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Vladimir Makei 'passed away suddenly', Belarusian state media reported today They gave no cause for Makei's death or any explanation of the circumstances Makei, 64, was due to meet Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov tomorrow He was then set to travel to Poland to meet a host of Western diplomats Some opposition figures in Russia and Belarus have posited the Belarusian security service could well have been involved in Makei's death Belarus's long-standing foreign minister has died suddenly, the state news agency Belta reported on Saturday, just days before he was due in Poland to meet key Western officials. 'Foreign Minister...

Dmitry Kovtun is dead, say reports. Mr Kovtun led an unusual life: from wannabe porn star, rubbish collector, waiter and alcoholic, to one of two Russian agents implicated in the radioactive poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. What dreams are made of.

Roger Stone has sensationally claimed he was poisoned by political enemies who wanted to kill him before he could 'debunk' their 'lie' that he knew Russians would hack the US election. The longtime Trump supporter claimed to have been told by doctors that a mysterious and debilitating virus he was suddenly struck with in December was in fact polonium poisoning. At the time, Stone had just been accused by the Obama administration of having prior knowledge Vladimir Putin was planning to meddle in the election. He says the poisoning was an attempt to stop him from testifying at a Congressional...

BERLIN (Reuters) - The head of an organization of former Russian spies was quoted as saying on Thursday Moscow abandoned its policy of assassinating enemies long ago, and that Alexander Litvinenko was probably murdered by criminals. Former KGB agent Valentin Velichko said fellow former agent Litvinenko, who died in London on November 23 from radiation poisoning, was a traitor but was not killed by Moscow. "That was long ago. It belonged to the days of Stalin," Velichko, head of the Veterans of Foreign Intelligence, told Die Welt newspaper in an interview. Millions died under the rule of dictator Josef Stalin.

The death of Alexander Litvinenko by radiological poisoning points to the possibility that the former Soviet spy may have been involved with Islamic terrorists in the preparation of tactical nuclear weapons for use in the jihad against the United States and its NATO allies. (snip) In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to suitcase nukes that were developed by U.S. and Soviet forces during the Cold War. Reliable sources, including Hans Blix of the United Nation, have confirmed that bin Laden purchased several of these devices from the Chechen rebels in 1996. According to Sharif al-Masri and other al...

US authorities are to examine Roman Abramovich’s ties to the Kremlin as part of a national security review of a $2.3bn (£1.18bn) bid for Oregon Steel by a company controlled by the Russian billionaire. Experts in Washington say the US government panel that reviews foreign deals will scrutinise the proposed takeover, announced last month, more closely if Mr Abramovich is found to be acting with the backing of the Russian government. Mr Abramovich is believed to be close to Vladimir Putin, Russian president. The Russian steel company, Evraz, is controlled by Mr Abramovich and Alexander Abramov, group director. Evraz and...

Nikolai Glushkov, a Russian exile who was a close friend of a noted critic of President Vladimir Putin, has died from an "unexplained" cause in London, police say. The Metropolitan Police says that its counterterrorism unit is handling the case "because of associations that the man is believed to have had." Glushkov, 68, was a close friend of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a prominent critic of the Kremlin who was found dead in 2013. At the time, an inquiry found he had hanged himself — but Glushkov publicly disputed the idea that his friend and former business ally would have...

Pope Francis if the first Rome and Patriarch Kirill of the third Rome are to release a joint declaration to touch on the single most important issue of shared concern between the Catholic and Orthodox churches today: the plight of Christians in Iraq and Syria and Africa who are being killed and driven from their homes by Islamists. I guess that makes Putin's Russia the defacto defender of Christendom. Two Romes have fallen, but the third stands, and a fourth there will not be." The Russian Monk Philotheus c. 1520 I have not seen the declaration yet to post it...

Read the article that may have gotten Alexander Litvinenko Killed

The poisoning of Litvinenko's body—and mind Cloak-and-dagger spy scandal shoots polonium onto world stage UPDATE - 23rd May 2007: Since this article was first published (21st March 2007), there have been further developments. British prosecutors have announced murder charges against an ex-KGB agent, who denies any involvement in the Litvinenko death. UPDATE - 24th January 2016: Many news outlets again were giving much publicity to polonium and the Litvinenko case, after a British inquiry asserted that the assassination "probably" had been given approval at the highest level of Russian leadership. by David Catchpoole Published: 21 March 2007 (GMT+10) More than...

