The Litvinenko Inquiry

it, let’s go. So, Volodia and I stayed, the two of us, and he stood up, approached
his wife, Andrei, and then he brought his son, 8 years old. He is such a boy, eight
years old, wearing a jacket, he said, ‘This is Uncle Sasha, shake his hand.’ We
shook hands, and he went (INAUDIBLE). So, then we came out.”
6.306 Mr Litvinenko’s account gives rise to a number of observations.
6.307 Mr Litvinenko was plainly mistaken about the colour of the teapot. It is clear from
Mr Andrade’s evidence that the tea was served in a white porcelain pot. There is
nothing sinister about this. Given that Mr Litvinenko was undergoing lengthy interviews
whilst seriously ill in hospital, it would have been surprising if he had not made a few
mistakes. There is evidence that the teapots in the Palm Court at the Sheraton Hotel,
where Mr Litvinenko had had tea with Mr Lugovoy the previous week, were silver. 287
It seems likely that on this point of detail Mr Litvinenko confused his memory of the
two occasions.
6.308 Of more significance, there are two points about the way that Mr Litvinenko described
Mr Lugovoy acting that would appear to be inconsistent with the theory that Mr Lugovoy
poisoned Mr Litvinenko with polonium at this meeting. Mr Tam QC referred to both
these points in the course of his opening address. 288
6.309 First, in Mr Litvinenko’s narrative Mr Lugovoy was diffident in the extreme about
whether or not Mr Litvinenko should drink the tea. One might have expected a poisoner
to encourage his intended victim to take the concealed poison, but on Mr Litvinenko’s
account Mr Lugovoy was almost discouraging him from drinking the tea. There is
no doubt that this is the account that Mr Litvinenko intended to give – after he had
given the account that I have set out above, Detective Sergeant (DS) Hoar asked
Mr Litvinenko “… how insistent was Andre that you have a drink, or was he indifferent,
was he saying, ‘Go on, go on have some’, or didn’t he care?”. Mr Litvinenko’s answer
to this was:
“He said it like that, you know, ‘If you would like something, order something for
yourself, but we’re going to be leaving soon. If, if you want some tea then there is
some left here, you can have some of this.” 289
6.310 Second, it is striking that, on Mr Litvinenko’s account, Mr Lugovoy encouraged
Mr Litvinenko to shake hands with his eight year old son at the end of the meeting.
Is it conceivable, one asks rhetorically, that Mr Lugovoy would have done that had
he known that Mr Litvinenko, as the forensic evidence indicates, had just drunk tea
poisoned with highly radioactive polonium?
6.311 I will return to consider both these points in due course.
6.312 As I have mentioned, Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun have both given their own accounts
of events in the Pine Bar on various occasions since November 2006.
6.313 In fact, one of Mr Lugovoy’s earliest public comments about this meeting took the
form of declining to say anything about it. When he gave his Declaration to the
British Embassy in Moscow on 23 November 2006, Mr Lugovoy said of the Pine Bar
meeting: 290
287
Mascall 12/69
288
Tam 1/87
289
INQ016582 (pages 8-9)
290
INQ002058
Part 6 | Chapters 1 to 8 | The polonium trail – events in October and November 2006
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