When Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London in 2006, poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 slipped into a pot of tea, the UK was shocked. Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence officer who had become a critic of Vladimir Putin’s government, died after a highly publicised illness.
A later public inquiry concluded that his killing was probably approved at the highest levels of the Russian state. Yet the Litvinenko attack did not trigger a fundamental rethink of how the UK protects itself from hostile states.