"The polonium trail started on 16 October 2006 when Litvinenko met Lugovoi and Kovtun in London. ..." "When Lugovoi and Kovtun's movements were mapped against the sites of polonium contamination, there was an exact match. The evidence of guilt was strong. In May 2007, the then Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald announced that Andrei Lugovoi was to be charged with murder and his extradition would be sought from Russia. Kovtun was charged in 2010. ..." Prof Norman Dombey, a physicist who has a deep knowledge of Russian nuclear sites, gave evidence at the public inquiry. Dombey says there is...

Post-mortem of Alexander Litvinenko's radioactive body was 'one of the most dangerous ever undertaken in the western world' as inquiry hears it was the only case of polonium poisoning ever recorded The post-mortem examination of poisoned spy Alexander Litvinenko was one of the most dangerous ever held because his body was so radioactive, an inquiry was told today. Doctors who carried out the procedure had to wear special suits, protective gloves and hoods to prevent them being contaminated, the hearing was told. The public inquiry into Mr Litvinenko's death also heard how the Russian dissident, 43, spent three weeks in...

A tape apparently recorded by murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko a year before he was poisoned has revealed he was digging up links between Vladimir Putin and one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists. A Telegraph investigation uncovered the audio recording, in which the dissident claims from beyond the grave that Russia’s president had a “good relationship” with Semion Mogilevich - a Ukrainian crime boss who was on the FBI's most wanted list and whom Mr Litvinenko believed was selling weapons to al-Qaeda. The apparent recording of Mr Litvinenko is published for the first time ahead of a public inquiry...

French experts have ruled out a theory that Yasser Arafat was killed by poisoning, according to a source close to the investigation into the Palestinian leader’s 2004 death. “The report rules out the poisoning theory and goes in the sense of a natural death,” the source told AFP. The French experts’ findings differ significantly from those of Swiss scientists, who said last month that their research offered some support for the suggestion Arafat was killed by polonium poisoning. …

(video at link)Rachel Maddow, Rhodes Scholar, speaks truth to those in power--unveiling a dastardly foreign policy scheme circa 2004. And it's all tied back to the REAL cause of Yasser Arafat's death. You're welcome, America.

The entire resurrection of the Arafat poisoned by Polonium-210 story is complete junk science. I’ve said it before at Israellycool but lets expand on it. The story so far: Nine years ago, on November 11, 2004, Yasser Arafat died. That he could have died from natural causes or some “lifestyle disease” was too unpalatable for his followers so they came up with a rather bizarre theory that he was poisoned with Polonium-210. After decomposing in Ramallah for eight years his wife and followers dug up his corpse to try to prove it. >>SNIP<< With the most amazing measuring equipment, in...

Swiss radiation experts have confirmed they found traces of polonium on clothing used by Yasser Arafat which "support the possibility" the veteran Palestinian leader was poisoned. In a report published by The Lancet at the weekend, the team provide scientific details to media statements made in 2012 that they had found polonium on Arafat's belongings. Arafat died in France on November 11 2004 at the age of 75, but doctors were unable to specify the cause of death. No autopsy was carried out at the time, in line with his widow's request. His remains were exhumed in November 2012 and...

The Polonium Diversion At least a dozen people have been contaminated by the rare radioactive isotope Polonium 210. The list includes Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB who died from a dose of Polonium 210 in London on November 23rd; Andrei Lugovoi, a former colleague of Litvinenko in the KGB, who met with Litvinenko at the Pine bar of the Millennium Hotel in London the day he became ill, November 1st; Dmitry Lugovoi, Lugovoi’s business associate, who also attended that November 1st meetings; 7 employees of the Millennium Hotel; Mario Scaramella, an Italian security consultant, who dined with...

...Litvinenko "was giving Scaramella lots of information about Russian and criminal infiltrations in Italy, but most of it was very difficult to verify and crosscheck. It was a little bit out on a limb." In the old days, Litvinenko had been familiar with criminal clans in Russia, now he was making risky approaches to the Italian mafia. Scaramella believed if they could get inside this network, they would be able to leverage much more damaging intelligence about Italian politicians. They spread their net wider. The Litvinenko dossier lists a dizzying roll call of names investigated by the pair, among them...

The sudden death of an exiled Georgian billionaire may have been another "Alexander Litvinenko-style" murder, it is feared. A major crime squad is investigating the death of 52-year-old Badri Patarkatsishvili, whose body was found at his country mansion in Surrey at about 11pm last night. His family said he suffered a heart attack - but Surrey Police have launched an investigation to confirm the exact cause of death after reports of a plot to kill him. Sky News' home affairs correspondent Mark White said: "The police want to leave no stone uncovered. "In the light of Litvinenko's death in 2006...