Putin probably ordered the hit. But there’s nothing anyone can do about it!

The bastards got me.

Those are the dying words Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko allegedly uttered from his death bed in London last week, which led his loved ones, political pundits and conspiracy buffs to accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his assassination. And they felt vindicated when doctors reported over the weekend that Litvinenko was poisoned by a fatal dose of a radioactive substance called Polonium 210, which Putin’s accusers claim “could only be found in government-controlled institutions” in Russia.

Now British authorities have launched a sensational and politically-provocative investigation ostensibly to find out who murdered Litvinenko. This, despite the fact that everyone - from government ministers to Litvinenko’s fellow defectors from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB, the successor agency to its infamous KGB) – has already fingered Putin, himself a former KGB spy, for this crime.

They claim that Putin targeted him because Litvinenko – who fled Russia in 2000 to save his life after accusing the FSB of killing over 300 Russians in 1999 in a Machiavellian scheme to frame and discredit Chechen rebels – was becoming too public (and credible) in his criticisms of the Kremlin. And, that it was Litvinenko’s high-profile investigation into what many suspect was another FSB hit last month on fellow critic, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, that prompted Putin to silence him now.

Nonetheless, with all due respect to Scotland Yard and Interpol, no matter how probative the circumstantial evidence of Putin’s guilt, neither he nor his putative assassins will ever be held to account for this murder. And everyone knows it....

After all, for years, some of us have been chronicling the egregiously undemocratic, if not unlawful, acts Putin has committed in his Putinization of Russia. These acts include confiscating private companies without compensation and throwing the owners in the gulag; silencing his critics (by curtailing or squashing the freedom of the press) and ordering others to be assassinated – as many suspect he did to stop Politkovskaya’s criticisms of his human rights abuses against the Chechens from reverberating around the world; and extending his totalitarian reach into neighboring countries in a vain attempt to reclaim Soviet-era control over them.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Putin would order the assassination of a spy who, for all intents and purposes, he considered not only an insufferable critic but also traitor. Moreover, notwithstanding all of the accusations and investigations this case warrants, it will result in nothing but terminal frustration for Litvinenko’s loved ones and inevitable futility for British authorities.

However, if one appreciates that Putin seems determined to emulate the power wielded by his predecessor Joseph Stalin – who ordered the assassination of at least one million Russians (at home and abroad) and threw another 18 million in the Gulag for political offenses – then his ordering the assassination of these two journalists would seem relatively benign.

But, since it is in the nature of totalitarian leaders like Stalin and Putin to manage their public image the way they manage sycophantic bureaucrats, it should also come as no surprise that he would do all he could to intimidate those critics he cannot kill. And, in this regard, here’s how Putin warned the British and others against drawing reasonable conclusions about his involvement in Litvinenko’s murder:

I hope the British authorities won't fuel groundless political scandals....It is a great pity that even such tragic things as human death are used for political provocations. As I know, the medical certificate of British doctors does not indicate that he died a violent death. It does not say that. Hence there is no reason for such talk at all.

Overlooking his unwitting (and perversely proud?) reference to the assassin’s use of a diabolically passive rather than violent method to kill Litvinenko, this, alas, is as plausible a denial as Putin can muster and all that I think he will feel obliged to say about the matter.

Meanwhile, given the frequent reports about how unguarded WMDs (including nerve agents) are in Russia, Putin’s supporters could argue that a number of Litvinenko’s other enemies (and he reportedly had quite a few) had access to polonium 210 as well as the motive and opportunity to administer it. Moreover, given the number of locations where traces of this deadly poison has been found, one gets the impression that the FSB was targeting every Putin critic in London, not just Litvinenko.

By the way, has anybody seen Putin’s most celebrated critic, former Chess champion Garry Kasparov, lately….

NOTE: When it was clear to Litvinenko that he would not survive this poisoning, he allegedly penned his own eulogy, which reads, in part, as follows:

As I lie here I can distinctly hear the beating of wings of the angel of death…You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.

May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.

Related Articles:
UPDATE: The Putinization of Russia extends to Georgia…
BBC Obituary of Alexander Litvinenko

Alexander Litvinenko, Russian spy