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Archive 1Archive 2

He is NOT wanted by Moscow

I removed the part about him being on the wanted list in Moscow. The Times article given as reference doesn't say anything about it. In his interview in 2002 he said that Interpol's warrant for his arrest has been revoked. Source: http://www.kommersant.ru/index-news.html?ext=news&id=56046

...publicly wanted. Haizum 18:38, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Even more: looks like Russian justice did not look for him at all. His sentence (3.5 years probation) ended in December 2005 and Chertanovo court ruled at February 25, 2003 that his absence in Russia does not violate conditions of probation.
This needs confirmation
--Ovc 01:47, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Convert to Islam?

Is there any credibility to the report that Litvinenko had converted to Islam? Does anyone know the facts one way or another? Dr. Dan 23:11, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

This information appeared on the web-site http://www.chechenpress.info and has never been approved by anybody else include other Chechen sites such as http://kavkazcenter.com/ (ARU)

Father of Litvinenko said this information is wrong [1] Biophys 06:13, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

No he said different thing. In your link he said he cannot say whatever is this true or not. "He said ’I want to be buried according to Muslim tradition’," Mr Litvinenko told Moscow's Kommersant daily. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2486268_2,00.html on the bottom. Alexandre Koriakine 23:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Putin and little boys

Looks like an article written by him:

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:vA38XOLDXnYJ:www.chechenpress.co.uk/english/news/2006/07/05/01.shtml+putin+pedophile&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2/

Who knows? Of course, the episodes with Nikita and Skuratov are well known. But we know surprisingly little about the actual Putin's life and career. One person who tried to investigate the actual biography of Putin was Artem Borovik (editor of newspaper "Top secret" - probably it does not exist any more), and he died in a puzzling plane crash (Putin said: "those who are against me will be dead in three days" - just a few days before this crash if I remember correctly). Another person who knows a lot about Putin is Boris Berezovsky (so he might be next on the hit list). However, Berezovsky is guilty as sin in many things, so he probaly is not going to come forward and tell anything, unless his life is really threatened. I only hope that he is clever enought to write down everything he knows and keep it in a secret place (in the event if he is killed too). Biophys 03:25, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, [2] is by him. Whether there is or isn't evidence that Putin is a pedophile, that Litvinenko alleged he is should be mentioned in the article. -- Infrogmation 14:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
If you mention 'Putin and little boys' then you have to mention of other Litvinenko accusation: 9/11 in New-York, explosions in London in 2005 and others which was made by Putin (as Litvinenko claimed). Alexandre Koriakine 10:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Done--Shakura 20:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Who removed the part about the Islam?

Why was it removed? It stated that this was not confirmed and it could be a speculation, but what was so awful about it to stay there? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.238.139.53 (talk) 21:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I didnt remove it but it probebly didnt belong here considering Wikipedia is actualy an encyclopedia and its editors must abide by guidelines. Chavatshimshon 23:15, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Er, if actual traces of polonium were found at all these places, that raises the possibility of suicide. That Litvinenko is said to have converted to Islam then becomes vital info. Still hearsay, but we could cite it as unconfirmed hearsay. This is a self-destructing theory of course, because now that the possibility of a "theatrical" suicide has been raised, Litvinenko's entourage will probably not dare to publically bury him as a Muslim, so we may never know for sure.
On the other hand, it is not always clear when reading these reports whether the police mean traces of radioactivity or traces of actual polonium. And the presence of polonium at all these places could also mean that someone very close to Litvinenko was involved. --Pan Gerwazy 09:12, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

24.60.104.71 02:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)Even if he is Muslim, it really doest tie into this in any way. Since Religion appears to have no significant involvement in his murder.

I believe it is a sin for a Muslim to commit suicide, except where it can kill an enemy of Islam. So if he did convert to Isalm ( more probably a smaer attempt by his enemies ) he then immediately commited a great sin. 145.253.108.22 10:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Availability of Polonium 210

The article now suggests that only governments could get access to Polonium 210. This is not quite true. Small amounts of Polonium 210 can be mail ordered by anyone in the United States, without any license.

United Nuclear is offering 0.1uCi of Polonium 210 for US $69. [3] For a lethal dose you would need in the order of 0.1mCi, i.e. a thousand times the amount. -- Petri Krohn 13:04, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

User:Nishkid64 removed the statement that Po-210 is freely available by mail order. The article falsely claims, that Po-210 can only be accessed by state actors. This is POV and bullshit. I have restored the sentence and the link. -- Petri Krohn 00:05, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
P.S. Please do not try to argue, that Wikipedia needs to be censored, so that other would-be assassins would not pick up on the Polonium 210 idea. -- Petri Krohn 00:14, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6181688.stm, right at the bottom: "Professor Dudley Goodhead, Medical Research Council Radiation and Genome Stability Unit, said: "To poison someone much larger amounts are required and this would have to be man-made, perhaps from particle accelerator or a nuclear reactor.""--87.113.8.161 01:07, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Po-210 is 250 billion times more poisonous than cyanide, and yet American websites are selling it online without a licence?? So much for the "poisoners had their own nuclear reactor" hypothesis.. I just hope Osama hasn't noticed..

There was a reference at the end of the main article to the American website, http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm, which sells Polonium-210 over the internet, and a remark afterwards "debunking the claim that the poisoners must have been experts with access to a nuclear reactor". I've deleted the "debunking..." remark because it is untrue (or at least highly POV), but I've kept the link to the website because that appears to be a fact. In fact if you look at the website itself you will see that (i) they don't keep the Po-210 themselves - they arrange for it to be shipped from a reactor, (ii) the units they sell are only 1/15,000 of a lethal dose, (iii) it is highly infeasible to combine 15,000 of their units to make a lethal dose, (iv) and in any case they only sell 1 or 2 units every 3 months, so it would be very noticeable if someone tried to do this.89.241.1.1 22:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Freely available?

From the United Nuclear web site:

"All our radioactive isotopes are legal to purchase & own by the general public."
-- Petri Krohn 00:28, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
That's a reference from the company website. I'm hoping for a reference that is coming from some third-party website or news source. Nishkid64 00:38, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
We should remember that after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, nuclear material, including Uranium (you get Po from Uranium), has been unmonitored (though the UN is trying to track everything down). Is it possible that this Po was not strictly from a government source? 82.93.133.130 16:01, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I also found a reference regarding United Nuclear and its polonium sales. Nishkid64 23:05, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Half-time of Polonium-310 is 138 days. Soviet Union breakdowned 15 years ago. Alexandre Koriakine 10:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
But the source of Polonium is still moving around. Remember you can "milk" one radioisotope from another. 82.93.133.130 13:39, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

English or Russian language?

What is the original language (Russian of English) of the posthumous statement and his last words? Russian media has no consistent translation (e.g. bastards is translated to подонки or ублюдки), so it may be said in English, also there are some claims of Russian linguists that some phrases (as a passage about the wings of an angel of death) are uncommon for a person of Russian origin.--213.148.27.40 18:33, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

The angel of death statement is a bit strange for a Russian-born man but remember he was living here for six years. My theory is that Mr Litvinenko had picked up some English phrases like the angel of death part and I reckon he probably tried to make the statement in English (perhaps parts in Russian as his English was said to not be very strong) whereas his last words were possibly in Russian. But that's just what I think. The Lilac Pilgrim 22:11, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
According to the interview with last Russians who met him - Ex-KGB officer Andrey Lugovoi (Russian: Андрей Луговой) and Ex-military officer Dmitry Kovtun (Russian: Дмитрий Ковтун) his English was poor.
Source: http://mk.ru/numbers/2478/article87222.htm
--Ovc 01:12, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but like the above user said, the angel of death part is not a primarily Russian thing to say. My friend tells me a newspaper has an image of the paper the statement was written on - the statement was apparently written in English. I will have to ask him to get it for me. The Lilac Pilgrim 15:59, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
It's very much possible that his statement was written by Lord Bell's PR agency. He was in intensive care since 20th. Was he even capable of speaking or to dictate his last words? I also find it bit odd in Andrei Nekrasov's statement[4] that "origins of Yeltsin's presidency were legitimate, while those of Putin's are not quite.", if you compare to Russian constitutional crisis of 1993. --Mikko Paananen 17:26, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
While an interesting theory, there's no evidence so it'll just have to remain here. However it wouldn't be that surprising if he did at least have help in composing the letter Nil Einne 09:16, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Is there any evidence at all that he contributed to the message in any way? Zocky | picture popups 16:24, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Andrei Nekrasov said in an interview with Radio Liberty (computer translation) that Litvinenko composed the statement in Russian with his lawyer. The statement was then translated. I didn't see the original Russian version, if it ever was released. ilgiz 17:11, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
an interesting touch: why was it never recorded, either in audio or video? Odd, eh? --Dietwald 12:35, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Alexander Litvinenko birth date

It's disputed, but some sources give October 30 as the birth date and some give December 4th. I've inserted both since there appears to be no proper source on this matter. Nishkid64 23:10, 26 November 2006 (UTC)


According to several sources his birthday is December 4, 1962.

I think we can remove October 30.

--Ovc 01:02, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about that. Half of the other language wikipedias are using October 30, so I think it's best to keep it up there temporarily. Nishkid64 01:13, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Also, please see The Independant obituary and The Telergraph obituary which both state his birth date to be October 30 Ryanpostlethwaite 02:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
30 August 1962 according to the Independent and the Telegraph. Well, let's wait utill we can be sure.--Ovc 03:14, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
August 30, October 30, December 4. This is insane. Nishkid64 20:33, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
November 13th!! actually I just made that up. just figured november was feeling little left out... --87.113.8.161 23:58, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I stand for 30 August 1962 since most likely obituaries were verified by his friends/relatives --Ovc 02:52, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Could this be simply a discrepancy between calendars? 82.93.133.130 16:09, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

If we were talking about three different dates all relatively close to each other, then I would agree with you. However, these dates are nowhere close to each other, and I think that almost all of the world uses the same Gregorian calendar now. Nishkid64 00:06, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
My theory on his birth date is 4th December, as being born in '62 would mean he would be 44. Most newspapers, no matter what they'd put his birth down as, claimed he was 43, which shows his birthday couldn't have passed yet. As for the 30th August thing, who's to say his relatives felt up to talking to a newspaper about when their deceased loved one was born? I think it likely that if it was a friend, his friend at the time confused the birth date with someone else's. It's very easy to do that. Plus, the only thing we can be sure of is that his medical details have it right, and they're not about to give them out to just anyone, are they? The Lilac Pilgrim 13:58, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Additional info - just checked the Russian page, which seems pretty sure that he was born in December. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by The Lilac Pilgrim (talk • contribs) 14:13, 28 December 2006 (UTC).

kgb killings

Rupert Allason, the British intelligence expert, commented that he would be most surprised if the FSB had tried to kill Mr Litvinenko because it would fly in the face of 65 years of Soviet or Russian practice: Neither the FSB nor the KGB has ever killed a defector on foreign soil and their predecessors, even under Stalin, did so only once in the case of Walter Krivitsky in Washington in 1941.[38]

Is this a joke?

No, it isn't. Most of the Americans were brainwashed with anti-russian propaganda and KGB was not as evil as some might think. Actually, IMO, this whole "Litvinenko poisoned by ruskie hitmen", thing is pretty stupid and all these conspiracy theories were created mostly to undermine Russia's democratic status. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.70.38.90 (talk • contribs).
It seems that Mr. Allason is forgetting Trotsky... Aecis Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984. 12:54, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I think perhaps he can count better than you. 2006 - 65 = 1941 19:31, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Uhhh...huh? It says 1941, and 65. Nishkid64 20:35, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually I think what anon is trying to say is that 65 years of Soviet/Russian practice would be from 1941. Leon Trotsky was killed in 1940 hence he would be excluded from the period Rupert was referring to. The mention of 1941 is only in reference to Walter Krivitsky. Nil Einne 09:21, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

0.1uCi ?

Why does everyone keep citing the fact that you can get 0.1uCi Po sources from the United Nuclear site as if its some kind of "zomg, oh noes teh atomes on teh intartubes" type dangerous crisis? Its barely 3 times the body burden even if you did manage to eat it all. If people want to wig out over Po sources shouldn't they be looking to the anti-static dusters that contain like 500 uCi? [5]. There's enough in ONE of those things to kill you (provided its separated from the Au amalgam). --Deglr6328 03:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Well actually you do apparently need a license for the brush but not the UN stuff. Also, while the UN stuff is in tiny quantities, it's I suspect, easier to recover then the matrix stored static brush stuff Nil Einne 09:38, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

http://www.osmolabstore.com/OsmoLabPage.dll?BuildPage&1&1&1005 Another online store for the 500 microcuries source.


