Poison(s) – Episode One: The Threat

In November 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, the husband of Marina Litvinenko, was poisoned with radioactive polonium. After three weeks of excruciating suffering, he died accusing a man: Vladimir Putin. The photo of his beardless face, destroyed by the poison, travelled around the world. Alexander Litvinenko was a former agent of the FSB, the Russian security services of which Vladimir Putin had taken the head shortly before his accession to power. In the year 2000, Litvinenko had publicly denounced the collusion of his hierarchy with the mafia, via a filmed press conference where all appear masked, except him, speaking in the center. Then he fled with wife and child to London. 

There, although regularly harassed and threatened at home, Alexander Litvinenko continued his fight to denounce the corruption of Vladimir Putin and those around him, and his criminal involvement in the attacks that ravaged Moscow in the fall of 1999. A system of corruption and stifling of civil society witnessed first handly by Vladimir Kara-Murza. At the time, he was a historian and entered politics alongside Boris Nemtsov, Putin’s main opponent. At the same time, William Browder, a British businessman who made his fortune with the opening of Russia to capitalism, begins to wonder about the corruption that has been spreading since Vladimir Putin became president. He is expelled from Russia. His company’s assets are seized. 

In 2006, in London, after a final public denunciation of the involvement of the master of the Kremlin in the murder of journalist Anna Politovskaia, Alexander Litivinenko was murdered. His widow Marina Litvinenko starts a battle against Putin. She wants to know who ordered the assassination of her husband. She must also lead this battle against the British government that refuses to give her access to documents classified as confidential by the secret service, MI6. In an official letter, Theresa May justifies: “it is true that international relations are a decisive element“. International relations but also international finance. Since the early 2000s, London has had a new nickname: Londongrad. The British capital has welcomed Russian billionaires and their  corrupt assets with open arms. For Sergei Pugachev, former adviser and close associate of Vladimir Putin, the West has not been able to resist money and has allowed itself to be corrupted, thus exposing its weaknesses during the poisoning of Litvinenko. 

Marina Litvinenko does not admit defeat. She finds an ally in Sir Robert Owen, one of the most important judges of the British Supreme Court. He too decided to cross swords with the government. Theresa May finally agreed to a public inquiry. Only Robert Owen has access to the classified documents. After several months of hearings and investigation, he handed down his conclusion, which surprised even Luke Harding, the journalist specializing in this poisoning – he was a journalist in Moscow during the years following Litvinenko’s death and was regularly harassed by the Russian authorities after each paper implicating the Kremlin. In his conclusions, Robert Owen points directly to the responsibility of Vladimir Putin. This is the only official document that has ever established his responsibility in a poisoning and it is the first time that the judge speaks about it. For him, as for Marina Litvinenko, the accusing will of Alexander Litvinenko had the value of a prophecy, that of the war that Vladimir Putin is now waging in Ukraine. A war against the West. 

PRODUCTION INFO

• Year: 2023
• Duration: 54 mins
• Production: Little Big Story
• Director: Jennifer Deschamps
• Available Versions:
  ENG, FRA
• Country of production: France