From Russia with lunch

On the face of it, the story about Alexander Litvinenko's poisoning is interesting enough. A while ago I read Stella Rimington's book on her time at Mi5 and was fascinated to read about one man who was poisoned with the tip of an umbrella by a Russian agent. We thought the Cold War was over, but the intelligence war clearly still continues.

But the interests are now not international, but parochial. There was a great Channel 4 News report this evening which revealed a little bit more about how this story is being spun. Why have we got all these pictures of Mr Litvinenko staring intently into the camera from his hospital bed? It's unusual for a man potentially in his final hours to consent to a modeling job. Well... it turns out that this is all the work of Bell Pottinger Group. The PR and public affairs company has the Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky on its books, which means times must be good. They're promoting the photo and the story to the max, and even leaked some Litvinenko's medical notes, saying that radioactive thallium was the probable cause.

There are clearly powerful interests at play here. Berezovsky has two aims - to trash the Putin government as much as possible, and avoid extradition to Russia. Last week, he was dealt a blow - the UK and Russia agreed to co-operate more closely on extradition... a move that could spell trouble for our oligarch. So - any suggestion of Russian inhumanity was gold for the PR men.

I've no idea what is going on behind the scenes here. But I'm going to swallow the PR line here for once. I don't like what I hear about Putin's Russia, and I think we should give those under threat over here as much protection as possible. Reducing the protection against unwarranted extraditions to Russia, like we have done with other countries, would be absolute lunacy.

Graphic Hat-tip: Theo Spark