Russia Reform Monitor: No. 1575

July 8:

Whitehall sources have told the BBC’s “Newsnight” television program the radioactive poisoning murder of former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 was carried out with the Russian state’s backing. A senior security official told "Newsnight" there were “very strong indications it was a state action.” The BBC said it had also been told that Russia’s internal security organization, the Federal Security Service (FSB), operated “with far more autonomy” than the organizations usually entrusted with foreign espionage operations. British prosecutors have accused former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi of the murder and requested his extradition, which Russia has refused. Lugovoi is now a deputy in Russia’s State Duma.

A spokesman for the Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, meanwhile, has denied any Russian special services involvement in Litvinenko’s poisoning, NEWSru.com reports.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has issued a statement warning that Russia will respond with “military-technical means” if a U.S. anti-missile shield is deployed near its borders. The warning came just hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Czech Republic Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg signed an agreement on basing missile defense system components in the Czech Republic. Meanwhile, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Washington wants an anti-missile shield “with everyone participating as equal partners” and “will continue to have a dialogue with the Russians,” Agence France-Presse reports.


July 11:

Russian media reports have alleged that a British diplomat, who was named in Russia as Chris Bowers, the acting director of UK trade and industry in Moscow, was in fact working for British intelligence services. According to the Daily Telegraph, Interfax quoted an unnamed Russian intelligence services source who claimed that Bowers was a high-ranking British secret service agent who had worked undercover as a BBC reporter in Uzbekistan in the 1990s. A British Foreign Office spokesman confirmed that the acting director of UK Trade and Industry in Moscow is suspected of spying by the Russians but would not comment further.

Russia has admitted its fighter jets overflew the breakaway Georgian territory of South Ossetia in a sortie that took place just hours before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Tbilisi with a message of support. The Financial Times notes that this is the first time in years of tension between Moscow and Tbilisi that Russia has made such an admission, even though Georgia has frequently accused Russia of flying warplanes over its territory. Speaking in the Georgian capital on July 10th, Rice said Russia needs “to be part of resolving the problem... and not contributing to it.” However, she also said she had told Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili that “there should not be violence.”

Russia and China have vetoed proposed UN Security Council sanctions on Zimbabwe, the Associated Press reports. Western powers mustered nine votes, the minimum needed to gain approval in the 15-nation council, but the resolution failed because of opposition from Russia and China, which are two of the council’s five veto-wielding members. Russia’s UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said sanctions would have taken the UN beyond its mandate to deal with threats to international peace and security.


July 12:

Georgia has threatened to shoot down Russian military planes flying over its territory while calling for an emergency session of the UN Security Council to discuss “Russian aggression,” Kommersant reports. According to the Russian newspaper, Georgian media have been reporting an alleged Russian Defense Ministry plan to storm the Kodori Gorge in the breakaway Georgian republic of Abkhazia, to which Russia plans to respond by publishing details of alleged Georgian plans to launch a military incursion into South Ossetia.