The death in London on 23 November of the FSB (former KGB) agent, Alexander Litvinenko, topped the headlines in the UK and many other countries. Unburdened by hard evidence, commentators of various stripes have been quick to point the finger of blame at the Russian security services; President Vladimir Putin; and the Russian businessman in exile in London, Boris Berezovsky. Until Litvinenko died, the case had attracted little attention in the Russian media. But as the brickbats rained in against Russia, the media there have not shied from discussing all of the theories being put forward as to who killed Litvinenko and why - adding a few eye-catching theories of their own. The episode highlights the maturity and vigour of the Russian media in what is, for now, a predominantly media event - unlikely as such to have any consequences for investment risks.
"Don't touch Russia with a bargepole!" is a conclusion that many could reach after wading through the thousands of column inches and hours of air-time which the death of Alexander Litvinenko has inspired in the British media. When The Times runs a front-page headline, "The bastards got me, they won't get us all" (24 November), and anti-Russian sentiment is running as strongly as at any time since the collapse of communism, a reaction from inside Russia is only to be expected.
In the Soviet period, Moscow was periodically involved in the murky business of assassinating perceived enemies of the state, both at home and abroad. Following the break-up of the USSR, the KGB files were open to researchers for long enough to reveal details of several plots - a number of them successful.
The KGB's tentacles even reached London in 1978. The Bulgarian emigre, Georgy Markov, was a thorn in the side of the Soviet Union's most loyal ally in the socialist camp, Bulgaria. His regular broadcasts on the Bulgarian Service of the BBC World Service angered Sofia and Moscow. So in a joint operation which sounded like something out of a spy novel, Markov was eliminated by a poison pellet fired into his leg from the tip of an umbrella.
In post-Soviet times, there have been no proven cases of Russian special services eliminating opponents abroad - with the one exception of the Chechen separatist leader, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, in Qatar. But the context for that 'special operation' - a colonial war (in Chechnya) causing thousands of casualties on both sides - is very different from the purely political activities in London of Litvinenko - or, more broadly, the circle around the exiled businessman and formerly powerful oligarch, Boris Berezovsky, who initially employed Litvinenko when the latter was still a serving FSB agent in the 1990s, retaining him on the payroll ever since.
The UK government's grant of political asylum to Berezovsky, as also to the senior Chechen separatist politician, Akhmed Zakayev, has soured UK-Russian relations.
The link with Chechnya provides one plausible backdrop among many to Litvinenko's death. Although there is no hard evidence for now about what happened to him, few doubt that he was murdered.
Before the announcement of Litvinenko's death, the Russian media paid little attention to the story. But after it was announced that Litvinenko had died, and the revelation that he had been poisoned with a radioactive substance, the arguments were aired across the media. Some gave summaries of what the British media were saying, including pointing the finger of responsibility variously at President Putin, the FSB and Boris Berezovsky; others came up with alternative views; and some took the flight of imagination even further than any British thoughts.
Russian media covers all the bases in this extraordinary "whodunnit?"
Without hard evidence as to what happened to Alexander Litvinenko, these Russian judgements are as imponderable as those of the worldwide media. The British government has called sessions of its COBRA security group to investigate all possibilities, even the idea that Litvinenko may have committed suicide. To the outside observer it seems incredible to think that anyone should put themselves through the agonies of fatal radiation poisoning to make a political point, but clearly the police and special services have to explore every avenue. It seems unlikely, however, that the British authorities will spend too much time following up the theory that it was all planned by Dmitry Medvedev to improve his presidential chances in 2008; nor will they call in for questioning the fairies at the bottom of the garden.
Amidst the scepticism and, in some cases, mockery of the coverage in the Western media, the most remarkable thing about the treatment of the Litvinenko case in the Russian media is that all of the arguments are put forward. It's often said that the Russian media under Putin has been heavily censored, with some observers suggesting that it is little better than it was in Soviet times, when all media was controlled by the Communist Party. But it would have been unthinkable for the Soviet media in 1978 (after the murder of Gerogy Markov) to conduct such an examination of what the western press was saying, even if only to dismiss it. One thing this whole chapter has shown is that the Russian media is more vigorous and mature than is often supposed.
Unless and until the Litvinenko murder is solved (which it may very well never be), this will remain a media-driven event - pitting a surge of negative sentiment towards the Russian government in the West against a defensive patriotic reaction in Russia itself. A purely media event will not take on a geopolitical dimension bearing on investment risks.
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