The Litvinenko Inquiry

Part 9 | Chapters 1 to 12 | Who directed the killing?
the question of the likely involvement of Mr Patrushev and Mr Putin on the hypothesis
that Mr Litvinenko was killed in an operation sponsored by the FSB.
9.208 Professor Service said during his oral evidence that if Mr Litvinenko had been killed
by the FSB, it was “inconceivable” that Mr Patrushev would not have had knowledge
(and I take him to mean advance knowledge) of the operation. 82 This evidence was
in line with the view that Professor Service had expressed in his report that, despite
the lack of irrefutable evidence, he found it hard to believe that Mr Patrushev had
not been, “somehow involved in some of the other killings under consideration in
my report” 83 – that is, the deaths of various of Mr Putin’s opponents to which I have
referred at paragraphs 9.129 – 9.155 above.
9.209 The question that logically follows is whether, if Mr Patrushev had advance knowledge
of an FSB operation to kill Mr Litvinenko, he shared that information with Mr Putin. On
this issue, Professor Service was far more cautious.
9.210 Professor Service was confident that President Putin reserved oversight of security
policy to himself. He also drew attention to the close links between President Putin
and Mr Patrushev, and to the latter’s long service as head of the FSB between 1999
and 2008. “The conclusion must be”, Professor Service stated: “that Putin generally
endorsed what the agency got up to in the years through to 2006 and beyond and that
Patrushev as its Director knew that he had his President’s support in its operations.” 84
9.211 Professor Service expressed the further view that he considered it to be very unlikely
that President Putin restricted himself to providing a general sanction to Mr Patrushev’s
broad line of action – he thought it likely, rather, that Mr Putin exercised, at the very
least, some oversight of Mr Patrushev’s activities.
9.212 But that simply begs the question of what level of oversight Mr Putin exercised over
the FSB. Professor Service readily accepted that he lacked the evidence to draw any
firm conclusion on this issue. He described the shortfall in the evidence available to
him regarding the working relationship between Mr Putin and Mr Patrushev in the
following terms: 85
“… there is no available evidence for how much initiative was left to Patrushev
in the FSB. Did Patrushev secure Putin’s permission for operations in advance?
Or did he merely need sanction for a general operational strategy? And did the
relationship between Putin and Patrushev undergo change in the course of their
collaboration? These questions constitute an important nexus of known unknowns
about Presidential power since Yeltsin stepped down from office.”
9.213 Professor Service did draw attention in his report to one possible reason why
Mr Patrushev might have concealed an FSB operation to assassinate Mr Litvinenko
from Mr Putin, namely that the operation was part of a deliberate campaign by Kremlin
insiders to weaken Mr Putin’s power. Professor Service referred to this theory that had
been advanced by some commentators, but he did not endorse it himself. 86 I observe
that it would also seem unlikely, given the duration and closeness of Mr Patrushev’s
ties to Mr Putin, that he would have been a party to such a plot in the first place.
82
Service 28/90-91
83
INQ019146 (page 27 paragraph 85)
84
INQ019146 (pages 26-27 paragraph 83)
85
INQ019146 (page 12 paragraph 37)
86
INQ019146 (page 6 paragraph 18)
243