When the Scotland Yard detectives touched down at Moscow's Domodedovo Airport that Monday afternoon, they had little idea what to expect. The team was led by a detective chief superintendent and included three Russian-speaking specialists from the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorist Command SO 15, but even they had no experience of such operations, let alone one with such implications for international relations that it was being played out in the spotlight of the world's media.
Acutely aware of the potential for negative publicity, the Russian authorities had decided to keep the Scotland Yard men as far away from the press as possible. After a few handshakes and strained smiles at the airport, the Brits were ushered into a people carrier and whisked into Moscow to the headquarters of the Russian prosecutor general on Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street. Yuri Chaika sent his deputy to greet them and wish them a productive stay in Moscow, but then the Russians produced a written set of instructions for the British to follow with a long list of dos and don'ts that made clear the limitations being placed on them. All interviews, said the instructions, would be carried out by Russian officers, with the British being allowed to attend only as witnesses; no suspects would be extradited to Britain; if any prosecutions were to prove necessary, they would be carried out on the territory of the Russian Federation. The Prosecutor General's Office, said Chaika, would detail a representative to assist them at all times, a not too subtle euphemism for twenty-four-hour surveillance. That evening the detectives were guests of the British ambassador, Tony Brenton, at the UK embassy overlooking the Moscow River. For the next two weeks they would work out of a suite of offices in the embassy which had been swept for bugs and was deemed secure.
The following day Yuri Chaika made clear his irritation with the British presence when he faced lengthy and searching questions at a boisterous press conference. Asked if he expected imminent arrests in the Litvinenko case, he snapped, ‘Scotland Yard can't arrest Russian citizens. If they have to be investigated, we can do that in Russia. We can instigate an inquiry and put them on trial here.’ He pointedly added that Russia had no extradition treaty with the UK and that the British were in Moscow very much thanks to the goodwill of the Kremlin. ‘If they want to arrest citizens of the Russian Federation, it would be impossible because of the Russian constitution. They will not be questioning any suspects. Any questioning we will do on their behalf… They can request permission to attend the interviews, but… that does not mean permission will necessarily be granted.’
At the same time the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was attacking the West for ‘politicizing’ the Litvinenko case and said British insinuations of high-level Russian involvement were ‘unacceptable'; the affair was, he said, ‘damaging UK-Russian relations’.
Over the next few days the British media was full of stories of how the Russians were impeding the detectives’ investigations. In fact the Scotland Yard team was making remarkably good progress. Within twenty-four hours of arriving, they had had their first meeting with Dmitry Kovtun. For a man who had recently been said to be at death's door, the detectives thought Kovtun was looking remarkably well. So too was Andrei Lugovoy, whom they met two days later.
No official information on the interviews was released by either side, and unofficial sources were remarkably tight-lipped too, but Andrei Lugovoy has spoken about his meetings with the British, which he says he actively welcomed as a chance to prove his innocence in the eyes of the world.
As soon as my name started to be mentioned in connection with this affair… I consulted my lawyers. The next morning I got straight in touch with the British embassy. I told them on the telephone that we should meet so we can clear up everything that has been going on. They called me back and said OK, great. I agreed to meet them at a time they proposed… It was a very constructive meeting and I am absolutely satisfied with how it went. I have met the British police. Dmitry has too. We both had a lawyer with us. The meeting was informal, because there is no legal basis for holding it. We have both signed statements… And they said they were very grateful to us that we had come forward.
Lugovoy and Kovtun were concerned to put their side of the story to the British police and keen to tell the world that they had nothing to hide. Apart from protesting their innocence, Lugovoy says they gave the detectives a detailed explanation of what happened after Litvinenko fell ill.
[Litvinenko] rang me at 7.30 on the morning of 2 November and he said, ‘Andrei, you know, I'm not feeling too good. My stomach's turning inside out.’ Then he rang me again that same evening and said he wasn't feeling any better… I had been planning on going to Madrid and he said, ‘I've got a good business contact in Madrid; I'll have to put you in touch with him’… Then I rang him on 7 November. He was already in hospital. His wife picked up the phone and handed it to him. We chatted and I asked him about his health. He said he had been unconscious for two days and thought he had probably been poisoned… But he said he was feeling a bit better and hoped he might get out of hospital soon. We agreed to talk again in a week and I rang him on 13 November. By then he had already named that Italian as being… Well, all the press were writing about it. We spoke just for a couple of minutes; his voice was heavy. He was sure he had been poisoned. I said, let's be in touch… Then my name suddenly cropped up [in the media]. But I can categorically affirm and I am ready to prove - and Alexander and his family and his friends and everyone who met him knew this perfectly well - that I met him on 1 November, and they know perfectly well that I met him after Scaramella. And they know where I met him.
At this stage Scotland Yard had not yet announced that they knew about the crucial meeting with the Russians in the sushi bar on 16 October. By insisting so strongly - and his language at this stage changed from a rather casual conversational style to a much more formal ‘I categorically affirm… ‘ - Lugovoy was making what he clearly believed to be a telling point: if he had met Litvinenko after Scaramella and there was already radiation at the Scaramella meeting, then Scaramella must be the culprit.
After all when I spoke to Alexander on the phone we had a completely ordinary, normal conversation. Nobody was accusing anyone of anything. He didn't even mention such a thing… I think maybe Scotland Yard should be looking at more than just the two names that are being mentioned at the moment; they should be looking at all the contacts he had not just over the last month, but over the last year. That's what they should be starting from - looking at all his movements, all his statements in the press, all his mobile phone calls and all his landline calls, including those with Russia and other countries, Spain, London, Moscow.