RT and another pro-Kremlin channel alleged her husband was murdered by a close friend

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The widow of Alexander Litvinenko is threatening to sue RT and another pro-Kremlin TV channel after they screened “libellous” claims that the Russian dissident was murdered by his close friend Alex Goldfarb.

Marina Litvinenko and Goldfarb have demanded retractions from RT and the state-run Channel One after they made a series of “reckless and defamatory allegations” in March and April, in the aftermath of the poisonings of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, they say.



The British government blamed Moscow for the attack on the Russian former double agent and his daughter in Salisbury. The Kremlin responded with a media counter-offensive, featuring press conferences by Russia’s ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, and a domestic campaign aimed at persuading Russians the claim was a smear.

Litvinenko’s father, Walter, played a starring role in this campaign. Litvinenko was murdered in 2006 with a radioactive cup of tea and his father initially blamed Vladimir Putin. But after an unhappy period of exile in Italy, he returned to Russia in 2012 and begged the president for “forgiveness”.

In April, RT screened a 30-minute interview with Walter Litvinenko, in which he claimed Goldfarb was a CIA agent. He said Goldfarb murdered Litvinenko in his hospital bed, citing a “confession” by Goldfarb’s late wife. Goldfarb then murdered his wife to cover up the crime, he alleged.

RT translated the interview into English and aired it on the Worlds Apartshow, hosted by Oksana Boyko.



RT this week acknowledged the legal complaint but has so far not commented.

Walter Litvinenko’s claims have no basis in fact. In 2016 a public inquiry into Litvinenko’s death ruled that his polonium killers were Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun and that they were sent by Russia’s FSB spy agency. Putin and the FSB’s then boss, Nikolai Patrushev, “probably approved” the killing on British soil, the inquiry found.



Speaking to the Guardian, Goldfarb said he initially took the RT claims “impersonally”, seeing them “as just another shot in the propaganda war”.



“But then when everybody started teasing me as ‘Alex the murderer’ and I imagined millions had watched these programmes I realised that somehow it sticks. A creepy feeling,” he said. Goldfarb’s wife, Svetlana, died of cancer in 2010, four years after Litvinenko’s murder.

Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko have written to RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, and the Channel One chief, Konstantin Ernst, demanding retractions. They have also launched a crowdfunding page to help pay the legal costs, estimated at more than $300,000 (£225,000). The case will be lodged before a federal court in Manhattan.



Marina Litvinenko said she had put up with “huge pressure and propaganda” from Moscow for more than a decade, and she had done her best to protect her husband’s reputation from “lies and fake stories”. Her father-in-law’s recent public support for Putin saddened her, she said.

The Kremlin’s TV campaign was politically motivated, and an attempt to deflect blame from her husband’s real murderers, she said. Russia’s modern spy agencies were using “old-school KGB methods” and cynically exploiting Litvinenko’s family members. She added: “I believe in justice”.

Channel One screened libellous material in four separate broadcasts, including the popular primetime show Person and Law, she alleges. During one broadcast Walter Litvinenko shared a sofa with an uncomfortable-looking Lugovoi, whom British authorities have charged with Litvinenko’s murder. Lugovoi is a deputy in Russia’s parliament and the recipient of an honour from Putin.

The state-run network also claimed Marina Litvinenko lied to the public inquiry, which heard evidence of how the two killers left a polonium trail across London. Walter Litvinenko told RT, in contrast, that Russia’s president was a “decent person”, and incapable of doing “nasty things”.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alexander Litvinenko died in hospital after being poisoned in 2006. Photograph: Natasja Weitsz/Getty Images

On Tuesday, the New York-based lawyer Bertrand Sellier wrote to Simonyan: “Your actions constitute intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress on our clients, particularly Mrs Litvinenko. She struggled for 10 years to have her husband’s murderers named in a court of law.

“Undermining the court’s finding with a fake narrative before tens of millions of viewers adds insult to injury. We hereby demand that you issue a full and immediate retraction and apology with equal reach and prominence as the broadcast itself.”

Channel One did not respond to a request for comment.



RT faces multiple investigations by the UK broadcast regulator, including in connection with the Skripals’ novichok poisoning. Ofcom said it was examining a number of instances in which the channel potentially breached laws on impartiality.

“Since the events in Salisbury, we have observed a significant increase in the number of programmes broadcast that we consider warrant investigation as potential breaches of the broadcasting code,” the regulator said.

“Ultimately, we may decide that the licence should be revoked because the licensee is not fit and proper, on broadcasting compliance grounds.”

