Russo-British relations at frozen dead end

At their joint press conference, just finished, President Medvedev said Britain would “never” get its hands on Andrei Lugovoi, the man the UK Crown Prosecution Service wants extradited to face the charge of murdering the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko.

“It will “never happen… no matter what the circumstances… please remember this,” the Russian president said.

David Cameron insisted that he wasn’t “parking” the Litvenenko issue that froze UK-Russia relations in 2007 but said the UK should move “beyond” the issue and look at business and commercial interests. You might that that sounded a little contradictory.

Earlier, I spoke to Mr Lugovoi in a Moscow restaurant. He said he thought that Mr Litvinenko may have killed himself in an accident. “What, you think he popped the polonium 210 in his own tea?” I asked.

Mr Lugovoi admitted he had become quite an expert in polonium since the death and thought it was possible “the adventurer” Litvinenko had the polonium 210 on him and was planning to use it in some way to discredit Putin.

I asked if he thought Putin was happy or sad when he heard about Litvinenko’s death. He laughed and said he thought Putin probably didn’t notice. He said he thought Russo-British relations were at a “dead end” so I asked him what it felt like to be the main blockage.

He said he was not ready to face British justice “at this moment” but tele-conferencing about the evidence might be a good idea.

In the press conference, both men tried to play down the idea that their countries’ relations had been frozen, but David Cameron later used the word himself, saying the security agency cooperation had been frozen in 2007 (and, he implied, was not about to be unfrozen).

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