https://proudstars.blogspot.com/2016/01/russia-has-murdered-british-citizen-on.html
Russia has murdered a British citizen on the streets of London: It's just cowardly folly to appease this thug Putin, writes EDWARD LUCAS
- New report into murder of Alexander Litvinenko blames two Russian spies
- It says Putin may have ordered his death because of vicious war of words
- But David Cameron is under fire for refusing to take action against Russia
- Report also dispels conspiracy theories and myths about KGB spy's death
Contempt: Russian President Vladimir Putin
Russia has murdered a British citizen on the streets of London. It has blustered, gloated and lied. And we are not going to do much about it.
That is the dismal upshot of the public inquiry into the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
What is abundantly clear is that the British Government is not going to respond properly to the outrageous behaviour of what is a rogue state in all but name.
And by ‘properly’, I mean we should be launching major money-laundering investigations into the tide of dirty Russian cash which swills through our financial system.
We should be telling the crooked bankers, lawyers and accountants who facilitate this theft from the Russian people that the game is up.
We should be expelling Russian spies from London, in the full glare of publicity, and prosecuting those who co-operate with them, betraying our country for money, favours and flattery.
And we should be urging our Nato and European Union allies to join us in fighting back against all forms of Russian subversion, mischief-making and influence-peddling – in everything from energy supplies to propaganda.
In understated legal language, yesterday’s report by Sir Robert Owen, a retired judge, tells an extraordinary tale.
Mr Litvinenko, a fugitive former Russian spy, had intimate, first-hand knowledge of the murky overlap between the Russian state and organised crime.
He advised MI6, Britain’s overseas intelligence service, in particular on the activity of state-sponsored Russian gangsters in Spain – touching on the financial interests of the highest levels of power in Moscow. That may have been the motive for his murder.