A nuke med tech I worked with once gave me a little metal button. I had that thing in my pants pocket for I dunno how long, and then one day he said, "So what'd you ever do with that Americium I gave you?" It came from a Wal-Mart home smoke detector. Hilarious. 82.93.133.130 16:16, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't know where the idea that the Po is sealed in some kind of indestructable ceramic matrix inside of these anti-static things came from but it is quite wrong. Its sealed in the same way that americium is sealed in the sources for smoke detectors. Its just electroplated onto a thin strip of silver and then overcoated with a couple layers of very thin gold. Need I point out that extraction of the radioisotope from such an object would be trivial at worst?--Deglr6328 19:56, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Whoever said it's superhard to recover? I just said it's probably harder to recover. Nil Einne 16:51, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Sub topic of Investigation of the death

Since the investigation is going to be long and ongoing and detailed should there be a sub topic of the investigation? JulianHensey 15:23, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

sounds like a pretty good idea. i think we should prbly also expand the media reaction section to include political reactions since as far as i recall some British Cabinet Ministers (Hain, Howells, Martin) have all taken up the story and commented on aspects of it in the last couple of days. W guice 15:46, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree. A separate section "Investigation of the death" is a good idea.--Ovc 19:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Here is verisons:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/27/nspy127.xml
Also one more version of Vladimir Gusak (former boss of Litvinenko):
http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.html?docId=725074
--Ovc 21:11, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

one more information based on military psychology http://zhurnal.lib.ru/u/urbi_o_k/litovka.shtml It is supposed that the image codes of the same strategic operation are - POLITkovskaya, LITvinenko, photo describing face and hear like Paul's Mccartney, twin, dead yesterday actres POLishchuk-MIRonov-Riga, POLeshchuk, POLand, LITva, POLoni, Thalii, Tal Mikhail, summit NATO Riga, iTALY , Mario Scaramella, Rome-Florida ship FinnBirch travellers infection, Birch, Berezovsky ... scare, X-ray panic, X-mas

paedo bit

someone removed

...on the basis that the article was "heresay" and didn't cite sources. i reckon that's irrelevant as we aren't discussing the veracity of the claims against Putin, merely reporting (with source) that AL made them. W guice 16:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Someone probably took offense to that claim. Litvinenko did make the claim, and we're only reporting what other people did, or else this article would turn into a POVfest. Nishkid64 20:39, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I would notice that this claim about paedophilie was made after a famous kiss to a belly by Putin: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%86%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%83%D0%B9_%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%82%D1%8B_%D0%9F%D1%83%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%BC Alexandre Koriakine 10:18, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Current event locking

As with many articles on Wikipedia, current events lend them to abuse and vandalism. May be a good idea to clean and lock this article to prevent further issues (like the yummy-gummy thing I noticed earlier). --Heavy1974, 11-27-2006

There's not that much vandalism to the page (the yummy-gummy thing was an isolated incident). Some of the IP's and newly registered users have made valued contributions to the article and protecting the page would only prevent them from editing it. Nishkid64 21:02, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes it should stay open, this article has come leaps and bounds, but as I've mentioned before the first paragraph is everchanging and must be cleaned up. Chavatshimshon 01:53, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Russian translation

Either there is hidden information about gas and oil companies, which should not be revealed (Kremls interest to see Litvinenko mute), or the image of Putin should be decreased (Putins contrahents interests). Next to Beresowski as well his friend Wladimr Ruschailo is a voter pro Ivan Rybkin (the contrahent of Putin in 2004) and he was the security-secretary of the russian federation, which he had to left in 2004, when Putin was elected. Even more, Putin made war with Tschetschenien, which was Ruschailos project for consensual peace. The murderer must have an organization in his background to steer suchs things. So the magazin russland aktuell writes and quotes him:

I just removed the above section. It's not really written in good English, and I was hoping someone good translate all the text, and rewrite that section. Nishkid64 22:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for that, Nishkid64. I was thinking of cutting it for the same reason, but stopped myself because I was worried about slapping someone down just because their English isn't good. But looking at it again it seems to be awash with POV as well. Seriously, I do hope this article isn't going to drift into a complete mess. A bit iffy 23:22, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, which is exactly why I had removed it from the article. If there's someone who can find an English source or can translate the Russian, that would be appreciated. Nishkid64 23:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I think it is by the same guy who on this talk page produced the part entitled "Further recherche". He uses the German version of Chechnya, for instance. And Kreml may look Russian, but is also German. As for POV, it seems the guy is repeating what the Aktuel site he is quoting is saying about the Litvinenko affair. Also this page. The intelligence guys Litvinenko met, were not straight from Russia as tends to be believed, claims this version. POV? It is one version among many, of course. Another version, that this same guy alludes to as well ("Litvinenko was killed by unknown people with FSB contacts because he had recently learnt too much about Yukos and had to be silenced") is to be found here. Just my two cents: to incorporate this, you don't need to know Russian, but German. --Pan Gerwazy 01:45, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Reading the page through Babelfish. It argues that the most likely party behind the murder is Boris Berezovsky and the CIA. -- Petri Krohn 03:08, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Sorry for Babelfish, but not really - "Daraus folgt natürlich noch nicht, dass Litwinenko im Auftrag des CIA oder Boris Beresowskis umgebracht wurde. Es macht es aber unwahrscheinlich, dass der Mord im Auftrag des Kreml geschah." I read this as "That does of course not mean that Litvinenko was killed on orders of the CIA. It does make it unlikely, however, that the murder happened on orders of the Kremlin". A big if here, of course: this is only one of the ends at which poisoning is claimed to perhaps have happened. If one of these guys was indeed CIA, as Aktuel claims, the poisoning did not happen at that end, probably. But there is still this Italian guy. The Scaramella, professor at Naples University, seems to be a woman, called Maria Scaramella. Mario Scaramello is discussed in some detail here I am still supposing the fact that at the beginning some authors thought that the Scaramella that Litvinenko met, was a woman, to be pure coincidence. --Pan Gerwazy 08:55, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Russian Mafia

It is very clear that Alexandar Litvinenk was linked to the mafia.

  1. He lived free of charge in a house owned by Boris Berekovsky.
  2. He was paid wages by the same Boris Berekovsky - how could he afford to eat at the expensive sushi bar and stay in an expensiv hotel?
  3. Boris Berekovsky is a fugitive from justice and Russia is seeking to extradite him to stand trial for fraud in Russia.

The main beneficiary of the murder is the Russian Mafia such as Boris Berekovsky as it is harder for Russia to apply for his extradition now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by BigEasyGuy (talk • contribs) 06:49, 28 November 2006

This is OT but why? If Boris Berekovsky killed Alexander Litvinenko then I would presume it'll be easy for Russia to extradite him since the UK won't want him any more. It's not as if Alexander Litvinenko was going to testify again Boris after all Nil Einne 09:32, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
You would also have to accept that Litvinenko lied about his killer on his death bead. That's a pretty big pill. --Haizum 11:27, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Not really. There's no reason to assume he lied. He could have just been deluded, confused or unaware the truth of what was really going on. Remember the fact that he said it was Putin doesn't make it true. It simply suggests he believed it's Putin. I personally do accept he believed it's Putin, although I'm not so sure it really was. However the above story does seem bizzare, at least as presented Nil Einne 16:33, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

If you think about this case (Litvinenko death) it *can* be beneficial to many people including russian mafia, FSB, Putin, Berezovsky, Chechnya, CIA, even Scotland Yard (less likely), etc. That is what makes this case hard to solve. However if Putin wanted to kill Litvinenko to shut him up, there would have been a different poison used - the instant (!) one, not polonium, which causes a slow dying. So I think someone really wanted Litvinenko to speak before he died. And that "someone" knew what Litvinenko would say. So who will benefit from what Litvinenko said after he got sick and before he died? That is a 5 million dollar question. =Alexei

Again, Half-time of Polonium-310 is 138 days. And Polonium-210 can be produced in medical lab using neutron generator (AFAIK).Alexandre Koriakine 10:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

It must have been the Japanese

There must have been a Japanese "big fish" who was very interested in Russian oil and could make the new James Bond Movie even more realistic, in the new bond movie there are basically no gadgets available anymore then only a tiny defibrillator, anti poisoning drugs and a tiny machine to analyze his blood, By killing Litvinenko it's way more realistic to have do's gadgets as being a spy. Rick Smit 00:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

2 words: Sony and Sushi Rick Smit 12:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Image of Subject

I would just like to bring to attention a possible different fair-use image that could be used, which shows the subject more clearly. [7]. This image is from [8]. Hope this may be of some use. Ian¹³/t 21:47, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Expanded the introduction

See [9]. I rewrote the whole section basically and expanded it. It looks pretty good right now in my opinion, but tell me if you think certain things should be taken out, or added in, or if the POV of the intro is all fine and dandy. Nishkid64 00:24, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

To be honest, I think Introduction is too long. It could be made at least 3 times shorter - as in biographies of other people in Wikipedia. His allegations and career could be described in separate sections. What is the source that says that he worked for intelligence? Biophys 00:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I expanded it per WP:LEAD. I can cut down some of the details as they are already mentioned in the other sections. I basically summarized his life. Also, it said he worked for counterintelligence in the Career in Russian security services section of the article. Nishkid64 01:03, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Also, the intro section depends from article to article. Some FA's of people who aren't too particularly notable have short intros while the intros of people such as Mahatma Gandhi are huge, and even bigger than ours. Nishkid64 01:05, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I simply think that such version of Introduction includes a lot of secondary details, so main facts are lost. It would be enough just to tell in Introduction that his main work was about fighting organized crime; that he appeared on Russian TV with Trepashkin claiming that FSB wanted to include him to a death squad; that he was prosecuted; that he escaped to UK; that he wrote a book claiming that Russian aparment bombing and other bombings were conducted by FSB (that was main idea; everything else is of secondary importance); and that he was poisoned. Everything else could be described below. Yes, I found the reference about his work in "intelligence" - that was not SVR. Biophys 01:15, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
He is certainly not Mahatma Gandhi. Biophys 01:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Well of course he's not. But I and other editors have plans to bring this article to FA status someday. We might as well start now. And what are you saying about the reference? Also, I will shorten the section down. Nishkid64 01:22, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
The reference is fine. He biefly worked in counter-intelligence, not in intelligence, and he told exactly nothing about this work in counter-intelligence. I think the Introduction should only mention a few key things. His main idea about apartment bombings is completely lost (this is his most important and credible accusation - see title of his book).Biophys 01:39, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Okay. You want to take a look at it and cleanup and stuff? Maybe it will be more effective that way? I'm not too familiar with the whole apartment bombing thing. Nishkid64 02:17, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
O'K. Then I will look first through the article to check if everything is well supported. Biophys 04:05, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the introduction is a kind of long. How about this introduction:

Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko (Russian: Александр Вальтерович Литвиненко; December 4, 1962 or August 30, 1962 – November 23, 2006) was a former middle-ranking Russian FSB officer and one of the most furious critics of the Russian President Putin. He accused during his press-conference in Moscow in November 1998 his superiors of ordering him to assassinate a billionaire Boris Berezovsky. He was twice arrested and acquitted by courts. After been charged third time he illegally left Russia for the UK in 2000. He is a co-author of two books, Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within and Gang from Lubyanka, and number of articles severely criticised the FSB and Vladimir Putin. On November 1, 2006 Litvinenko unexpectedly felt ill and became hospitalized. Upon his death on November 23, it was established that he had died from Polonium-210 poisoning. Litvinenko's illness, notoriety as a former FSB officer, and his public accusations that Russian government officials were behind his poisoning, led to worldwide media coverage.

Please let me know is it worth to put it in the article.--Ovc 06:20, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Why do you need to mention " unexpectedly felt ill" if you do not mention the contacts. - I think to current intro is good; there is no need to make it shorter. -- Petri Krohn 06:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

The introduction is way too rambling and detailed which is why I shortened it. Please read WP:LEAD which recommends it is concise. Also some of the sentences don't flow well. The first sentence was a Russian Security Service agent [with a link to FSB] and later a Russian dissident is a much better summary than was an ex-FSB lieutenant-colonel with KGB experience in fighting organized crime. Tom 10:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

In order for the article to have more impact it needs to be more concise. I promise you, the shortened introduction looks and reads better than the longer one. The longer one does not summarise what he was in the first sentence including his dissidence, it goes straight into a narrative without any gap: "After working in...", it doesn't make sense in English,"his superiors had ordered for the assassination" should be "his superiors had ordered the assassination". You can't be a dissident of an organisation, see dissident. Its got several long contiguous paragraphs instead of 4 short clearly defined ones.

Please can people say which introduction they prefer [10] or [11]. Tom 11:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

It's not a matter of which is better. Why would I come here in the first place if I had no intention of trying to shorten it a bit? Even though there wasn't much discussion on this, I think the current introduction is fairly decent, and I'll try to make copyediting corrections and such later on. Nishkid64 15:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Which is this. I really don't want to get too drawn into this, but perhaps there is someone who can find the information in that link usefull. I really do urge any editors with the available time to read it, as it seems to raise some interesting points. One thing I do know is that this assasination (or something else) is probably far more complicated than we know right now. Esn 07:04, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

one more - http://zhurnal.lib.ru/u/urbi_o_k/litovka.shtml about poLITkovskaya, LITvinenko, POLeshchuk, actress POLishchuk death, poloni 210, thali... (in russian - about semantic codes of russian secret services strategic operation?! ) Who removed this information?

Please fix the picture, someone

Could somebody competent to do so please fix the picture?

Some clever harry has posted Le Chiffre from Casino Royale, the new James Bond film.

Yet Le Chiffre was only a user of benzedrine, not polonium! 82.93.133.130 13:45, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Minor edit

Hi there. I changed the English in the above paragraph as it wasn't quite right to the following:


I hope no one minds. Feel free to revert it. There are still some overly long sentences there but I didn't want to change too much. Nice article by the way.Intesvensk 11:07, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I for 1 mind. You changed "Aldo Moro was held" into "Aldo Moro were held". --Pan Gerwazy 19:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
The sentence is actually "IF Also Moro was held" which requires the subjunctive to be used, which means "If Aldo Moro were held" is gramatically correct. Correct me if I'm wrong though.Intesvensk 23:32, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
You're wrong. The verbal form connected with "if the tip (that) .... " is "had its origin in the KGB". Everything in between is a subordinate clause (containing more subordinate clauses) depending on the "that" in the first part. "Had" is a past tense, no need for a subjunctive there.
The second use of "were" (and "if the KGB were behind ...") is, however, grammatically correct AMERICAN English. In British English, subjunctive "were" is mandatory when the proposition is contrary to known facts, and old-fashioned elsewhere. The trick involved is the use of "would" or "could" in the main clause. See[12] and [[13]], for instance. However, in this sentence, even British people would prefer "were", because they would think of "KGB" as a singular with a plural meaning, like the word "police". Nice ambiguity - which means we do not really have to decide between British and American English here, and "were" is perfectly neutral.--Pan Gerwazy 10:03, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm very sorry. You're grammar is definitely much better than mine. I will try to remember the rule in future.Intesvensk 20:43, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Cutting the article into new pages

What do people think about starting to cut down the size of the article by maybe moving the investigation to a new page so people can get updates instead of having to scroll all the way down the page? JulianHensey 12:56, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Why do we need to shorten the article in the first place? Nishkid64 15:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Because Wiki policy is for a page to be under 32 Kb in length, or shortened into new pages JulianHensey 16:50, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Nah, that's only a guideline.


An article called "Alexander Litvinenko investigation" or similar seems a bit disjointed to me at least at this stage. And if people want to keep up, there's always Wikinews W guice 20:32, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Why was the the ICU photo deleted

Does anyone know why the ICU photo was deleted? I was of the opinion it should qualify (see above) under fair use. IMHO, it's more significant then the current photo so if we have to choose one, I would choose that one. I've never been good at using the deletion log but I can't find it there and I can't seem to see any discussion on the "possibly unfree images" either so unless it was speedied I'm confused where the discussion took place. Looking through the page history, it was never clearly marked that the image was up for deletion. Nil Einne 16:47, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

There's the reason: [14]. I'd still consider the image constitutes fair use though. DWaterson 18:58, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Maybe, but the photographer sent Wikipedia take-down notice, so we had to follow that notice. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 09:06, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Do we? My understanding is if we could have refused and stuck to our guns. This could have resulted in a messy court case but if our legal grounding was solid, then AFAIK, all that would have happen is we would have wasted a lot of money on legal fees. Altho I personally believe this did qualify under fair use (but I know next to nothing about the law, especially US & copyright law), I don't personally believe we should have fought it but I do think it's inaccurate to say we had to comply. Of course, it would be rather silly to not at least temporarily comply while we let our lawyer consider the matter first Nil Einne 09:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Liberal Russia

I'm encountering resistance to the Liberal Russia information.

