinenko not know at this point that Putin has been involved in these activities in St. Petersburg? Maybe he does. Maybe he doesn't. He missed it in the dossier. He missed it in the dossier.

34:56David:But I guess what he's thinking is Putin is perhaps Berezovsky's guy like me. Perhaps Putin is there, you know, thanks to Berezovsky to some extent. I think Berezovsky always exaggerates how much influence he has over these decisions. But he's perhaps hoping this is the new guy, the last guy, after all, got sacked by the president. So maybe this is the guy. But when he tries to hand over the dossier, Putin goes, you keep it. It's your work. I mean, that's a bad start. And then he's also got this list of all the FSB officers who Litvinenko thinks are clean. And he tells Putin, well, there are some honest people in the system.

35:35David:And together, we could battle corruption and the mafia despite the dangers. and I like the description, Putin nods. Putin writes down Litvinenko's home phone number and he says, sure, I'll call you. I mean, it's tragic. I mean, I find it sad. It is sad. It is sad, you know, because this is a guy who thinks everyone else is breaking the rules, but we can change the system. And of course, as soon as Litvinenko leaves the room, Putin orders an investigation into Litvinenko and for the investigation into the corruption allegations to get dropped. So immediately Putin is showing his hand, I think, isn't he?

36:17Gordon:I do think it is a very sad, very tragic undercurrent to the story that there are so many people in Russia at this time who are trying, even inside the system, like Litvinenko, who think that there's a different and better way to run the state. and they are ultimately, of course, not successful because they're up against, we talked about this in our series on Vasily Matrokin, they're up against this massive organization, the KGB, which by the end of the Soviet area was the most powerful organization in the Soviet Union and it hasn't been dismantled at this point. It's very much alive and well.

36:58Gordon:So then Litvinenko, and I find this is wild, Gordon, Because on November 17th of 1998, he then decides to do something which in retrospect seems totally insane. Because he goes public with his criticism of the FSB.

37:17David:Yeah. He and some of his colleagues are going to organize a press conference saying they are FSB officers. and it's really interesting because the other fsb officers wear ski masks kind of balaclavas to hide their faces but ledvinenko is the one guy who doesn't do that why again yeah i just think he's got this idealistic as you said maybe naive that's maybe also the word view that the truth is going to win out i'm going to be open about this i'm going to fight it and he's gonna just say that you know we've received illegal orders to kill to kidnap to extort instead of protecting the state senior fsb officials are part of the problem and this press conference is obviously massive at the time and you can see pictures of it barizovsky is in the background of course and he's hoping he can use this perhaps to get putin to purge the old guard and the enemies and he doesn't realize i think that that putin is allied to that old guard of you know kgb as you said fsb officers who are tied into corruption that he's already chosen his side he's not capable of being pushed to a different direction so these hopes are going to be dashed and it marked livinenko out as a man who'd you know putin's eyes and colleagues eyes as a traitor and putin is going to actually actually single out Litvinenko in a personal way in some comments soon after talking about his marriage and other things.

38:50David:And it's that sense where Putin really takes things personally. He's a kind of guy who has grudges and particularly people he views as traitors. And I think that's something we'll come back to when we look at the murder. So Litvinenko and the other men are all going to get sacked. Litvinenko is arrested March 1999. He spends eight months in prison, the famous Lafortevo prison in Moscow, where spies and political prisoners are held.

39:15Gordon:It was Stalin's favorite shooting prison also, Gordon. Yeah. So that's the place to be. I did a decent amount of research on Lafortevo for my second novel, Moscow X, which of course all takes place in Russia. They have this very interesting system in which they don't want the prisoners to interact with each other. And so when they're transferred around in the corridors, they actually have these like wooden boxes that almost look like coffins that are on either end. So if two teams of guards are taking prisoners down a corridor at the same time, so the prisoners don't see each other, they might stick one of the prisoners inside that box while the other one passes.

39:55Gordon:And the guards have these weird kind of metal clackers, like little cricket things that they click because they don't want the prisoners to hear the guards' voices. And so The guards will click these things to signal who's going into which box and who passes and all that. So it's a very, I mean, a lot of deep history at that prison, but it's a pretty grisly place. They actually shot a lot of people there during the terror. And they have these, in many of the cells, there are these kind of scupper drains that are built into the walls because they were shooting so many people that they had to have cleanup.

40:32David:Drain their blood. Right.

