THE mystery surrounding the death of the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko deepened today when it emerged that doctors treating Yegor Gaidar, the former Russian prime minister, believe he also was poisoned. One of Mr Gaidar's aides, Valery Natarov, said today that doctors treating the ex-PM at a Moscow hospital, where he appears to be making a recovery, believe the poisoning was deliberate. "Doctors donÂ’t see a natural reason for the poisoning and they have not been able to detect any natural substance known to them," he said. "So obviously weÂ’re talking about poisoning (and) it was not natural poisoning." Iocaine powder. I'd bet my life on it!
Litvinenko, a longstanding critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in a London hospital last week. Doctors revealed that he had been poisoned with the radioactive isotope polonium-210, traces of which since been found at about a dozen locations in the UK and on two British Airways aircraft used on the London-Moscow route. Mr Gaidar, Russia's first post-Soviet premier under Boris Yeltsin who is still ciritical of Mr Putin, fell ill last Friday, the day after Litvinenko's death, during a trip to Dublin to promote a new book. His daughter, Maria, told the Noviye Izvestia newspaper that he had had a simple breakfast of fruit salad and tea shortly before he collapsed.