In the article, there is a quote from Nikolay Kovalev, retired FSB commander, who says "I'm sure it wasn't the FSB, and I think it was Berezovsky".

This on its own is highly unbalanced because there is no information here given about the other events that have occured between the FSB and Berezovsky, which must be stated or this part of the article is entirely pro-FSB, by dint of not stating existing opposing information.

Berezovsky, along with a few others, founded the party Liberal Russia. One of the founders was shot and killed shortly after founding, and the co-founders were found guilty of the murder and jailed. The FSB accused Berezovsky of being behind the murder.

It is widely accepted that Berezovsky was not involved in the murder (check the article for Sergei Yushenkov) and the FSB is suspected of being behind the murder and convictions of the co-founders to disrupt the thread posed by Berezovsky's political activities. Indeed, Berezovsky was expelled/fled from Russia after this incident.

Bearing in mind this sequence of events, it is entirely improper to quote a retired FSB commander accusing Berezovsky of the murder without so much as a word of the possible issues that must be considered.

(In fact, it's worse than this; Kovalev's quote is followed by a quote from a British intelligence officer who says, seperately, that it's highly unlikely the FSB would commit a murder outside of Russian territory. These two quotes, given with no balancing information, simply mislead the reader by only presenting one side of the argument when the other side would have a significant impact upon the reader's consideration.)

Toby Douglass 22:10, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I cleaned up your section because it was POV-ridden. This was your my cleanup of your edit[15], and the re-addition of the Allason quote (which should be explained more). Encyclopedia articles are supposed to maintain neutrality. You're using words such as "It seems unlikely" or "judicial system in Russia is non-functional" (needs source for 99% and regardless, you shouldn't write your own views on the issue). I agree that it is something of very high importance and I will work with you on trying to get a NPOV entry for that particular section. Nishkid64 22:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Russian Judicial System. A judicial system which invariably convicts *IS* non-functional. There is no getting away from this. I had a similar problem with another contributor in another article - I described the increases in political murder and loss of political freedom in Russia, and he responded asking me to include an opposing view. I pointed out there that human rights violations *ARE* wrong, and there is no opposing view. I could be wrong, but I fear you have fallen into this trap. Toby Douglass 12:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
British Judicial System. I had a look round the official Government statistics but there are so many it's hard to find what you're looking for - the referenced article indicates conviction rates in the UK for major crimes runs at about 10%. Toby Douglass 12:11, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Also, you need to source that section. Even now it still looks like speculation unless you find a source that says "Yuskenkov's death and the conviction and jailing of the co-founders of Liberal Russia for his murder is widely perceived to have been part of a policy of eliminating the political threat posed by Berezovsky to the establishment; as such, the accusations from the FSB of Berezovsky's involvement warrant careful consideration." Nishkid64 22:33, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
I have to get some lunch - be back later to respond to this. Toby Douglass 12:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Eh, regardless, can you just remove any potentially controversial statements in that section. I mean, you might find a reference that the Russian system is dysfunctional, but how is that entirely relevant to Alexander Litvinenko? Nishkid64 15:41, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

This url could actually bu useful. Click 'PHOTO PAGE'

operationsallownode.50megs.com

What the heck? It just shows morphed pictures of people. Unless I am missing something, I don't see how this is useful or even relevant to the article? Nishkid64 22:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Developments in investigation do not belong in intro

Dear 72.183.125.111, regarding your edit to this article: the intro of the article should contain only information directly pertaining to the subject, as summarized as possible. Developments in the investigation are not relevant enough for the intro. What is relevant for Alexander Litvinenko is: *date and place of birth *date and place of death *notability prior to death *cause of death *media coverage of the death. Wikipedia is not in the business of public service announcements. The burden to establish relevancy for inclusion lies on you here. Aecis Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984. 01:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

  • I mean no offense, but your comment seems rather non-sensical on the face of it. Litvinenko is dead. The authorities are investigating. A tie has quite clearly been developed between Litvinenko's death in regard to British Airways. The authorities are seeking BA passengers who traveled to and from Moscow on specific flights...and you somehow not only do not find this relevant to Litvinenko, but feel justified in insisting that I justify it being on the top of his page? I'm quite sorry, but this is utter nonsense from my perspective, and thus have no further comment. --72.183.125.111 01:26, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
    • He didn't say it wasn't relevant to Litvinenko, but to the intro section of Litvinenko's encyclopedia article. Which it isn't: it's too unstable (still developing) and not a major factor in the case compared to the other intro details mentioned (who he was, what he did). W guice 01:40, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
    Maybe we need to split off a new article: Alexander Litvinenko poisoning, maybe even Alexander Litvinenko murder investigation. -- Petri Krohn 01:41, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
    yeh, someone made this suggestion already but for a different reason actually, [16] while earlier i commented i thought it'd be a bit disjointed, if we're going to have to keep the size down and not lose information it might not be a bad idea. Should we have a vote? W guice 01:46, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
    oh, and i'm not sure we could really use the '...murder investigation' one just yet, apparently some people are still considering suicide an option as i found out when i put a fact tag against that before. not 100% yet, anyway. W guice 01:48, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
    Well, in any case, I still would oppose splitting up the article. Usually we split up articles when they are really really long (70+ KB?). It's around 50 the last time I checked, so I don't think it's necessary yet. If people vote to split, I suggest we fix up the current article right now and try to make it perfect before doing anything else. Nishkid64 01:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
  • W guice has summed up quite well what I said: the information is highly relevant for the article and the investigation (that's why I put it back in the article and referenced it after it was removed), but developments in the investigation are at this point not relevant enough to be added to the intro (an arrest obviously would be). Aecis Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984. 15:26, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Mario Scaramella

I created a stub on Mario Scaramella based on a Evening Standard interview. There is something fishy in his career. -- Petri Krohn 03:05, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Internal Troops picture / deathbed statement spacing

As reprinted from my, Tpbradbury's talk pages. Thoughts, please?

The picture is relevant because Litvinenko was in the Internal Troops, please put the picture back and read the article next time. In regard of the quotation, I didn't mash-it-up as you asserted, but left it completely in the same form just taking out all the extra unnecessary space. There isn't a correct way of writing anything! It also takes up a lot of space in the article. Anyway let's have a talk about it. If you get time have a look for some more relevant pictures. Tom 12:56, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

True that AL was in the Internal Troops; however, he was also in the KGB and FSB and we don't show pics of their logos or troops in the AL article, because (a) they fit perfectly well at the appropriate KSB/FSB articles and (b) while relevant to AL, IMO they aren't sufficiently relevant to justify having them illustrate a part of his article, even the 'career' part of it.
As to a correct way of writing something, i thought it was prudent to follow the spacing of the document that is (at least purportedly) signed by AL himself, provided by another user in an edit summary and viewable here.
Best, another tom 13:09, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
You make an interesting argument, with perhaps some validity, on the quotation, although its unfortunate it takes-up more space. It's also not in the same font as the source and doesn't have his signature in our article. Sorry I'm being difficult! It's a good source but I don't think it's correctly referenced yet, next to the quotation in our article, so one of us should try and do that soon. Pictures: you make some good points. I was trying to get some relevant pictures to make article look nicer/more colourful (it's about a tragic subject i know). I was going to include a diagram on polonium. What pictures do you think we should put in? Tom 13:29, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I thought that quotations are handled as precisely as possible in the press. For example, any copy-editing of a quote is usually marked with square brackets. I don't think destroying the structure of the statement has a strong argument except that the spaces are "unnecessary" and that there aren't any rules of "writing anything". ilgiz 15:04, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Google ranking of Litvinenko article

CONGRATULATIONS - 1st in Google ranking when looking for "alexander litvinenko" Today we have been in the 1st position when you search under litvinenko on google. We are moving up and down according to various things but always on first page. Google is ranking on a huge amount of factors but two of the most important are number times viewed, and number of updates on pages....since everyone is looking at us we better make it a good article! JulianHensey 15:30, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Well considering the fact that many Wikipedia articles are the first thing that comes up with when you do a Google Search, I wouldn't really consider this a real achievement. Anyway, keep up the great work with the article guys. We still got to polish up everything. Nishkid64 15:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
It says there's about 10 000 views per day on [17] but I think this is an average for the whole of November. Recalculating this for about the 10 last days is hopefully about 30 000 views per day so Nishkid's right, let's get polishing. Tom 16:19, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

"Congratulations". Oh dear. Do a google search for David Schwimmer and then read the article. BennyFromCrossroads 23:12, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Police investigating suicide

"Someone" has deleted the part about theories of his death being suicide to discredit Putin. This was a published theory by the Independent newspaper in London, and also will have to be investigated by the police as a line of enquiry. Therefore I think it still deserves a place in the article with reference to the independant article - what do people think? JulianHensey 16:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I think it is highly unlikely that his death was by suicide, particularly if it was by polonium poisoning. The Metropolitan Police have to investigate all lines of enquiry, but they have their own reporting guidelines which we do not necessarily have to follow. Physchim62 (talk) 17:18, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
People are letting their own personal views on the situation judge the article. The article should discuss all theories made regarding Litvinenko's poisoning, and that includes the possible suicide. Nishkid64 21:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Exactly. The option of suicide is being investigated, and the option has received quite a lot of media coverage in non-trivial and reliable sources. Whether Litvinenko committing suicide is "highly unlikely" is immaterial. Aecis Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984. 22:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Okay, section restored. It's totally useful in this article, and I don't know why 72.183.125.111 removed it if it was properly sourced and of significance. Nishkid64 22:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I have hidden one part of the section: "Furthermore, Litvinenko's involvement with Boris Berezovsky, an ex-oligarch who, by his own admission, is "working towards a regime change in Russia", gives credit to other scenarios. The negative fallout of such a demonstrative assassination, including widespread public belief that it was such, would be beneficial to some in eroding the support and political relations of President Putin’s government in Russia and abroad." It fails WP:V and WP:OR. Aecis Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984. 22:40, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah I don't think we can really find sources for that or refine it. Keep it in the article for a day or so, and then remove it entirely if no changes have been made. It's all OR. Nishkid64 23:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Is the statement by Alexander Litvinenko published by GFDL?

I raised this question as when I post this letter to Chinese Wikipedia and translate it into Chinese, someone deleted the texts and say please verify the statement by Alexander Litvinenko published by GFDL. But the main point is the Wikipedia in other languages also do that, but no problems occured. So I want to comfirm it as it takes quite a while to translate it into Chinese, Thanks--Yick50907551 17:36, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

No, Wikipedia is using the statement under fair use. A translation would also be fair use, but many foreign language Wikipedias would not allow it. You can get around this by using "short citations", which are permissible under the Berne Convention. Physchim62 (talk) 18:06, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Microcuries?!

The last time I checked, Curies were not the SI unit for measuring radiation and I wasn't even aware people still used them in a non-historical purpose. Now I'm not physically minded, otherwise I'd've done it myself, but would it not make more sense to have converted the obsolete microCuries to bequerels or even Sieverts? 62.25.108.10 18:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

As usual it is the US that hasn't changed to SI units. Anyway, I've added Bq conversions of the figures. Sentinel7 19:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
This is a UK event, and the radiological units commonly used in the UK (and pretty much anywhere outside the US) are those listed in ISO 31-10, i.e. becquerel, gray and sievert. Therefore, all radiologic figures should be given in these units used by the UK authorities and international standards bodies. Providing both units only adds to confusion and should really be avoided. Markus Kuhn 13:21, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Adamov's statement on avalability of Pollonium.

Dear 72.183.125.111!

I'm not absolutely sure that this statement is really necessary here (despite I suppose that it is worth metioning), but you descriptions to the edits are certainly wrong.

First you wrote that there are no any authorities. But Dr Prof Adamov is a nuclear scietins and former head of the Russian nuclear ministry, so you comment was at least incorrect.

Second you name it "fraud". It is not a fraud of any kind, it is a statement made by a professional. It may be wrong, but it is definitely not fraud. And any allegations of crimes of Adamov do not matter.

So I'm reverting your removal again and ask to discuss it here and find a community consensus here before any further removals.

Thank you!

Dr Bug (Vladimir V. Medeyko) 19:03, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


Здрасвуите, Dr. Bug:

With all due respect, I made no comment -- at all -- that there are not any authorities. My comment was that Dr. Adamov is a fraud. My source for this was Wikipedia's entry, which states:

"In 2005, he was arrested in Bern, Switzerland, on fraud charges. The arrest was made at the request of the United States. The US accused Adamov of diverting up to $9 million which the US Energy Department gave Russia to help improve security at its nuclear facilities. Extradition requests were filed first by the USA and then by Russia, which has actively protested the move by the US. Adamov was finally extradited to Russia. The move was widely covered as a successful ploy by the Russian government to prevent Adamov from telling US authorites state secrets (and perhaps some criminal secrets) that he knew. Now he is free, waiting for a trial in Russia."

Perhaps most important to Wikipedia's content accuracy, Dr. Adamov's statement regarding the availability of Po-210 is not backed up by any credible authority. With its very short half-life, Po-210 is quite rare, and must effectively be generated via the following sequence in nuclear reactors: 210Po84 is made by a β- decay chain from Pb-210 to Bi-210 to Po-210; the Polonium alpha decays to Pb-206 with a half-life of a little over 138 days, with a decay energy of about 5.4 MeV.

I don't feel that a "consensus" -- i.e., a show of hands -- is the heart of the matter here. Truth is.

You may feel free to quote Dr. Adamov, but you must also be willing to carry the above baggage. It's the truth.

До свидания.

С уважением, --72.183.125.111 19:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

September 11 - this is not a good source!