40:33Gordon:And so there's drains on the side of the walls and then they've got pressure hoses or had pressure hoses in most of the room so they can shoot someone, spray the thing down and bring someone else in to kill them. That's grim, isn't it? This is the rich history of the prison where they hold Litvinenko.

40:47David:And luckily he does make it out. And he actually gets it. It's really interesting. He gets acquitted in his first trial in November 1999. As he is acquitted, FSB officers come into the courtroom and arrest him again. I mean it's just like you couldn't get a clearer signal we are going to get you and then he's released on bail in December 1999 this is such an interesting moment because so much else is going on in Russia big changes in Russian politics President Yeltsin was ill his priority is getting out of office in a way that protects him and his family from corruption charges they think we need an empty vessel who will do that who will give us immunity come up with a deal who do they pick Who did they pick?

41:29David:Vladimir Putin.

41:31Gordon:Volodya. Yes, indeed. Everyone thought this guy was malleable. Our guy. Yeah, our guy.

41:38David:And he's a spy. He's going to bring strength and stability. So he gets, first of all, made prime minister, August 1999. So he's moving up the ladder from FSB prime minister. And then something important happens, which we will come back to, because there's a series of devastating bomb blasts which hit apartment buildings in Russia in September. So just after Putin is made prime minister, hundreds of people are killed. These appear to be dramatic terrorist attacks which scare the country. It's blamed on Chechens. They confirm the idea you need a strong man, a former KGB man, some might say, to take on the Chechen insurgents.

42:18David:and this paves the way for putin's rise and also for a new war in chechnya to take on those who are said to be responsible we'll come back to these bombings because they're they're very interesting and very important but putin's on the rise you've had the bombings yeltsin then resigns new year's eve 1999 putin from almost nowhere is acting president does the deal with the yeltsin family he's going to become president very quickly though it becomes obvious doesn't it that he's not the empty vessel because summer 2000, Putin summons all these oligarchs, the big businessmen, to a barbecue. I mean, I love the image of the barbecue.

42:55David:Sausages. I don't think Putin would be grilling the sausages himself.

42:57Gordon:Putin had the chef's hat on and the apron that he's turning the sausages over.

43:01David:I think that's how it works. And he says to the oligarchs, you're not running me, I'm running you. You are my guys, you bend the knee or else you're out. Stay out of politics, then you can keep your money if you interfere in politics i'll take you down and beresovsky is the is the guy who is not happy with that he's one of a few who are not happy with that but he's the one of the first ones to really clash with putin and there's this really interesting thing where there's a a moment where this really comes to life because a russian submarine the kursk sinks in the baron sea august 2000 118 people are on board it's a really dramatic story as families are hoping maybe these men could be rescued.

43:44David:And Berezovsky's TV stations, we said he owned TV stations, go hard on the new president, Putin. Critical of him. Putin's on holiday. Isn't it?

43:55Gordon:26 years later, Gordon, this is now an impossible situation to imagine, that you'd actually have Russian media that are taking the president to task because Because Putin's on vacation when this happens, right? And the response is seen as slow and kind of tepid. And Berezovsky just has his stations rake him over the coals for this. Putin is not amused by this treatment, though.

44:22David:No, it's fair to say. So Putin summons Berezovsky to the Kremlin and basically says, hand over your TV channel. You know, give it to me. Because you can't go on like this. It's the new Putin way, which is I'm going to put order in oligarchs. I'm going to tell me what to do. Berezovsky refuses. And so he flees to the United Kingdom, late 2000, via France, I think, claims asylum. And from there, he begins to plot. He's a plotter. But the crucial thing is he's not the only one to flee.

44:50Gordon:So during the year 2000, Litvinenko is out on bail and very unsurprisingly concerned for his family. He's getting harassed, fair to say, getting messages from people inside the FSB that he's viewed as a traitor. And Marina has said that her husband had actually been approached by an FSB colonel who had said, we will not continue discussions with you. We will kill you. To be clear, we will kill you and your six-year-old son. You're being prosecuted not for any crimes that you may have committed. Everybody knows that you did not commit them. You are being prosecuted for betraying the system and openly acting against the system.

45:30Gordon:So, wow, that is a very clear message that it's time for the Litvinenko family to go.

