Accused of murder, safe in Russia:
Putin refuses to extradite suspect

Diplomatic standoff after Crown Prosecution Service decides that Moscow businessman should face charges

Ian Cobain, Luke Harding in Moscow and Will Woodward

Relations between London and Moscow fell to their lowest level in almost 20 years yesterday after Russia refused to hand over a businessman accused of poisoning the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko.

The Crown Prosecution Service said police had gathered sufficient evidence to justify charging Andrei Lugovoi with murder and demanded that he be extradited to stand trial for an "extraordinarily grave" crime. A spokesman for Tony Blair said: "Murder is murder: this is a very serious case."

But in a swift response, Russia said there was no chance of Mr Lugovoi being sent to stand trial in Britain, and warned of a political backlash. Marina Gridneva, a spokeswoman for the Russian prosecutor general's office, said: "Under Russian law, a citizen of the Russian Federation cannot be handed over to a foreign country." Mr Lugovoi spoke to Russian state-run television and Channel 4 news yesterday to insist he had nothing to do with Litvinenko's death. "I can say that I am absolutely calm as I am absolutely innocent," he told Channel 4. "I...am convinced that I did not kill Litvinenko. Moreover, I am fully and deeply convinced that the British justice does not have any evidence. I also do not understand how they will claim I had a motive, and if there's no motive, it's difficult to imagine they have a case." He said the decision to charge him was "political".

The Kremlin has also denied repeated assertions by friends of Litvinenko that it was behind his murder.

But British security and intelligence officials believe that former, and possibly serving, agents of the Russian state were behind the murder. They say that only a state institution could produce polonium-210, the highly refined radioactive product used to poison Litvinenko.

The decision to seek the extradition of Mr Lugovoi was predicted by the Guardian in January. Since then there are understood to have been a number of discussions about the move at Cobra, the government's emergencies committee.

Peter Ricketts, permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, summoned the Russian ambassador, Yuri Fedotov, for a meeting yesterday morning. Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, later said: "This was a serious crime. We are seeking and expect full cooperation from the Russian authorities in bringing the perpetrator to face British justice. These points were made strongly to the Russian ambassador when he was called into the Foreign Office."

The Foreign Office believes it can continue to cooperate with Russia on other issues. "We work closely with them on international challenges, on Iraq and climate change," said a spokeswoman. But on this "serious crime...we expect cooperation from Russia," she said.

The extradition request is to be sent to Moscow within the next few days. Downing Street said the formal response then - and not comments made yesterday by the Russian prosecution service - was what mattered. Russia signed the European convention on extradition in 2001. "Whether it's Russia or other countries there are certain legal obligations that countries have," said Tony Blair's official spokesman. "Let's see what the legal response is."

The murder accusation comes at a time when relations between Britain and Russia are strained. In a speech last year, Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, laid out his foreign policy goals and called for relations to be strengthened with the "leading" EU countries of Italy, France, Germany and Spain. Britain was not mentioned. A few months earlier Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB, accused four British diplomats of spying.

The Kremlin is also angry that Britain has given refuge to Boris Berezovsky, an influential Kremlin insider under former president Boris Yeltsin who fell out with Mr Putin and fled to Britain in 2000. Last month Mr Berezovsky told the Guardian that he was plotting a coup to topple Mr Putin in an interview which prompted the Kremlin to renew its attempts to have him extradited to Moscow.

Gleb Pavlovsky, a consultant to Mr Putin, said: "'A situation in which Britain doesn't give us Berezovsky but asks for people affiliated with Berezovsky to be handed over will definitely not arouse enthusiasm in Moscow. If this story develops it will seriously damage the attitude of the Russian elite towards Britain and the west. The west is trying to criminalise the image of Russia."

Other analysts warned of a possible backlash in Russia against the UK. Boris Makargenko, director of Moscow's Centre for Political Technologies, said: "I hope there will be no anti-British hysteria. But I'm certain some people will say the Brits are plotting against Russia. It's inevitable, Russia will not extradite Lugovoi. "

Litvinenko, 43, a political refugee who had taken British citizenship, was a critic of the Kremlin, which he accused of being behind the deadly wave of apartment block bombings eight years ago which stoked support for a renewed offensive against Chechen separatists.

He was poisoned during a meeting in the bar of the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair on November 1 last year, dying 22 days later. Hours before he died, scientists working alongside Scotland Yard detectives realised he had swallowed a massive dose of polonium-210, a rare radioactive isotope.

A colourless and odourless substance which cannot be picked up by radiation scanners at airports, polonium-210 appeared to have been chosen as the murder weapon because the chances of it being detected were so slim. But once it was discovered in Litvinenko's urine, Scotland Yard was able to map out a detailed picture of every step the killer took before and after the murder.

This led the CPS to conclude that there was enough evidence to charge Mr Lugovoi with murder. Sir Ken Macdonald, the director of public prosecutions, said yesterday: "I have today concluded that the evidence sent to us by the police is sufficient to charge Andrei Lugovoi with the murder of Mr Litvinenko by deliberate poisoning... I have instructed CPS lawyers to take immediate steps to seek the early extradition of Andrei Lugovoi from Russia to the United Kingdom, so that he may be charged with murder, and be brought swiftly before a court in London."