The source says "Certainly, Mr Litvinenko had not done much for his credibility by claiming that the FSB was behind the Sept 11 atrocities or that senior al-Qa'eda officials were agents of Russian intelligence." However, Litvinenko never says that. The actual words of Litvinenko about this can not be found (unlike his words about London's bombing and Zarqawi). I think we shoud remove this. Biophys 22:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems I can't find what you're exactly referring to? Can you please link me or direct me as to where exactly this is? Nishkid64 22:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

This is it [18]. I already deleted this. Could you also take a look at the article about London bombing (reference 14). I think this is also wrong. Read please the entire text. He only wanted to tell that FSB supports terrorism worldwide - in general. He said absolutely nothing specific about London's bombing. May be I can rephrase this slightly. Biophys 22:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I fixed this. Biophys 23:03, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
His "friend" Mario Scaramella is not much more reliable either; he is the source of the claims that Soviet submarine K-8 left 20 nuclear mines in the Bay of Naples in 1970. Do we really believe this? -- Petri Krohn 23:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
The UK Indymedia source seems a bit weird. It was taken from Chechenpress Department of Interviews, apparently, and that seems a bit odd to me. The Telegraph article also seems a bit POV heh. It's news, but it's written with some sort of biased tone IMO. Anyway, thanks for fixing it up. Let's see what other people think. Nishkid64 23:46, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the Bay of Naples, see Soviet submarine K-8#1970 Bay of Biscay fire: "Russian officials confirmed in 2004 that on 10 January 1970, K-8 received orders to lay a number of tactical atomic torpedoes as naval mines in the Bay of Naples, to be used against the United States Sixth Fleet. The success of her mission is not directly known." Aecis Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984. 23:50, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, but that's not even sourced. It's been tagged as {{fact}}. We can fix up that article if we find an official source on the issue. As for Scaramella, it may be complete bs, but he said it, so it belongs in the article. Nishkid64 23:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Source 15 about "paedophil" also looks suspicious. It gives link to Chechen press, but the link does not work. Is the article actually there? Do you think Chechen press is a reliable source? I am not so sure. At least "kavkaz.org" they sometimes use as a source is not reliable at all (kavkaz.org is a propaganda site of Chechen rebels). So, maybe we should double check. Biophys 00:55, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I checked this. Litvinenko indeed made this allegation. There is a russian version of this text:[19]. But the English translation (in the internet reference you are using) is very incomplete! I do not know who translated it, but he certainly had an agenda. I will try to fix this. This is very interesting. Biophys 01:28, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
9/11 According to BBC source - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6163502.stm Appearing alongside high-profile opponents of Mr Putin, Mr Litvinenko continued to make allegations about his former bosses. Perhaps most notably, he alleged that al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri was trained by the FSB in Dagestan in the years before the 9/11 attacks. However, I cannot believe that you may call this person credible (and other persons involved - Beresovsky, it's PR agency with Gold***).Alexandre Koriakine 15:36, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
We are talking here only about Litvinenko allegations. So, the only relevant question is if he made a certain claim or not (if his allegations are true is a completely different story). But we must be sure that he indeed made a certain claim. To be on the safe side, we should only cite sources that provide actual words of Litvinenko and make sure that his words are properly reflected in the text. There are many distortions about this in newspapers, because journalists are looking for sensations. We should not do that. Yes, he made claimes about Ayman al-Zawahiri in Dagestan and pedophilia - I checked this. He did not do any specific claims with regard to September 11 or London's bombings.Biophys 16:25, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Section about experts hidden from view

I have hidden one part of the "Poisoning" section from view: "Those who administered the poison were experts in the subject, as precisely the right amount was used to cause a prolonged death; too great a dosage would have resulted in immediate convulsions and death, and too light a dosage would have resulted in a possible recovery though with a good likelihood of subsequent long-term health problems." It is not clear whether those who administered the poison were experts. It's a personal analysis/deduction from what we know at the moment, and as such it should not be presented as fact. Those who can reword it into a more encyclopedic text are free to do so, which is why I haven't removed it altogether. Aecis Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984. 22:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm...it's definitely fixable. I mean, there's a reference for it, so we can use that and try to make it encyclopedic. Nishkid64 22:58, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Go ahead. What you should include as well imo is a remark made by Alex Goldfarb, who said that the dose wasn't the right amount of poison at all. If he had gotten about five times as much, Litvinenko would have died the same day from severe internal bleeding, and noone would have thought of radiation poisoning. Because they used so little, he developed the symptoms of radiation poisoning (e.g. the loss of hair), which made people suspicious. If the killer/killers had used a higher dose, he/they would have had a good chance of getting away with it. According to Alex Goldfarb, IIRC on BBC's Newsnight. Aecis Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984. 23:16, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I haven't read this before but has no one commented on the fact radioactivity was used at all? It seems to be this was a big mistake since it probably makes it a lot easier to track then if it were a more ordinary biological or chemical agent... It also causes a greater degree of general hysteria which may not be a good idea as it may mean there will be far greater attention to the investigation. Of course, maybe whoever planned it didn't care. Nil Einne 19:22, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Dissidence Section changes

1) added details on the Nov 17, 1998 press conference;

2) suggesting to remove Galina Starovoitova reference;

3) going to add criminal charges timeline.

--Ovc 01:16, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the sentence about Starovoitova must remain there. It is very important for many reasons. First, it shows that accusations by Litvinenko and others were credible. Second, it provides a wider context of things that happened with Litvineko. Third, the murder of Starovoitova is almost certainly related to FSB. Biophys 05:31, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
We can put in the article only facts, not allegations. According to the facts mentioning Starovoitova is completely irrelevant: her case was investigated and her murders were sentenced. If we use criteria "almost certainly related" we can add to the article almost all people murdered in Russia in 90th. --Ovc 15:08, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
First, I am telling exactly the fact: she was murdered just three days later. Second, this is not me who made a connection between these two events and people (Litvinenko and her). This is an official statement of Amnesty International - see citation. Biophys 22:30, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Bullet points top of article

I am wondering whether immediately before the introduction we have about three/four news bullet points on the news today and each day about the investigation. It is a real pain to have to wade through the article to find the latest updates and I am sure this article is being used to gather information by numerous people who have already read the main parts of the article and just want updates?

example here

    • FBI becomes involved in investigation "we will always help countries that ask for help"
    • Flight investigation continues, focusing on "football flight" from Moscow

    • Then those people came to the wrong place. Wikipedia is not a news website; we are an encyclopedia. If they went headlines, they should go to WikiNews. Nishkid64 15:22, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

    New Page request

    Do you think there should be a new article because it is a much bigger case now than just Alexander Litvinenko. We have the old pm of Russia, the flights, and just as im typing this, Mario Scaramella has just been told he has been poisoned. Samaster1991 14:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

    Don't think it's absolutely necessary now. This was discussed earlier, and I said that we should wait and polish up this article before we do any article-splitting. Nishkid64 15:25, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
    It's become clear over the last few days that Litvinenko is just a player is a broad international scandel (a textbook example of an international incident) that has grown into a public health scare. It's bigger than Litvinenko, and it will eventually get its own article. The only question left is when, and I would argue the quality of this article will get worse until it does. hateless 19:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    The article is okay right now. It still needs a lot of reworking, but with a lot of newly registered or anons adding new headlines, it's no surprise that the quality of some parts of the article has declined (no offense, guys!). However, we have to wait it out until the whole scandal has cleared up before we can do any article splitting in my opinion. Nishkid64 19:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    I think we need a new page as this page has far exceeded the biography its ment to be in the coverage of the poisonings. Both of the investigations and further people sections as well as some of the illness and poisoning section could be the start of a new article. Hypnosadist 00:32, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    True, I agree with what you said. My only problem is when we should do this. If we do this now, then we'll have to be watching over multiple articles for inaccurate edits or cleaning up other's mistakes. Nishkid64 00:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    Most of the changes would then be done on that new page with just a few updates on this page (hopefully) and at the same time allow a lot more breadth of coverage of the people and issues involved.Hypnosadist 05:57, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Letters from Trepashkin and Galina Starovoitova

    This is probably a speculation, but it is now clear for what reason Galina Starovoitova was assassinated. Mikhail Trepashkin tells the following[20]. "Litvinenko and others bravely came forward to tell the truth about FSB, but nobody supported us. Where are you, democratic forces of Russia? I am sitting in the prison wrongly accussed for 4 years, and no one helps me. " (this is not translation but summary). Galina Starovoitova was a kind of person who would never let them down. She would make a huge international story of it using her personal international connections. Therefore, it was an imperative for FSB to kill her as quickly as possible. It would be important to learn what she did during last three days of her life. Biophys 16:59, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

    Galina Starovoitova is not related to Litvinenko: he did not mention her (or her case) in his public statements; her murder is investigated and murders are sentenced. Also in your article Mr. Trepashkin does not mention Starovoitova at all.
    This article (and any other wikipedia article) has to be neutral and free from bias. Let’s write only facts, not allegations. --Ovc 20:54, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
    First, I am telling exactly the fact: she was murdered just three days later. Second, this is not me who made a connection between these two events and people (Litvinenko and her). This is an official statement of Amnesty International - see citation. Biophys 22:30, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
    Biophys seems to be turned to conspiracy theory of the evil FSB. Please, Biophys, take facts, not conspiracy rumors (when we laugh at that FBI prepared 9/11 to start the war in Iraq, you are serious about Litvinenko accusations in his book). The facts is that Russia was very-very criminalized (you even cannot imagine) during the years 1991-2001, it seems to be better now, but still we have echoes of this period. Also recently on a russian TV was shown that a case of Starovoitova is closed, no politics found in there (i.e. FSB involved), only criminal business motives (we have not confuse big money with politics). Also, I wouldn't consider Amnesty International as a credible source towards Russia, since top heads from CIA go retire there. Biophys, if you are interested in killings in Russia, I think you would like to know that there are many killings of politics you don't know, possibly because they weren't fierce critics of the government. Also, Biophys, if you are playing detective here, I would appreciate that you also try to investigate the murder of Paul Khlebnikov (since you are sticked to the theme), a so-called pro-Putin journalist. Alexandre Koriakine 23:09, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
    I only made a point that this not original reseach. As about his claims - one should treat them scientifically. If you show me any good sources (certainly not the state-controlled Russian propaganda TV) that prove the following: Zawahiri never was in Dagestan, Putin is not a pedophile, and nobody from FSB leadership ordered murder of Starovoitova - that would be interesting to see. Biophys 23:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
    Need I provide a good sources that Putin is not an alien from Mars? Nobody from FSB - this I cannot say, since I am sure there are also may present corrupt people, even this year I remember many cases of taking people (even groups of people) to jail from the government and milicia. Also I would point that a simple internet link is not a credible source, even a book is not a credible source. What verified is that KGB killed Trotsky, as for other - since the end of Stalin KGB/FSB don't use killings of political dissidents to shutting them up. I don't think that they now to do it, starting from the pawns (mostly unknown to the russian public). Maybe you would like to know the situation from place: in Russia, there are some state controlled three main channels 1st main, 2nd Russian, 4 NTV, 3rd Moscow pro-Lugkov Moscow major (remember, till 2000 Beresovsky and Co controlled 1st and 4 NTV channels - and RenTV possibly), we have also two anti-Putin channels RenTV (really, I watch it from time to time and they criticize Putin in many points, they usually show a western point) and TNT (they stopped show news a long time ago, AFAIK), also we have Euronews in Russian (on the air to the public, but from 12 to 9 nighttime). And we have satellite and cable TV - so CNN and Euronews there (I don't include anti-Putin paper media, but mostly it's red - communist). And, here we have internet, as you see. So I think we have different views. Please stop to think that we have Goulag here, here is a kind of democracy but with a high level of corruption and criminality (what we are trying to fight).Alexandre Koriakine 00:24, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    Well, I just looked at KVN (клуб веселых...) on your first channel, where Putin was present. Looks like a real cult of Putin's personality. Let's think I am wrong. I want to be wrong. Biophys 05:42, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    Would you please provide a link to official statement of Amnesty International suggesting any FSB involvement in her murder? I cannot find any link suggesting it. It could be useful for Galina Starovoitova article, not this one. --Ovc 23:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

    Currently reference number 8 in Litvinenko article. It is also included in Starovoitova article. Biophys 00:19, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

    No, I am asking about suggestions in FSB involvement in her murder. This article does not suggest it. --Ovc 00:28, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    No, it does. [21]. They suggest investigation should not be done by FSB, because FSB can be involved. Biophys 01:23, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    Please show me where you read "FSB can be involved". Can you do it using copy&paste? I am not able to find it. --Ovc 02:02, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    " The organization believes that in view of the recent reports about the FSB, the investigation of this murder should be transferred from the FSB to another independent body", but one should read the entire text. Biophys 02:44, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    I see suggestion that FSB could be bias in the investigation. Where do you find suggestion of the direct involvement?
    Also you use words "the murder of Starovoitova is almost certainly related to FSB". Where did you get it? Would you refer sources? --Ovc 04:01, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    Right, this source says that FSB could be biased. But why would the FSB be biased? Because Litvinenko and others made their statement - the source says. There is a direct connection with Litvinenko statement.Biophys
    Your second point is not relevant because I did not write in any articles that "the murder of Starovoitova is almost certainly related to FSB". Sorry, I do not have any more time.Biophys 04:55, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    You seem to be missing the point. You seem to be suggestiong we mention Starovoitova in connection to Litvinenko. However we can't do this because no credible source has been provided that links these 2 murders. Furthermore, we also can't suggest Starovoitova was murdered by the FSB because no credible source has suggested she was. AI have simply suggested the investigation should not be carried out by the FSB. It might be okay to write about this in the Starovoitova article. However we cannot and should not suggest AI is saying she was murdered by the FSB because they did not. And as I've stated, we still can't link these 2 murders in any way shape or form without a credible source having done so. This talk page is not intended, as is mentioned all over the place, is not intended for discussion of your personal theories or beliefs Nil Einne 11:08, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    That is why I am not going to discuss discussion. What is really important is the article. This article is fine. It does not say "the murder of Starovoitova is almost certainly related to FSB". I agree, the cited statement from Amnesty International does not prove anything, but it does suggest a potential connection, if you read the text. We are not proving anything here. This is not original research. We only use published sources. This source is good for Wikipedia, and it is properly cited. Biophys 17:36, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    Starovoitova wasn't a critic of FSB. Also I didn't find suggestions of FSB involvement (nor FBI and MI6 involvement) in russian part of the internet.Alexandre Koriakine 00:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    No, she was the strongest critic of FSB, because she was for lustration. I would like to finish this discussion. It leads to nowhere. Biophys 01:23, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    Look this [22]Biophys 02:44, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

    Investigation timeline

    Just who is looking at this article?! When i put up subtitle "investigation timeline" guess what - a few hours later the BBC news website puts up "investigation timeline" nothing like some copying :) JulianHensey 19:35, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

    page counters

    are you allowed to add an invisible page counter on the page - is that ok with wiki policies?

    See here: [23] - 336 000 hits per day
    Uhh...why would you need it in the first place? We're here as an encyclopedia, and we're not trying to compete with others for popularity and web traffic. Nishkid64 16:36, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    The influence of Wikipedia is often missed, and for donation purposes people need to be aware just how much of a reference it is used by people for current events - this article is now topping out Google nearly all the time, and with estimated 300,000 + page views a day a counter will demonstrate to possible donors just how important Wikipedia is. JulianHensey 17:14, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    We don't have page counters, period. We're not looking for donors to come see the our website's popularity. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia first and foremost, and that's how it will be. Nishkid64 00:37, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Anatoly Sobchak

    I would like to note that Russian lawmaker Anatoly Sobchak perhaps was also poisoned by a substance that simulates heart attack, although this is unproven. If someone knows anything about this, please tell. Biophys 22:24, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

    Dissidence Section

    1) I removed "accused the former FSB Director Nikolay Kovalev of ordering them in November 1997 to assassinate Boris Berezovsky" since they did not assuse him (source: http://www.agentura.ru/timeline/1998/urpo/)

    2) I changed "the businessman U. Dzhabrailov" to "a brother of the businessman U. Dzhabrailov" (source: http://www.agentura.ru/timeline/1998/urpo/)

    3) I see 6 names of the officers on the Interfax press conference. But there were only 5 offices in the press conference (including Trepashkin). Please refer source.

