Sergei Skripal, a former colonel in Russia’s military intelligence arrived in the UK in 2010 after he was discovered selling secrets to the MI6. He was part of a ‘spy swap’ program that allowed him to relocate to England.

The question remains, who is really behind this attack? Why would Mr Skripal be attacked now after living under the radar for 8 years? What can the investigation hope to look like, and what can we know so far in comparison to previous cases of attacks of Russian citizens on British soil such as Alexander Litvinenko and Alexander Perepilichnyy?

Chair

Oliver Bullough is a prize-winning writer, broadcaster and journalist, who has written in, around and about the former Soviet world for the last decade and a half. Bullough spent 7 years in Russia from 1999 as a correspondent for Reuters. His book The Last Man in Russia: And the Struggle to Save a Dying Nation is about the effect of Stalinism on future generations. Bullough is currently investigating fraud, money-laundering and international corruption and chairs our regular Kleptoscope nights at the Frontline Club.

Speakers

Jane Bradley is an investigations correspondent for BuzzFeed News. She is the co-author of Buzzfeed’s investigation into the suspected Russia-linked assassination Alexander Perepilichnyy ‘Poison in the System’  and 14 other suspected Russia-linked deaths on British soil. Bradley was one of the youngest senior broadcast journalists at the BBC at 24 before going on to work as a producer for Panorama. Bradley has worked for the likes of Channel 4/Dispatches, PBS Frontline, New York Times before joining Buzzfeed in 2015.

Marina Litvinenko  is a writer, known for Death of a Dissident, Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File (2007). She was previously married to Alexander Litvinenko.

Chris Phillips is former Head of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office with particular expertise in Counter Terrorism strategy. He co-ordinated the Counter Terrorist security for visits to the UK from foreign governments and dignitaries. His specialism is in the field of strategic counter terrorism advice and best practice.

Mary Dejevsky is a writer and broadcaster and chief editorial writer for the Independent. She is a former foreign correspondent in Moscow, Paris and Washington, and a special correspondent in China and many parts of Europe.

1 November 2006. Alexander Litvinenko is brazenly poisoned in central London. His crime? He had made some powerful enemies in Russia.

Based on the best part of a decade’s reporting, as well as extensive interviews with those closest to the events, Luke Harding‘s A Very Expensive Poison is the definitive inside story of the life and death of Alexander Litvinenko.

The evening will start with drinks at 7:00 PM, followed by a sit-down dinner at 7:30 PM.
Three course menu costs £25 per person – drinks not included.

Along with Luke Harding, we are delighted to welcome Marina Litvinenko at the BookNight dinner.

The event will be hosted by Frontline Club director, Pranvera Smith, and founding member and senior correspondent at the Guardian and the Observer, Ed Vulliamy.

For more information about membership and the other benefits on offer, please contact membership coordinator Aurélie Bourguet.

Cowell has dome something better. His meticulously researched opus – The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder – The First Act of Nuclear Terrorism and the New Cold War – fully justifies its sub-title, which is perhaps the more important part of the story. “Who?” is partly answered in the evidence piled up against Litvinenko’s erstwhile colleague Andrei Lugovoi, whom the British authorities have tried, unsuccessfully, to have extradited from Moscow .
 
Cowell’s summing up of the forensic investigation which proved Litvinenko was poisoned with a minute trace of the isotope Polonium-210, sprayed into a teapot is worthy of “CSI”. It also makes clear how close the authorities came to NOT finding the  murder weapon. Polonium only showed up when a secret facility tested Litvinenko’s final urine sample.

“If the (British)  Ministry of Defence scientists had not run the extremely unusual tests when they did”, Cowell writes. “it is conceivable that the nature of the poisoning would have remained a mystery, as Litvinenko’s killers surely intended it to be…” His description of the poison at work is chilling: “…the isotope tore relentlessly through his bone marrow and his organs, destroying the immune system. The lethal dose measured a tiny fraction of a microgram…This was no ordinary murder.” Rhe “no ordinary” aspect takes thia book to another level, an artful  melding of  “who?” with “why?”

The inescapable conclusion is that the other half of  “who” is the then president, now prime minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin. Cowell connects him to the “Why?” with a deft weaving of the role of the Russian oligarchs, especially Litvinenko’s one-time employer and Putin’s enemy Boris Berezovsky and their power struggles with the Kremlin and the Russian security service, the FSB.

Meticulous reporting, using intelligence sources and participants in the affair, shines a light into the usually opaque world of Russian policy. To restore Russia ‘s place as a world power Putin could not tolerate dissent from regional governments, troublesome members the Duma (parliament), journalists (twenty mysteriously killed, including Anna  Politkovskaya) or dissidents like Litvinenko railing from ostensibly safe exile. “Putin,” Cowell writes, “restored what the Russians call the ‘vertical’ power structure, whose apex is the Kremlin.”

The Terminal Spy sums up: “The death of Litvinenko would come to be seen as the defining moment of the Putin presidency. Putin sought to restore Moscow ‘s greatness. The death of Litvinenko ensured that Russia ‘s reputation as a land to be feared for the worst of reasons was revived for all the world to see.” Given that the book was written well before the latest clashes in Georgia, the observation is prescient to say the least.

Reviewed by Allen Pizzey, roving correspondent for CBS News, based in Rome. The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder – The First Act of Nuclear Terrorism and the New Cold War by Alan Cowell published by Doubleday, £16.99.

It was then that a former KGB agent named Alexander Litvinenko asked to be recognised. The rest as they say is history, not instant history but history nevertheless.

For many months now the Frontline Club has been recording on video most Forum events and experimenting with a system that makes it easy to access the discussions on the Frontline Club website.  But there had been numerous  technical problems making the system work, and Vaughan Smith and John Coghill had been frustrated trying to exploit the broadband revolution.

After word spread that Litvinenko was seriously ill with what later was diagnosed as Polonium radiation poisoning, an alert Associated Press reporter who had been in the Forum for the Politkovskaya tribute, called wondering whether we happened to have what he said on video.  AP got a scoop, and other networks and agencies also began bombarding Frontline with requests, not only from Britain but from all over the world. Frontline had a world exclusive, and suddenly Smith was back in the independent news agency business.  

It was a publicity bonanza for the Frontline Club, not only on the nightly news and 24 hour news channels but also on our own website. Coghill made it impossible to come to the Frontline website without being shown the Litvinenko clip. Did this involuntary accessing turn some people off? Coghill assumes that some did grow weary of having to navigate around the clip. But the figures that he has gathered since the Forum comments were posted are impressive:  more than 106,000 viewers have watched the video in the four weeks that it’s been shown; more than 33,000 “unique visitors” to the website.  And viewers and visitors stayed with the video watching it for more than 2 minutes at a time.

Coghill also decided to make the Litvinenko Forum video available to YouTube. It generated more than 56,000 views. Google video also has shown it and received more than 3,000 views.

Vaughan Smith acknowledges that he had concerns that Litvinenko might have been poisoned by someone who was in the Forum the night that he accused President Putin of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya.But there’s no evidence to support that, and Litvinenko as he lay dying, repeated his accusation.  For Smith and Frontline, the Litvinenko experience has reminded us all of the price journalists, activists, and whistle-blowers – if that is what Litvinenko turns out to have been – pay for exercising free speech.  Smith says that as long as there are brave individuals who take those risks, the Frontine Club will make its platform available to them.