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Nine Scotland Yard detectives were in Moscow last week, trying to talk to Lugovoy. But the interview kept getting postponed for "technical reasons." Cooperation between the Londoners and the Russian authorities has been frosty. Russian prosecutors insisted that they conduct all the interviews, with the British merely suggesting questions. Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika said no Russian citizens would ever be extradited to Britain in connection with the case, while his office suggested that Russia would open its own criminal investigation in London. Lugovoy and Kovtun were said to be in the hospital with radiation poisoning, but there was no independent confirmation of that. After his interview with the British detectives, Kovtun was reported by the usually reliable Interfax news agency to have lapsed into a coma, but his lawyer quickly denied it. Hamburg police found alpha radiation in the apartment of Kovtun's ex-wife and in the home of his ex-mother-in-law, but were not able to say whether the source was polonium 210. For their part, British officials were hoping further tests might let them pinpoint the origins of the polonium, since reactors usually leave signatures in their output. The forensic trail so far points decisively to Russia. But Scotland Yard knows that pursuing Litvinenko's murder back to those who set it in motion, whether official, private or some combination of the two, may never be possible unless someone confesses.
Meanwhile, there is the light--uncomfortably glaring--that the case sheds on modern Russia. Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the few independent liberals left in the Duma, says, "The point is not whether Putin is responsible for these concrete murders. The point is that he is responsible for having created a system that is ruled by fear and violence." Ryzhkov claims that the armed forces, Interior Ministry, FSB and those who have retired from them to join private security services "are running this country, own its economy and use violence and murder as habitual management techniques." A U.S. businessman in Moscow seconds the argument. "While you in the press are obsessed by Politkovskaya and Litvinenko, you've missed that half a dozen major oil executives and another half-dozen major bankers have been murdered in the last few months." Unlike Litvinenko's sickness, Russia's may not be fatal. But like his, it starts from inside. From his lead-lined coffin, a shadowy figure has illuminated that much.