    --Ovc 08:01, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

    I wasn't sure what was intended with the "Contrahents of Putin - Theory" section which is currently commented out. I've left it hidden for now. Apart from anything "contrahent" is not a word in common english usage. "Detractors" may be a better word to use. Pontificake 10:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

    "Contrahent" ?!

    What the blazes is a "contrahent"? Sounds Catalan! I literally cannot understand what's meant by it, but it's used more than once in this article. Silverhelm 10:52, 2 December 2006 (UTC).

    The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary says its an obsolete word for a person "entering into a contract", presumably just meaning a contractor. It obviously appears in some Russian-English dictionary.--Grahamec 14:26, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    I just checked. Nope. Online Russian dictionaries do not have this word. I was able to find it only in Merriam-Webster Unabridged. --Ovc 15:24, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


    Explosive attacks on houses 1999

    The section titled 'Explosive attacks on houses 1999' in the article is very poorly constructed. The English is so bad that I can't tell what the meaning of it is, or else I'd try to do something to clean it up myself. Tuviya 15:50, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

    Russian links?

    Also, there are a lot of Russian-language citations in this article. I thought such a thing was not normal for the English Wikipedia. Don't we have a policy that says sources should be English-language, as this is an English-language resource? Tuviya 16:19, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

    Even if it is not normal what can we do if the most useful information is in Russian? --Ovc 17:14, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    We either find English-language links, or we go edit the Russian Wikipedia. Tuviya 07:02, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    Although we greatly prefer English language sources, if and when reliable English language sources cannot be found there is nothing specifically wrong with using a foreign language source provided it is a reliable source. Wikipedia:Verifiability provides some help. Foreign language sources have the key problem that it's much more difficult for our readers to verify that the source actually says what it says it does and also a reader who wishes to read further can't do so unless they understand the foreign language. I.E. the sources are much less accessible. However we also have a related problem with many primary sources (i.e. journals) in that they are usually subscription based, if they are even on the web and for old articles they may only be available in the hard copies. These will not be available from most libraries only university libraries. (They will also usually be hard for the lay person to understand). Similarly other hard copy sources, books etc may not be widely available. However in all cases, while we prefer more accessible sources, provided the source is a reliable source, I don't think we're likely to implicitly reject it if it adds something and there is no more accessible source. Nil Einne 08:12, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    Of course, we have to take care to ensure that people don't add crap and pretend it's from a source that people either don't understand or can't access. Also, if there is dispute as to what a source actual says and/or if a source fulfills our reliable sources requirement, we will usually have to leave the info out until the dispute can be resolved. With less accessible sources, this may be difficult Nil Einne 08:12, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    Alright, thanks for the info. Tuviya 20:17, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Careful with editing and citations

    People need to be careful when doing major editing and retaining citation - for example the suicide theory had a citation there and it is now gone. We cannot start missing out putting back the citations because of some editing ideas - it makes the article look poor when this happens. Please be careful to ensure when doing major edits citations stay.

    Exaclty my point. Luckily, I believe I can still locate the suicide link, and I'm doing that atm. Nishkid64 17:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

    How he died...

    I was watching ABC News last night, and they said that he died of polonium-210 and radioactive thallium poisoning. Yet I see no mention of that in the article. Any reason why? Is ABC News wrong or something? Nishkid64 17:43, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

    Unfortunately this is just like Chinese whispers - as information gets passed down the line it often changes if someone doesn't quite understand - in the UK press you see the difficulty sometime of information being stated that is wrong or non experts getting themselves confused so unless anyone comes up with this "theory" then don't worry about it..JulianHensey 17:53, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

    True, but ABC News was talking to hospital officials about this, which makes this all the more confusing. Nishkid64 18:44, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

    Litvinenko had traces of thallium in his body, however the polonium was far and away the greatest component in his death, as he had more than 100 times a lethal dose of Po-210. Ref this link, which is an excellent and comprehensive update. --72.183.125.111 01:47, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Russian apartment bombings

    It appears that either someone used Babelfish to translate German to English or someone with poor English skills wrote the Russian apartment bombings section. We need English/Russia sources for this asap!

    Together with Juri Felschtinski, an US-American historian of Russian origin, he wrote the book "FSB Blowing UP Russia. Terror from Within" (Russian ФСБ взрывает Россию). Central thesis book is that the explosive notices were not committed of 1999 on houses in Moscow and other Russian cities, with which approximately 300 humans found death, as by official Russian places is maintained by Chechnian terrorists. Rather the notices - so the authors - went on the account of the Russian secret service FSB and served as pretext for provoking the second Chechnya war. It could not supply proofs for these in Russia to conspiracy theory circulating today however.[24][25] Also members of a public commission represented this thesis around Sergei Kovalev. Their members were afflicted by a set of incidents: The commission chairman Sergei Yushenkov was shot on 17 April 2003. [26][27]

    The investigator of the commission, a lawyer named Mikhail Trepashkin -- like Litvinenko a former FSB officer -- a pistol put underneath, it became in May 2004 because of betrayal by state secrets and illegal possession from ammunition to four years camp detention condemned. According to data of Amnesty International was obviously politically motivated the procedure „“and did not correspond „not to the international standards for fair procedures “. Russian groups of human rights assumed that that „the accusations were designed against it, in order to prevent that it could continue its determinations to the 1999 committed bomb attacks on houses “, so Amnesty international. .[28] The committee member Yuri Shchekochikhin, vice-editor-in-chief of the weekly paper „Novaya Gazeta“, died on 3 July 2003. Official cause of death was a fast running allergische reaction, the so-called Lyell syndrome. The political friends of the deceased doubted this representation. They pointed out that the deceased had not suffered from allergy and that was never clarified, what the alleged allergischen shock released. You attempts to examine the circumstances of death more near were obstructed however by official side; numerous questions could not be answered. Some western media speak of poisoning. [29] The Russian oppositional Internet newspaper grani.ru incorporates the case under the large political murders into Russia.[30]


    Agree, take the section out it makes no sense and really cocks up the article and spoils it. JulianHensey 21:24, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

    Okay, will do. Nishkid64 21:27, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
    What section they are talking about? Of course, these bombings must be described, because this is the most important allegation of Litvinenko, and he wrote a book specifically about this subject. I thought everything was fine. Please do not take any important pieces out. First person even did not put his signature.Biophys 04:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    I found the excluded section. Yes, it was poorly written. Biophys 04:57, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Prodi's connection?

    This story from the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6200148.stm showing he's now getting the lawyers involved to defend his honor. Hypnosadist 21:32, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


    Wikipedia MUST delete a state claiming Litvinenko claimed Prodi had a part in the attempt on the Pope's life. The article cited DOES NOT SAY THAT. It is misleading, and is not backed up by hteir own citations. DELETE THIS AT ONCE.

    Removed by Hypnosadist. Thanks for letting us know. Nishkid64 23:58, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

    Further people who have been taken ill -- Poorly named

    The section: "Further people who have been taken ill" appears to be discussing at two or three people who have no symptoms whatever - but who are merely showing traces of Polonium 210. I think we need a better title for the section. "People who were also contaminated" seems like a better choice. SteveBaker 05:18, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Well there's a problem since Akhmed Zakayev is also on that list. He doesn't have any traces, but his car does. Anyway, I renamed it "urther people contaminated or related to the case". Nishkid64 14:46, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    I doubt his car could be contaminated without him also being contaminated. Whatever. SteveBaker 16:15, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    Well I think people were saying that Litvinenko used Zakayev's car. I forgot whether they said he was driving it or Zakayev was driving him. Nishkid64 17:57, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Half life of Polonium

    I looked up the half-life of Polonium - this stuff decays to lead with a half life of only four months. So either VAST quantities of this stuff was provided for the purpose - or it had been produced fairly freshly for the purpose. To put 50 mCi worth of Po into food, you'd have had to aquire 100mCi if it was four months old, 400mCi if it was a year old, 3,200mCi if it were two years old, 25,000mCi if it were three years old...eight times more for every year since you made the stuff. So it's not like someone had a bottle of the stuff sitting around since Soviet era reactors might have made it. You'd need a hell of a lot of the stuff if that were the case.

    But worse still, what you end up with when Po-210 decays is lead. So sit on a pile of Po for a few years and the AMOUNT of the stuff you'd have to feed someone gets quite large. If you're going to put it in someones food - it's gotta be reasonably freshly made.

    Interesting! SteveBaker 17:07, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Remember that the source of any given radioisotope can be held for longer periods than the resultant if there's a short half-life. This is why they either ship Technetium 99 from short distances or more often ship it's source, molybdenum. See Technetium Cow. So while you have a point, one would simply work around the short half-life with something like a "cow" or source substance. Cheers 82.93.133.130 14:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

    Putin threat to Politkovskaya - absurd

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=7T0JcfjwQLc In this speed Litvinenko said that Putin used Khakamada (a liberal pro-west woman-politic and person having contact with Politkovskaya) to pass a threat to Politkovskaya. Today on a TV shown that Khakamada denied this and called this totally absurd.

    Of course, she denied that Putin personally threatened the life of

    Politkovskaya as Litvinenko claimed! Otherwise, Khakamada would be already dead. Besides, Khakamada is not a kind of person that can be trusted. To understand this, one could read her own writings about Russian politics. Biophys 18:17, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Oh my God! According to your behaviour, Litvinenko is a person that can be trusted. Khakamada (whom I don't like but respect, and who lost all elections and who blamed and blame many time FSB and Putin, in more offencive way) 1000 thousand times more respective person than a criminal Litvinenko. I think the current situation in russian politics is totally unclear to you. By the way, your next homework is a book of Paul KhlebnikovAlexandre Koriakine 19:55, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    Please remain civil and assume good faith. Tuviya 20:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    Irina Hakamada tells approximately the following about this Litvinenko claim: "What he is telling is a complete nonsense! I have not been in Kremlin already for three months!". That means she actually WAS in Kremlin three months ago and earlier (note that Litvinenko did not say when exactly Putin issued his threats). Most important, Hakamada is a Kremlin's insider. What does it mean? She wrote herself about this in her recent book "Sex in big politics" (this is an interesting book!). See some fragments: [31],[32], [33]. To be a Kremlin insider means to play all their games by their rules. If someone do not follow the rules, like Tregubova (see [http://www.amazon.com/Bayki-Kremlevskogo-Diggera-Tregubova-E/dp/5933210730/sr=1-2/qid=1165214671/ref=sr_1_2/104-5859887-8050345?ie=UTF8&s=books]), she will find a bomb under her door like Tregubova [http://www.amazon.com/Proschanie-kremlevskogo-diggera-Tregubova-Elena/dp/5933210951/sr=1-1/qid=1165214671/ref=sr_1_1/104-5859887-8050345?ie=UTF8&s=books]. This is very simple. Did you read this book by Hakamada and two books by Litvinenko? Biophys 06:58, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
    You fight againt facts with your insinuations and consp. theories. A FACT - Litvinenko told that Khakamada were passing threats to Politkovskaya from Putin. Which is insane to a russian mind - who is Putin and who is unknown Politkovskaya - but this this seems to be ok to non-russian because of lack of knowledge of russian politics and situation. A FACT - Khakamada denied everything. But you insisnt that Khakamada lied but criminal and betrayer Litvinenko was telling the truth. Also down here you argued that russian media has different theories about Litvinenko death. Of course! Even anti-Putin pro-western forces do not copy (even decline) many wester official theories because they seem clearly absurd from russian political view. We have different situation here than in the west. Alexandre Koriakine 09:02, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
    Yes, I agree with you on the following. He indeed made such claim. This is fact, just as you say. Therefore, this should be included in the chapter about Litvinenko claims. I did this and provided explanation in Discussion section. Biophys 18:06, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

    Wikipedia article about FSB

    I have made a few changes in Wikipedia article about FSB related to Litvinenko. You may take a look and correct if anything is wrong. Biophys 17:32, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Here are some interesting news items that could be integrated into the article:

    Conspiracy
    Blackmail
    Spin doctoring

    -- Petri Krohn 17:28, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    User watch

    Earlier today, a user named Ekraus was adding POV information to the article. I saw this and removed all the unsourced info he added, and I warned him and subsequently blocked him indefinitely as he was a single-purpose account adding unsourced POV info to one article. I felt I jumped the gun so I asked other admins at Admin Noticeboard for assistance on the issue. They said to give him another shot. I saw he made a request to be unblocked on his talk page, and I processed it and unblocked him. He believed that I had some sort of "political agenda" and he believed that both sides of opinion should be presented in the article (he was basically saying it was biased against Russians). Anyway, he's unblocked now and he'll probably come back and edit this article, so I just wanted to let you guys know. Nishkid64 18:00, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    POV pushing on source of polonium

    User:72.183.125.111 has been trying to "prove" that the polonium must have been smuggled into the country and is using the article to push this unproven POV. It is well known that practically all polonium available (100 grams annually) originates from from Russian RBMK reactors. Most of this is distributed by commercial distributors in the US. The fact that the polonium originated from a Russian reactor is no proof of that it came from from Russia or was used by Russian state actors.