45:37David:Yeah, that's right. So late September, Litvinenko tells Marina he's flying to Nalchik to visit relatives, but he then crosses into nearby Georgia. He can get in there. His international passport has been taken by the FSB, but he's got an internal one, which he can use to cross the border, goes to the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi. he passes a message to Berezovsky who in turn contacts some of his people so particularly a guy called Yuri Felchinsky a Russian-American writer investigator of the FSB Felchinsky travels from Boston to Tbilisi to meet Litvinenko all of this and all that we hear about it's going to be funded by Berezovsky Litvinenko gets a message to Marina his wife tells her to buy a new mobile phone calls her on the new phone tells her and Anatoly their son has to go on holiday anywhere just get somewhere they go to malaga in spain uh then he speaks to her when she's in spain and he says he's not in nalchik he's in georgia they have to decide if they're ever going to return to russia if they go back the chances are he's going to get arrested jailed killed maybe even their son they can't be safe and marina i think at that point agrees it's time to go so meanwhile levonenko's in tbilisi is with him they're worried they're worried the fsb are going to know that they've gone they're going to be tracing them people are starting to call around moscow including to felshinsky saying you seen litvon yenko so it's interesting they first try the u.s embassy in tbilisi looking for political asylum it's refused makes i think it makes some sense yeah and then litvon yenko gets It's a false Georgian passport.

47:16David:Not entirely clear how. They then use that to go to Turkey, to Antalya. Felschinsky goes and gets Berezovsky's private plane. He's got a private jet. It's helpful when you're trying to escape places. To collect Marina and bring her and Anatolia to Antalya. So the family are reunited. Felschinsky at this point is replaced by another Russian exile, a guy called Alex Goldfarb, scientist activist from New York. Alex asks people, you know, before he leaves in Washington, and he says, you know, how do I get this guy out? Can I take him to an embassy? They say, don't get involved. Too dangerous. So now it's Goldfarb Litvinenko.

47:51David:They go to Ankara in Turkey, try the US embassy there. Litvinenko and Marina interviewed separately by US officials in secure rooms. Do you think, I mean, would that be CIA doing that? You know, if it's a prearranged, you've got an FSB guy turning up?

48:04Gordon:I tend to think it would, yeah, it would probably, start with a consular officer and then make its way to eventually to someone from the agency, I would think. I mean, because it seems like these were not, it wasn't a 10-minute interview. They end up having longer discussions with him. So I'd imagine at some point, yeah, you would have the CIA involved, which I think is interesting because maybe it speaks to something of the maybe both the politics of the times where of course russia is not the implacable foe that it is today and at the same time also maybe what litvinenko isn't he's not offering his services as as an asset he doesn't it probably doesn't want to be debriefed by you know the cia about the inner workings of the fsb i mean this is very much a political asylum case, isn't it?

48:57Gordon:Where he wants a safe haven, a place to land.

49:00David:Yeah, rather than being a spy. So yeah, he gets interviewed by the Americans for three hours. He goes back to the hotel that evening, I think realizing he's not going to get out and he's going to be told the next day, no. I think you're right. I think it looks a bit complicated, looks a bit murky. The politics with Russia, do you want to get into a fight with someone who's the new Russian leader's enemy? So they escape, they drive out in the middle of the night from the car park they fear the fsb are on their tail at this point they're getting pretty desperate i think uh one of berazovsky's business partners suggests sending a boat to pick them up in istanbul but goldfarb is alex goldfarb who's with lipidenko is researching where they could get by air without a visa and the solution they eventually hit upon was to fly to the uk to london by purchasing tickets from istanbul to tbilisi via london as that didn't require a transit visas.

49:54David:Now, it's a slightly weird route when you think about it, isn't it? You're going from Istanbul in Turkey or, you know, to Tbilisi via London. It's like, that's not a logical route, but that's the one they picked precisely because of the visa regime. So 1st November 2000, Alexander Litvinenko, Marina and Anatoly fly to London. They land at Heathrow. Litvinenko approaches the first police officer he can see in the transit area and he says, I am KGB officer and I'm asking for political asylum.

50:28Gordon:We'll be there, Gordon, with London now set to become Litvinenko's new home. Let's end this first episode of our series on Litvinenko. When we come back, we will see how this battle with Putin is going to get even more dangerous.

50:44David:And don't forget, if you want to hear those episodes right now, then you can by joining the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. You'll get early access, ad-free listening, lots of other things, including some bonus episodes where we're going to be talking to people directly involved in this case, including one of the police officers who led the investigation into what happened. So do join the club. But otherwise, we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.