Chief suspect feted with near-hero status

By Nick Holdsworth in Moscow
The Telegraph, Last Updated: 1:03am GMT 28/10/2007

While the widow of his alleged victim hides in fear, Andrei Lugovoi is
leading a deliberately public life on the political hustings in Russia.

The former KGB agent is campaigning as a leading candidate for the
ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia in December's
parliamentary elections. The prize: a seat in the State Duma, which
comes with immunity from prosecution.

Not that Mr Lugovoi, 42, appears to have cause to fear prosecution in
Britain or Russia over Alexander Litvinenko's poisoning last year.
Moscow has refused British extradition requests and the chances of his
being prosecuted in Russia are remote since his elevation to near-hero
status, apparently in line with President Putin's increasingly
anti-Western rhetoric.

Mr Lugovoi adopted his own anti-Western stance while garnering support
in Vladivostok last week, claiming the UK used him as a "tool of
provocation against Russia" and describing Scotland Yard's decision to
send officers to Russia as "one more provocation".

"Those are only opponents of Russia who are not interested in a strong
Russia," Mr Lugovoi said. "All that is done to discredit the citizens
of Russia and the [Russian] state in general."

During campaigning, Mr Lugovoi met commanders of the Russian Pacific
fleet and servicemen, and posed for photographs holding party flags.

He continued his populist message on his party's website, saying: "We
should stand firm in the face of the international situation that has
developed around Russia."

Appealing to Vladivostok's poor, Mr Lugovoi, a multimillionaire, vowed
to "support those people who have an opportunity to work, but have no
opportunity to earn. Those who receive kopecks (pennies)."

While Mr Lugovoi campaigned, the third man present at the Mayfair
hotel when Litvinenko was poisoned described plans to toast the
anniversary of his grisly death with a glass of vodka.

Dmitri Kovtun, a childhood friend and business associate of Mr
Lugovoi, told The Sunday Telegraph that they owed it to Litvinenko
who, like them, was a born-and-bred military and security man. Mr
Kovtun, who described spending a month in a Moscow hospital with
radioactive poisoning after Litvinenko's death, said that he felt no
after-effects of his own brush with polonium-210.

"I am fine now. The rumours that I had been in a coma and had
continued to suffer health problems are not true. Morally, I feel fine
too," the 42-year-old security consultant said.

In the cramped office he shares with Mr Lugovoi in Moscow's Radisson
Slavyanaksya Hotel, which gained infamy in the 1990s as a mafia haunt,
Mr Kovtun paused when asked how he felt about Litvinenko's death.

"He was neither a friend, nor a colleague. He was an acquaintance –
there is a big difference. But of course we shall drink to him on the
anniversary of his death."

Slender and slightly built, with stylishly short greying hair, Mr
Kovtun, who served in the Soviet special forces, mused on the web of
theories spun in Russia about who killed Litvinenko.

"I was at that last meeting only by chance. If you were a hired killer
– an agent for the security service – and were supposed to kill a man,
would you take someone along by chance? Andrei Lugovoi had his wife
and family with him in London. It's madness to think he would have
carried out the assassination. We've been through dozens of
explanations and variations. Maybe Alexander Litvinenko was mad. When
I met him I thought he was definitely not a normal guy."

Although questioned extensively in Moscow by officers from Scotland
Yard, Mr Kovtun has not been named as a murder suspect.

Mr Kovtun concluded by repeating what he told police. "I, too, was in
hospital with radiation poisoning. I felt awful and was terrified.
Would I do that to myself if I intended to kill someone? What kind of
a killer would contaminate himself and leave a trail of evidence
behind him?"


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