    I am loosing good faith in his edits. This edit from yesterday [34] reverted my edits and resulted in misinformation remaining on the page for a whole day. I found the edit summary insulting: Restored section to a more NPOV, literate and informed version. His reintroduction of uninformed illiteracy: RBMK -> RMBK was not helpful, the change in paragraph order made the text less "literate" and was only done to push his point-of-view. -- Petri Krohn 18:17, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Well, we had problems with this user before in regards to the whole British Airways thing. Have you tried discussing this with him? If you haven't, I suggest you do, as it's possible that this dispute can be resolved fairly quickly if both parties involved start talking with each other. Nishkid64 18:24, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    The mispelling was due to a direct quote from a newspaper article, but if it were my mistake, I'd admit it. I've fixed any number of your syntax and typo errors without making similar hysterical remarks, Krohn. You're welcome. Your POV-pushing edits regarding completely off-topic sources of Po-210 as regards Litvinenko are ridiculous, as time has shown and will continue to show.--72.183.125.111 18:46, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    Thanks for the backup, Nishkid. You're on your own now, kid. Don't forget -- there's lots of Po-210 in the sun...maybe Krohn can come up with a meterorite-related Po-210 scenario for that. --72.183.125.111 18:46, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    I'm not trying to back anyone up. I'm just saying what should be done in these types of scenarios. Anyway, if you guys can't agree on this polonium thing, either remove it completely or keep it to the agreeable basics. Nishkid64 18:52, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Krohn, I've pretty much had it with your deleting valuable content. Knock it off. Now. As you well should know, no nuclear authority has supported the idea that any commerical product was the likely source of Po-210 --72.183.125.111 19:20, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Guys, I will fully protect the page if the edit warring continues. Actually, I'd have to request full protection at WP:RFPP since I'm involved, but that's not the point. Nishkid64 19:28, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    (After edit conflict)
    I did remove some irrelevant speculation earlier. I do not believe I removed any content in my last edits (only rearranged existing content). Can you point out what content was removed. I am sure we can work out a solution for including it. -- Petri Krohn 21:00, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    Krohn insisted (again) on deleting the information that no credible nuclear scientist has supported the idea that a commerical product was the likely source of the polonium. I have subsequently deleted the highly specious commerical product section -- of which no product has a citable connection to Litvinenko's death -- per your previous suggestion. --72.183.125.111 20:56, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    I did NOT remover this content. it is still there, right where you originally placed it: However, no credible nuclear authority has asserted that this is a likely source for the poisoning of Litvinenko.
    What I object to is your edit where you insist that this refutial is placed before the statement, that lethal amounts of polonium are commercially available for use outside universities and the nuclear industry. -- Petri Krohn 21:06, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    The admission that there is no credible nuclear authority that claims a commercial product is behind Litivenko's death needs to go at the beginning of the commercial products subsection, not after some selected random product so as to bury the comment. The section otherwise starts off with the implication that it has somehow been validated that a commercial product is at issue, which is most certainly not the case. It's a question of being forthright rather than deceptive. --72.183.125.111 21:10, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    Not so! The claim here (in this article and other news sources) is that the polonium came directly from Russian reactors. The commercial information is the refutial, it is presented only to refute the unsubstituded claim that Russian origin proves a Russian actor. We do not need to refute the refutial, even before it is presented. No one is claming that these commersial sources of polonium were used. It is just not known at this point. -- Petri Krohn 21:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    If that's the point you're trying to make, then just state it in plain English. You don't need to list a bunch of entirely unconnected products that you are clearly implying could be used...even though, due to laboratory challenges, that is highly specious speculation. The "commercial products" section should remain deleted, as it is entirely tangential to Litvinenko...the subject of this article. If you want to make a plain (and rather obvious) statement that the route by which the Russian polonium came to be in Litvinenko's body is unknown, then fine...say that. But don't try to drag in America on what is very clearly a European and Russian issue. --72.183.125.111 21:25, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    Maybe I should have been more explicit. I did however write in plain English the "state actor" POV and argument (which you evidently had no objection to). It can not stand alone, it must be balanced by the option of commercial source. If one goes, then both must go. -- Petri Krohn 22:02, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Given all of the facts stated so far, the "state actor" POV is blatantly obvious and recognized worldwide...but nonetheless speculation. As I've clearly stated here regarding speculation, I'd move to strike it as it is speculation. What you've added regarding "distributors" (of what...and citing whom?) is not clear English, and again implies that a commercial product was used, which no one...much less any nuclear authority...is claiming. This section is getting very weird. I'm leaning toward deleting the whole section per Nishkid's suggestion. --72.183.125.111 22:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    The section "Thallium-initial hypothesis" is both well-sourced and fairly written. It talks directly about Litvinenko and doesn't go into much detail in regards to the chemistry. The "Polonium-210" section is also pretty good. The problems start to arise right after that point. "Po-210 production" has no relevance to Litvinenko, "Sources of polonium" can just be merged with "Polonium-210" and "Commercial products" can be greatly shortened. You guys went into the technical aspects, and IMHO, it's not really necessary here. Nishkid64 22:25, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    Given that most of the world's polonium comes from Russia, you're really going to have to explain your statement ""Po-210 production has no relevance to Litvinenko," Nishkid. Perhaps you meant: "it doesn't matter to him now" (?) --72.183.125.111 22:40, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    Yeah, that's what I meant. Sorry for the ambiguity. Nonetheless, I feel sections should be removed/shortened. Nishkid64 22:53, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    The fact that it comes from Russia has no relevance, except as part of the blatantly obvious and worldwide recognized "state actor" proof. Most of the polonium is exported, so it should have no relevance. The story is however repeated in the media over and over as proof of Russia's/Putin's involvement, so it has a place in the article. -- Petri Krohn 00:07, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
    The amount of polonium involved was not trivial - according to the UnitedNuclear site, it was enough to make 15,000 standard laboratory radiation sources and would be worth something like a million dollars on the open market. If some random person phones them up and orders that much of such a rare substance - I think they are going to remember. And (as I've pointed out already) Polonium doesn't keep - it decays to lead in a matter of months. So this was a recent sale of a huge quantity - and presumably not to their usual customers. Whoever sold it to them knows exactly who and for what purpose. Whoever did this wanted the right people to know that they did it. If you wanted to murder someone quietly and without fuss you'd whack them with a car or pay a hitman to blow their brains out in a faked mugging or something. Even if you wanted to poison them with radioactivity for some bizarre reason - as the UnitedNuclear site again points out - the amount of more lethal Americium in one smoke detector is ten times more than enough. Why use a million dollars worth of exotic Polonium-210 ? Unless that is that you want to send a very exact message to some person or organisation who can see exactly what the message says. SteveBaker 02:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
    Yes, this is strange. But we cannot decode this message at this time. What about the amount of Polonium found in the body of Litvinenko - the autopsy details isn't opened to the public yet, so we have to wait.Alexandre Koriakine 23:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

    Canadian polonium?

    Do you seriously believe, that there is a major commercial source of polonium outside of Russia? Sergei Kiriyenko speculates that it could also be produced in the Canadian CANDU reactors. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) however says that CANDU reactors do not and can not produce polonium. Now, is there possibly some other secret source, that might be supplying polonium to Russians? [35] The issue is mute now. I added the caveat "in Russia" to the statement, you clamed was unsupported by the source. --Petri Krohn 00:30, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

    I'm pretty sure quite a few places/reactors produce or can produce polonium. The main question is how easy it would be for someone to obtain it from there Nil Einne 20:42, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

    Theories of Litvinenko death

    I just looked through Russian media. The number of Litvinenko death theories is growing exponentially there. Basically, they are trying to create "white noise". I do not think we should describe all their "theories" here. Biophys 18:30, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    True. I believe one of the Russian articles I was translating was titled "White Noise" lol...I think they're just trying to create a media frenzy. Anyway, what do you think about the theories in the article as of right now? Do you think there are too many? Nishkid64 18:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    They? Are we somehow we and they something else. Wikipedia, not even the English Wikipedia, has no Anglo-Saxon point-of-view. Russian sources are as valuable as any others. -- Petri Krohn 21:29, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    The Hindustan Times has a great tongue-in-cheek lead-in as well as a great follow-up story along these lines. Link: [36] --72.183.125.111 19:27, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    You are right, guys (sarcasm). The russian media like United Press International published a very provocative article: http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20061203-125014-3665r
    Please, don't feed people with your conspiration theories! Alexandre Koriakine 19:59, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    We're following the facts and truth, Alexandre. They are a very tenacious thing. If a deorbiting President Eisenhower era satellite is found to be at fault for the Po-210 poisoning, we'll report that, too. --72.183.125.111 20:20, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    Again Alexandre, please assume good faith and remain civil. If you cannot do that, then perhaps this is not the site for you. Tuviya 20:21, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    I thought I have to point people to the facts if I see something wrong. Sorry, maybe I pointed too much. Alexandre Koriakine 20:34, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    "Embarassing death" and "Opponents in 2008" seem to be minor hypotheses and could be removed (although I do not insist). Everything else is O'K. "Blackmail" theory will certainly grow.Biophys 20:56, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    One interesting opinion in Russian media is this [37] (Yulia Latynina, December 2; one can only read her introductory words). Of course, this is only an opinion.Biophys 21:21, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    For the record, I do not totally disagree with Alexandre. I am of the opinion that all speculation should be removed from the article, and that it should only contain citable facts. But...that's just me...others insist on implying that anti-static brushes (perhaps launched from space, perhaps not) were the source of Litvinenko's death. Again, I find the article in its current state rather full of propaganda, and that all speculation should be deleted or stuck under the heading Speculation, opinion and propaganda. --72.183.125.111 21:00, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    I think it is time we start a new article on the murder, the investigation and the speculation. -- Petri Krohn 21:23, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    I agree with user Krohn. For heaven's sake, the subject-article man is dead. If we can't stick to the facts under those circumstances, when can we? This article should contain solid facts and respected citations, and thus will likely lag the content of the investigation and speculation article. --72.183.125.111 21:31, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    If I understand correctly, Krohn suggests that only "Investigation" chapter would be organized as a separate article. Would it be more covenient for a reader? For me, it is O'K right now. Biophys 21:37, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    No, I am proposing Alexander Litvinenko assassination and moving all dynamic material there. In fact it would be easier to move this article and start the Alexander Litvinenko article from fresh. --Petri Krohn 00:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
    I'm OK with the article's structure provided that all the speculation is either deleted or VERY clearly marked as such. It's otherwise too tempting to the propagandists to weave in their spin, obfuscation, nonsense and white noise...and to then try to label that as the citable truth. --72.183.125.111 21:42, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    It is NPOV right now, because all main alternative hypotheses are present, explained, and they are obviously only hypotheses.Biophys 22:03, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    "All main alternative hypotheses"...? Do you mean main and alternative hypotheses? Why has no one taken up the very specific claim that Litvinenko himself made? I see no section labeled "Vladimir Putin" theory. Again, I think that all "so called speculation" should be deleted. As Nishkid observes below, eventually it will be as the truth continues to come out. --72.183.125.111 22:34, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
    72.183.125.111 has had problems with our so-called "speculation" since he started editing this article. That section shall remain until the truth is known. If the whole situation clears up remarkably within the next week or so, the best thing to do would be to shorten the theory section into bullet points and expand on the truth. And Petri, I used the word "they" jokingly. I never even used the word "we" and I was only laughing because I was translating a Russian news article and the title was "White Noise" and it was in reference to the whole Litvinenko situation. Nishkid64 22:17, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

    Source of small amounts of Thallium (and large amounts of confusion)

    The article remarks that 210Po decays to Lead. Eventually I don't doubt it, but 210Po84 - 4He2 = 206-82 and 82 is Thallium. (Half life very very long.) If you are going to poison someone with tiny amounts of a fantastically poisonous and hard to detect substance, you probably don't leave Bismuth in it, so I suspect the Bismuth is a red herring. Are the numbers for detectable amount of Thallium to have come from lethal amounts of Polonium wrong? Not being a nuclear physicist or a chemist I'm not in a good position to work that one out, but I find the existing explanation lacking. Midgley 00:52, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

    Atomic number 82 is lead. Thallium has atomic number 81. 210Po decays into 206Pb. Please do at least rudimentary fact checking before posting. -- mglg(talk) 05:02, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
    I guess the point is that if the Polonium 210 were mixed with Bismuth, the radioactivity becomes much more potent because the short-range-easily-blocked radiation from the Po can cause secondary radiation from the Bismuth that would be much, much more dangerous. However, all of the reports are that the Polonium isn't dangerous in the form it's been found. Also, if you had to sneak this through radiation detectors at airports and such - you wouldn't want it mixed with Bismuth. The significance of the half-life thing is that Polonium 210 (as opposed to the other isotopes of Polonium) decays directly to a completely non-radioactive, stable isotope of lead - which is commonly found in nature. So 'old' polonium 210 gradually turns itself into a chunk of lead containing trace amounts of polonium. With a half life of four months - this process reduces a pure sample of Polonium 210 into a chunk of boring old lead within just a few years. The significance of which is that this is unlikely to be Polonium that was manufactured a long time ago - so the idea that this stuff was made in a Soviet-era reactor and sat on someone's shelf for 10 years is a non-starter. If we are to believe the information that the 'signature' of the Polonium used here shows that it comes from a Russian reactor - then that is strong indication of RECENT involvement by the Russians rather than of old Polonium that they sold to someone years ago which has been used to implicate them in some way. SteveBaker 05:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

    Split and page move from Alexander Litvinenko

    I was bold. I moved this page from Alexander Litvinenko and split the static non-poison content to a new page with the same name. -- Petri Krohn 01:54, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

    pictures of Litvinenko

    Can someone let me know the deal on pictures? Found this one with no source or anything - can we fair usage it? http://www.ziua.net/pics/2004/07/26/7.jpg JulianHensey 16:51, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

    I've seen that picture before, it looks personal :-\ The Lilac Pilgrim 19:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

    Another consequence of the half-life of Polonium-210

    It occurs to me that given Po-210's short half-life (138 days), it would be really easy for someone with a mass spectrometer and a tiny sample of the material to determine very accurately the exact date on which the Polonium involved in this case was manufactured. The ratio of Polonium to Lead in the sample would give you that date with great precision (certainly enough to pin it down to a particular day). SteveBaker 12:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

    From where would you get a clean sample? By swiping airplane seats? The amount of lead is so small, that it could not be measured, if even detected. -- Petri Krohn 05:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
    The main problem with this idea is that the amount of naturally occuring lead is so large, compared to the extremely small amount of artificial polonium or with the lead-206 which arises from polonium decay. You would not be able to get a meaningful ratio. However, measurement of isotope ratios is presumably how the Atomic Weapons Establishment thinks it can track the source: they don't let on exactly which ones they measure, but I can get the general idea. Physchim62 (talk) 09:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
    Well, in detail - naturally occurring lead is a mixture of roughly 54% Lead-208, 22% Lead-207 and 24% Lead-206 with trace amounts of other isotopes. Since Polonium-210 decays only into Lead-206 and produces none of the other Lead isotopes, you could measure the amounts of Lead-208, 207 and 206 and the amount of Polonium-210 in the not-so-clean sample. Then you'd know that the total amount of naturally occurring lead must be the amount of the common Lead-208 isotope multiplied by 100/54. You could check that figure by looking at the amount of Lead-207. From that figure you'd know how much of the Lead-206 present in the sample was from nature (24/54 times the amount of the 208 isotope) and however much there is over that amount would have to have come from Polonium-210 decay. It's not difficult. Mass spectrometers are exceedingly sensitive - and they work with tiny samples. Remember - we use this exact technique all the time to do radiocarbon dating using the decay rates of Carbon-14. C14 decays much more slowly - which makes the test much harder than with Polonium-210. SteveBaker 13:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
    The problem is that the amount of Polonium was very low. The lethal dose is 0.1 mkg. Even if they fed him 100 LD it is still 10 mkg on 70 kg of the body mass. The natural amount of Lead in a human is proably 10...100 times higher. Alex Bakharev 14:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
    I asked the question over at Talk:Mass spectrometer - I refer you to their answer. SteveBaker 23:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
    The question is in fact at Talk:Mass spectrometry. --Petri Krohn 10:44, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

    A tiny sample wuld have been found in his body or excretions obviously. Since all of it is pretty much a:" do we want to believe this?"(eg. the possibility to make some in cyclotrons quitte effectively, and the signature) the fact it isn't traced how old the stuff was points toward a more recent then expected production, wich would be the more effective poison anyhow. Also the article should mention that litvinenko absurdedly had been connecting putin to ridiculous events, like the london bombing, and that he was allieing forces that basically aimed at capturing governmental power in russia by discrediting the democratic situation. Also i interprete the facts as putin expressing no regrets to someone he perceived a nucleair threat. but perhaps that is just me.80.56.39.154 11:07, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

    Murder

    As the police are now treating this as murder should we change the title to "Murder of Alexander Litvinenko"? PatGallacher 18:27, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

    No, as there are other possible victims. The title could be Alexander Litvinenko assassination. --Petri Krohn 10:33, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
    But there's no proof he's been assasinated and given that we have suicide theories... Nil Einne 19:20, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

    Putin's reaction

    In this affair, one of the things that struck me most was Putin's reaction to his death; if I recall well he said something like "It was not a violent death". As he had been accused in person by Litvinenko, why is that comment not in the section Russian Government response? Harald88 20:23, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

    24.60.104.71 01:40, 7 December 2006 (UTC)I believe that claim was actually made before it was apparent that there was a radiactive element involved.
    Everyone knew that he was poisened, and it was generally thought to be due to a radiactive substance. I'll try to find a newspaper reference. Harald88 07:31, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
    That can't be right - there were reports of Polonium-210/Radiation poisoning BEFORE Litvinenko died. So therefore if Putin said "It was not a violent death" (past tense) - then he must have said it AFTER Litvinenko died - so he (and everyone else) already knew it was radiation poisoning. SteveBaker 07:36, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

    OK I found a few with Google (putin "not a violent death"), and we have quite a few sources options to choose from, and for example theglobalandmail as well as harvard international review and cornellsun commented specifically on that weird statement ("so obviously illogical"):

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6535350
    http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/11/24/D8LJGCUG2.html
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061125.wxelitvinenko25/BNStory/specialComment/home
    http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/11/24/uk.spypoisoned/index.html
    http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/11/24/uk.spypoisoned/index.html
    http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2677102
    http://hir.harvard.edu/blog/?p=187
    http://www.breakingnews.ie/2006/11/24/story286469.html
    http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/11/24/russian-spy.html
    http://cornellsun.com/node/20204
    etc. etc.
    Harald88 10:37, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
    I now added it, with more references than needed; I leave it to others to decide which to keep (at least one ref. about the fact that his statement caused surprise should be kept, and also the transcript should be kept of course). Harald88 22:10, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
    Actually as far as I remember polonium-210 only surfaced after he died, from the initial tests I believe. When he died, AFAIK no one really knew what was up. Thallium had been ruled out by his doctors and IIRC so had radiation surprisingly. Also, I would argue it wasn't in fact a violent death. Nil Einne 19:19, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
    See this link. [38] in the timeline it has radiation and thallium ruled out. This concurs with what I remember since I distinctly recall hearing the doctor say it wasn't either of those. Indeed, if you go to the AL archive, I think I even mentioned I was surprised when Polonium came up because of it Nil Einne 19:22, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
    By adding "before plonium-210 was identified" and deleting the word that I used to indicate the cited opinions, the article does not reflect the interpretation of the cited sources; that is not acceptable in view of WP:NOR. Thus I'll expand on that. On a sidenote, only a fool would have found it likely that he wasn't poisoned - thus I felt that Putin treated us as fools. Harald88 22:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

    Criticism of the blackmailing theory

    Screenshot of http://ruin.ru/ru/Charities/ as of 18 November 2006

    I have uploaded the screen shot of the "Russian Investors" web page obtained by Google cache on 18 November. It is shown on the right. The page mentioned Yulia Svetlichnaya at that time as its press-secretary. The wiki article in question says that the Aftenposten jornalist called the director of "Russian Investors" and inquired him about Svetlichnaya who was probably the PhD student telling The Observer about Litvinenko's blackmailing plans. The director sounded messed up and hung up. The current page no longer mentions the name or address of Svetlichnaya. I thought the screen shot might be useful, but the web site requires written authorization to use its materials. ilgiz 05:06, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

    You are right, it's still in the cache :-) [39]
    Regretfully it's not in the archive. Harald88 07:40, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

    The problem with this one is that the Telegraph article writes it was not only Yulia Svetlichnaya who talked to Litvinenko, but Yulia recorded everything. James Heartfield's page at the University of Westminster looks like what you may expect from a British-born PhD candidate interested in international politics, to the extent of mentioning his two children - did Aftenposten talk to him? In any case, James Heartfield is not (yet?) in hiding and has a blog where he mentions the interview and reactions to it. His "in the news" boasting page has a link to an article in "The Australian" which gives April and May as dates for the interview, which I suppose means that he agrees with that. Another note: Yulia Svetlichnaya uses the transliteration Julia Svetlichnaja. These "j" s are favoured in German and Dutch, so she may not have come straight from Russia to Britain. --Pan Gerwazy 13:39, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

    Just noticed: James Heartfield. It's a small world, after all.--Pan Gerwazy 13:57, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
    The Telegraph's article doesn't mention any plans to extort money. So the only source supporting the blackmailing theory is the interview with Julia Svetlichnaya in The Observer? ilgiz 14:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
    You are clutching at straws. Have a good look at the last paragraph but one: "His stories were full of extravagant conspiracies, hardly surprising when he had lived in the middle of so many himself. He was still very interested in the world of Russian espionage and was hoping to earn a living as an intelligence analyst, hinting that he was privy to the secrets behind many big scandals, some of them from as long ago as the Cold War." Note (it is on James Heartfield's blog) that they both went on TV after these articles. I see that my link to the Telegraph has been removed, while the Aftenposten claims Svetlichnaja is the only one behind this story and at least suggests she is not even a student. --193.190.172.95 16:20, 7 December 2006 (UTC) That was me, not logged in. --Pan Gerwazy 17:54, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
    The trouble with James Heartfield is he is an ex-trotskyite turned libertarian, and on both accounts he may have his own reasons to blame the people that Litvinenko could blackmail. --Pan Gerwazy 18:06, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
    "Earn a living as an intelligence analyst" doesn't equate to extortion. What was the deleted Telegraph article link? I see there were 2 articles posted 3 December, one prefacing the Svetlichnaya's story. They are both mentioned in the blackmailing plot section. I rephrased the last sentence, reverting its claim that the co-authored article supports the theory. As for your last comment, I don't understand if it was said in support or criticism of the theory. ilgiz 18:12, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
    As for the deletion, I suppose I looked between edits? The way it is phrased now, does not sound right to me. The Telegraph article negates the whole argument coming from Aftenposten: she was not alone in interviewing Litvinenko, and the interviews took place long before the poisoning - but it is used as an argument against the story. I haven't heard of Heartfield denying the story, and his blog does not look like he is about to do that. As for the trotskyite bit - the editors probably know Heartfield's past. Did they tell Heartfield to use restraint on the Cold War extorsion bit (the point being that any trotskyite still alive might get wet dreams reading about Litvinenko blackmailing that old Nomenklatura)? --Pan Gerwazy 21:20, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
    I couldn't find a deleted link in my changes to the section. I understand your argument that more than one person at a time took the interviews with Litvinenko. My point was that the blackmailing/extortion plans were only mentioned by Svetlichnaya, not by Hearfield. Can you show Heartfield's or Heartfield's and Svetlichnaya's collective words confirming the theory? To "earn a living" is not the same as "to blackmail" or "to extort", is it? ilgiz 21:52, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
    The Chechnya forum on yahoo and Wikipedia are basically the only ones quoting this Aftenposten article. I do not care for the blackmail assertion very much - everything there depends on Yuri Shvets, and we are not going to hear much from him in the near future. However, we have here a whole paragraph about a claim that Svetlichnaya is a front for the Kremlin creating white noise, perhaps not even a real student. Note that her page at Westminster University has her studying in Britain since 2005 - you can actually download one of the papers she wrote in that year (I have read part of it, and yes, it looks like Englsih written by a Russian). No, Svetlichnaya is not a journalist - but Heartfield is. So what else is left of this grand accusation: some anonymous professor and the fact that they found her name on a funny website. Svetlichnaya earns or earned some money doing press releases for an investor firm - well, studying at a British university is very expensive, particularly for foreigners. As for the name being taken out, perhaps these guys did not want to get involved in a controversy like that? As Svitlachnaya came to Britain in October 2005 (perhaps from Germany or Holland) and the interviews are from April and May 2006, the "front" argument is also suggesting the Kremlin planned this murder VERY long ago.--Pan Gerwazy 12:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
    Indeed not much space should be given to a lonely voice. But which source claims that she came from Germany or Holland? Note also that Yulia isn't English, but Julia is.Harald88 10:38, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
    Julia in English does not sound like Russian Yulia at all, but German Julia is the same. The "j" transcription of the "y" (like in English "yet") in Russian Cyrillic names is dominant in Germany, Holland and the Dutch speaking part of Belgium - though it is also found in Scandinavia and Middle European countries (like Czechia) as a result of German influence. French speakers prefer to write "i" (Svetlichnaia). Of course, Svetlichnaya could have taken this gmail e-mail account long ago, but why does she use the same transliteration at Russain investors - I would be very surprised if her international passport from the RF says something else than "Svetlichnaya" - they use English transliteration now. As for the blackmail-make money statement, note that James Heartfield's version is very close to what Gordiyevski said about the Prodi affair and the Repubblica article quoted in the Litvinenko article:[40]. I quote "Gordievsky said Litvinenko had merely said what Scaramella wanted to hear, because he was in desperate financial straits and hoped to benefit from such cooperation." --Pan Gerwazy 17:50, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
    Again, Heartfild never stated that Litvinenko planned blackmailing. The only source of the "Gordievsky's statement" of Litvinenko's blackmailing plans seems to be RIAN. RIAN, the Russian Information Agency "Novosti" (News), was long known to be staffed with foreign intelligence officers. To the contrary, Litvinenko stated that the Moscow region FSB head Anatoly Trofimov said Prodi was the KGB's man in Italy. [41] La Repubblica's article quotes Litvinenko saying he did not hear about Prodi and did not have any proofs against Prodi. I don't see much contradiction here with his knowledge of Trofimov's statement, taking into account the time of Litvinenko's conversation with Trofimov (Fall 2000), the date of the La Repubblica's article (3 March 2005), the date of Trofimov's assassination (10 April 2005) and the date of the Litvinenko-Batten statement (3 April 2006). ilgiz 19:41, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
    At a press-conference in London Svetlichnaya said there were not any witnesses when, according to her, Litvinenko confided in his blackmailing plans. The emails she received from him were part of his mailing list delivery. [42] computer translation ilgiz 22:50, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
    More details complicate the matter further. The Russian Investors' chairman of the board of directors Alexey Golubovich, once a member of Yukos's management, distanced himself from Yukos and claimed he was a target of assassination attempts from his former Yukos colleagues.([43], computer translation) The Russian state Prosecutor's office dropped charges against him later. ilgiz 23:15, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
    So, she gave a news conference to make it clear she really existed. RIA Novosti was in fact alluding to a recent re- publication of this 2005 interview with Litvinenko (26 November 2006 [44]). It may be a bit more extensive than the earlier published version, because, even though my Italian is not so good, I see it mentions a few things that were never quoted here: Litvinenko went along with Scaramella because the visum extension of his brother (who lived in Italy) was being questioned and Litvinenko was sure that Berlusconi told Putin what he had revealed (which means by the way, that whatever he may have thought about the Italian guy, HE was convinced Scaramella worked for the Italian government). There is also a paragraph where he says he felt humiliated as Mario gives him 600-800 in cash, both because he felt hit an normal thing to do to denounce the history of the KGB, and therefore wanted to be paid transparently, as a sort of consultant, but also because he was afraid that the FSB would one day find out he got paid large sums of money on the side. Gordievsky and Scaramella seem to have met later in Cambridge, without Litvinenko knowing what it was about. Perhaps even this story of using intelligence to gather money is a Scaramella invention? As for the link between Yukos and Russian Investors, I think it would be rather difficult to find any financier or manager who has never been employed by one of these oligarchs. I see you want to keep this blackmail story just in order to keep the "government front" accusation in. It's silly - this is a story by one person, however trustworthy she may be and it probably doubles up with Yuri Shvets. Well, I suppose someone will come along when it is no longer current and vital and shorten the thing.--Pan Gerwazy 01:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

    Hamlet

    A peculiar coincidence ( or is it? ... )

    William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act 4, Scene 3

    ...

    KING CLAUDIUS

    Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?

    HAMLET

    At supper.

    KING CLAUDIUS

    At supper! where?

    HAMLET

    Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. --Itinerant1 16:11, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

    Eh? Nil Einne 19:28, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
    Interesting. You can make everything from Shakespeare have some coincidental reference to current events. Why do you think people believed Nostradamus? Also, this is a talk page where we discuss the article itself, so it's not for small talk. Nishkid64 19:33, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

    German Connection?

    I just caught half of an NPR report saying that someplace in Germany related to all of this mess is showing Polonium-210 contamination. Did anyone catch the entire story? SteveBaker 21:14, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

    No, but see this article in the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/10/AR2006121000562.html

    It gives full details. Among other things, Kovtun left radiation on a file card in German immigration possession! And in a cab. All this well before the London poisoning. The article says that Aeroflot "is not available" for inspection, for some obscure reason, but indications are that Kovten came to Hamburg from Moscow, then went to London. There is no eveidence that he passed thru Hamburg on the way back, so the radiation probably didn't come from England and probably didn't come from Germany. Which leaves ... Russia.

    I thought they'd already found that the polonium came from a reactor in Russia? The Lilac Pilgrim 15:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

    Airport security checks?

    Speaking to a (co-incidentally) Russian friend today, she made a good point; Kovtun went through airport security *several times* while being practically covered in polonium - a dangerous and in particular *radiological* hazard.

    Airport security didn't notice a thing!

    All those hours queuing, no liquids in containers, baggage all checked and x-rayed, etc, etc, etc - and what good did it do?

    And, tell me if I'm wrong, but aren't radiological threats one of the current concerns with regard to terrorism?

    Toby Douglass 00:28, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

    Normal airport security checks will not detect alpha radiation unless they are particularly lucky. Most alpha emittors also give off beta radiation and/or gamma radiation, which are easier to detect by security, but polonium-210 is the exception. Physchim62 (talk) 11:41, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
    This is something most people fail to grasp. Alpha radiation is fast moving, electrically charged helium gas - it won't go through a sheet of paper - the layer of desd skin cells covering your body will absorb it without harm - and certainly alpha particles won't go through the side of a suitcase. You could keep a slug of polonium-210 in your pocket and not get irradiated by it - it's absolutely NOT dangerous unless you eat the stuff or breathe it in. Just a few inches of air is enough to block its radiation. To detect it, you've got to either get in very close to the polonium - or you've got to hope that one of those alpha particles hits some other substance and knocks off a more energetic particle - that can happen if you deliberately mixed polonium with other exotic substances such as beryllium. However, that's a long shot - there is no way an airport detector will pick up Polonium on a routine scan. As far as radiological threats - Polonium won't explode as a nuclear bomb like Plutonium or Uranium - and it's insanely expensive. You can't even make a believable 'dirty bomb' out of the stuff because shielding against alpha radiation is childishly easy and a simple face-mask (so you don't breath the stuff in) is ample protection. The only reason a terrorist might be interested in Polonium is as a trigger for a nuclear weapon...but I think you need very little of the stuff for that - maybe the amount you find in one of those photographer's anti-static brush would be enough. The radiological threat that the airports are set up to detect are the mass-destruction stuff...Uranium and Plutonium in significant quantities. SteveBaker 16:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
    Having said all this, though, Kovtun was littering his path with polonium. It wasn't safely sealed. This surely gave opportunities for detection, had the matter been considered beforehand. For example, you could have airport staff regularly place their hands into alpha-particle detectors, to see if they had material on their skin. Toby Douglass 00:25, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
    Wait, are we actually discussing the notion that Kovtun may very well have been the man that killed Litvinenko? I'm open to suggestion with this, but you all seem pretty certain it was him. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by The Lilac Pilgrim (talk • contribs) 10:30, 19 December 2006 (UTC).
    Toby: Why on earth would airport security even care about Polonium-210 going though their detectors? It's not a weapon of mass destruction - you can't bring down a plane using it - terrorists can't use it for much because it's too expensive and childishly easy to trace - it's an utterly stupid choice as a poison (unless you are trying to make a point...as in this case). If you wanted to simply poison someone, give them a $12, 20gram overdose of an over-the-counter Acetometaphin like Tylanol. It's simply not sensible to have the airports scan for poisons...which is what Polonium-210 is. If you started to put detectors into airports for every concievable threat, you'd spend an eternity getting onto the plane and the cost of screening would go through the roof. Furthermore, having security staff check their hands for alpha radiation would cause an awful lot of false-positives. Alpha radiation sources are everywhere. Luminous watch dials, Smoke detectors, Radon gas - which routinely leaks into peoples homes when they are built on granite-rich rocks. SteveBaker 16:07, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

    Vladislav == Vyacheslav Sokolenko ??

    We have a new section: "Vladislav" - with no references that says: "Although Scotland Yard police have declined to comment a popular theory now is that Litvinenko received the fatal polonium dose in a cup of tea. This tea he drank with his Russian contacts in a room at the Millennium before going to the bar. The man that made this tea was introduced to Litvinenko as Vladislav. He arrived in London from Hamburg on Nov. 1 on the same flight as Dmitry Kovtun, and his image is recorded by security cameras at Heathrow airport on arrival. After the poisoning almost immediately, he then left Britain on another passport."

    Then we also have (in the "Chronology of events" section): 1 November 2006: Litvinenko meets with the former KGB agents Andrei Lugovoi, Dmitry Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko in the Millenium Hotel in London.

    Is it possible that we've made a boo-boo here and that Vladislav is actually Vyacheslav? Similar sounding names - we're saying that both are known to Kovtun and were both in the Millenium Hotel at the same time. We don't have a surname for "Vladislav" and we don't have any references for that section - and Vyacheslav Sokolenko is a redlink.

    This sounds odd. We really need a reference and a surname for the Vladislav section.

    SteveBaker 14:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

    I do not think that Vyacheslav Sokolenko is his real name. He could be the same person referred to as Igor the Assassin. -- Petri Krohn 14:51, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
    A Russian would not mix up Vladislav and Vyacheslav unless they wanted to confuse people. Igor the Assassin is described as speaking "perfect Portuguese" and that "he may be the same person, who served Litvinenko tea in a London hotel room.". Vladislav is described as having *Central Asian features* in other words he maybe dark which means his cover might be Portuguese. It sounds quite possible the two are the same people.
    Vladislav probably should get his own page now.
    BernardZ 01:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
    • As to not mixing up names, I get my friend's names mixed up with my dog's name a lot. I don't think Russians are exempt from making mistakes :P ~ The Lilac Pilgrim (not signed in)

    Po-210 heating up the tea?!?!

    The article says:

    Litvinenko remembered Vladislav making a cup of tea. He thought that the water from the kettle was only lukewarm and that the polonium-210 was added, which heated the drink through radiation so he had a hot cup of tea. The poison would have showed up in a cold drink."

    Whilst I'm sure that's an accurate statement (ie Litvinenko presumably really did say that) - it needs to be clarified that what he said can't possibly be true. The microscopic amounts of Po-210 used couldn't possibly have put out enough energy to heat the tea to any measurable degree. That's just ridiculous. If it was that radioactive, it would have continued to heat his stomach contents until they boiled and he'd have died a very swift and exceedingly nasty death! So this statement was just ill-informed supposition on Litvinenko's part. Think about it - even if this were true - he can't have noticed that the tea was initially only lukewarm and was mysteriously heated up in front of his very eyes - would you drink tea that you noticed was mysteriously heating up right in front of you?!? So how come he is telling us that's what happened? He must have been guessing - or trying to provide details where there were no details. In truth the Polonium would have been no more noticable in a cold drink than a hot one - that's just nonsense.

    I'm not quite sure how we should express this in the article. He made a very misleading statement - but he really did say that (we presume). I doubt we can find a reference to the fact that he was mistaken about the tea being heated by the Polonium - and I could probably calculate the heat put out by that amount of Po-210 and prove that it wouldn't have heated the tea...but then I'd be guilty of Original Research.

    Also, in our text, there is a closing quotation mark at the end of the paragraph but no matching start-of-quotation mark. Just how much (if any) of that paragraph was actually uttered by Litvinenko?

    SteveBaker 04:39, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

    ...Actually, strike even that. I don't believe Litvinenko said any of that. At the time of his death - it was believed that Thallium was the cause - how could he have mentioned Polonium - or radioactivity of any kind? Furthermore - if he'd told people that the Polonium was in the tea then why was it such an amazing revelation - weeks later - that the Police had tracked the poison down to a tea cup? No - I think that entire statement is 100% bogus. SteveBaker 04:43, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

    The statement is probably what Litvinenko though remember he did know before he died that it was some radioactive material that killed him but it is scientifically wrong. Still it worries me that its only come out now.

    Say the amount of Po-210 he drunk was about 1 millionth of a gram. Po-210 emits about 140 watts per gram, its half life is 138 days and say it was in the cup for 5 minutes. I work out then. 10^-6 amount of po-210 consumed x 140 watts per gram x .5 halflife x 5 minutes /(138 days x 24 hours a day x 60 minutes an hour) = .003e-6 watts. It would not heat up anything. If the Vladislav theory is correct maybe Vladislav was concerned about getting Po-210 in the steam where he would breath it. BernardZ 05:55, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

    Thanks! That's pretty much the calculation I did (my numbers were a little different - but I got the same order of magnitude in the result) - it's clearly bogus. 140 watts represents the amount of heat you'd get from a couple of lightbulbs - but it's 140 watts PER GRAM - and we believe that microgram amounts were used - so we're talking about something like a millionth of the amount of heat you'd get from a light bulb. I like your theory that Vladislav didn't want the steam carrying it around the room - Polonium is very prone to being spread around in the air and breathing it in is really dangerous - so that makes an enormous amount of sense. It also carries with it the implication that Vladislav would have to be quite familiar with the properties of the stuff he was using. It would suggest that he had not simply been told "Here - just slip some of this stuff into Litvinenko's tea." - it would imply that he knew that this stuff is easily dispersed and that inhaling it is just as dangerous as drinking it. Interesting - but sadly, it's still nothing we can put into the encyclopedia.
    If we can't find a source to back up the fact that Litvinenko either didn't say that - or at least was mistaken in saying it - then perhaps it would be better simply not to report that he said it. I hate to think of our readership believing that the Polonium was so 'hot' that it could boil water. That gives a totally false impression of what's going on here. I'm going to delete that paragraph from the article until we can find a way to make that work. SteveBaker 15:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
    If the Vladislav theory is correct, then he is certainly a pro. What I want to know is who introduced him to the group possibly it was either Dmitry Kovtun or Andrei Lugovoi.

    BernardZ 23:07, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

    Stange-tasting tea?!

    In the section "Yegor Gaidar", we have:

    However, other observers noted he was probably poisoned after drinking a strange-tasting cup of tea. Gaidar was taken to hospital; doctors said his condition is not life-threatening and that he will recover.

    We know that Litvinenko died having ingested millionths of a gram of Po-210. If Gaidar survived, we must assume that his dose could not have been significantly bigger - and in all likelyhood was much less.

    So how the heck would the Polonium have made the tea taste strangely? There is no way you could taste microgram amounts of anything.

    SteveBaker 05:40, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

    • According to Marina Litvinenko in an interview (I'll find it for you) her husband told her the tea tasted terrible because it was cold. It is possible the tea was spiked - perhaps his killer went under the false assumption that the radiation would heat up the tea, which it didn't. ~The Lilac Pilgrim who isn't signed in
    That's an interesting idea - and it's somewhat backed up by other ideas that have been presented here. There has been a suggestion that someone who understood the issues with polonium ought to be familiar with the way this stuff spreads about the place - I mean, a microscopic amount of it was brought from Russia and it's been found in bunches of airline seats, all over apartments, rental cars and has contaminated a bunch of different people. Clearly nobody was spreading it around deliberately - so we must assume that it spreads around remarkably easily. It is suspected that heat/steam from hot tea might cause the ultra-fine polonium particles to drift up into the air - which would obviously be really dangerous to the person doing the poisoning as well as his victim. If the murderer knew this - he might well opt to risk alerting his victim by serving cool tea rather than risking his own life inhaling radioactive steam. But this is all speculation - we have no evidence to back that up. SteveBaker 01:11, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

    Detailed timeline for Nov 1st -- Sources?

    I see that an anon user has added some significant and useful data to the timeline for Nov 1st (the day of the poisoning). This adds considerably to our understanding of events - but it is utterly unsourced. Worse still, the previous version said that opinions vary as to the exact order of those meetings...which means getting this properly sourced is very important.

    Would the anon user (please get an account!) please tell us where he/she got this information so that it can be properly referenced.

    Thanks! SteveBaker 14:26, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

    (That person subsequently emailed me some references (THANKS!) which I have added to that section of the timeline.) SteveBaker 16:17, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

    Take a shot at Good Article status?

    I'd like to take a shot at getting this article up to 'Good Article' status now that events have stabilised. You'll see in the edit history that I've had a couple of marathon 'cleanup' sessions - resulting in some major reorgs of the copious amounts of data we have here.

    More needs to be done - many of the online references lack stuff like author names, dates and such. Some of the text could use massaging to get rid of redundancy and improve grammar - and despite all of the amazing work done on referencing the article - there are still some justifiable 'missing cite' complaints in there.

    So I plan to do more cleanup over the next week - then maybe ask for peer review - then go for WP:GAC - maybe WP:FAC eventually. I've done this a couple of times before - so I'm pretty confident that we could get it there with a little more work and a measure of patience. SteveBaker 16:17, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

    Rupert Allason said...

    User:86.155.208.55 has twice attempted to change the information that "British novelist Rupert Allason said he would be most surprised if the FSB had tried to kill Mr Litvinenko because it would fly in the face of 65 years of Soviet or Russian practice, as "[n]either the FSB nor the KGB has ever killed a defector on foreign soil and their predecessors, even under Stalin, did so only once in the case of Walter Krivitsky in Washington in 1941." - to include Leon Trotski's assassination in Mexico. There are two reasons why this information should not be added here:

    1. This is in fact what Rupert Allason said - he might be wrong - but you can't add in Trotski's assasination there because it is not true to say that Allason said that.
    2. Allason was right. Trotski was killed by Ramón Mercader who was a member of the NKVD - not the KGB and not the FSB. He's also about "in the face of 65 years of Soviet or Russioan practice". Trotski was killed in 1940 - which was 67 years ago - not within 65 years. We may assume that Allason deliberately chose 65 years in order to exclude Trotski's assassination from his explanation.

    Consequently, I would request that User:86.155.208.55 not keep adding this information back into this article. Thanks. SteveBaker 22:13, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

    Russian site Alexander Litvinenko poisoning / Отравление Александра Литвиненко READY FOR CANCEL

    Отравление Александра Литвиненко-ready for cancel. Need HELP!:-)84.9.149.207 13:12, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

    As far as I can see, it's being deleted because it's a copy of another article, and their information is in the article on Alexander Litvinenko (ru:Литвиненко, Александр Вальтерович) Sam Vimes | Address me 13:32, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Strange how I find out that Mr Litvinenko is dead thanks to Wikipedia the night he died, yet find out this page is due to be deleted on the Litvinenko Justice Foundation. :-/ The Lilac Pilgrim 23:39, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

    thallium-206??!

    The section on Thallium talks about a radioactive isotope: thallium-206 - but our article on thallium does not mention this isotope. Is this section just nonsense? SteveBaker 15:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

    • Are you asking if Thallium-206 exists? However presumptuous this sounds, last year in Chemistry, I learned that it certainly exists, but I think it may only be found in reactors. The Lilac Pilgrim 16:14, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

    Russian site Alexander Litvinenko poisoning / Отравление Александра Литвиненко/

    Russian site Alexander Litvinenko poisoning / Отравление Александра Литвиненко/ READY FOR CANCEL

    Отравление Александра Литвиненко-ready for be delete. Need HELP!:-)Zasdcxz 03:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)84.9.149.207 13:12, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

    THALLIUM is in NORM.-part of Po-210 as rest of nucl. synthes / small amount/ and THALLIUM-very famous old rat poison.Use steel in India . :-)Zasdcxz 03:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

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