The prospect of anyone facing trial for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko appeared to have faded almost completely on Tuesday after Moscow said it would not extradite Scotland Yard's prime suspect.
?scow's decision did not surprise anyone at the Yard or at the Crown Prosecution Service, but there was concern in Whitehall that it would further damage Anglo-Russian relations, which have been severely strained by the murder and the UK's subsequent extradition plea.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had ridiculed the request, branding it "stupid." British authorities felt they had no alternative but to make the request because of the gravity of the offence.
Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian intelligence service, the FSB, had taken British citizenship after being granted asylum in the UK, and the method of his poisoning put many other people at risk.
Sir Ken Macdonald, director of public prosecutions, rejected a Russian offer to put Andrei Lugovoi on trial in Moscow on the grounds that there was no guarantee that the process would be impartial and fair.
"The allegation against Lugovoi is that he murdered a British citizen by deliberate poisoning and that he committed this extraordinarily grave crime here in our capital city," Macdonald said. "The appropriate venue for his trial is therefore London."
Prime Minister Gordon Brown led a chorus of condemnation of the Russian decision.
"Russia's refusal to extradite Lugovoi is extremely disappointing and we deeply regret that Russia has failed to show the necessary level of cooperation in this matter," a spokesman for Brown said.
A UK Foreign Office spokesperson described Russia's decision as "unacceptable."
"We have consistently said that the murder of Litvinenko is a serious criminal matter. Hundreds of British citizens and visitors to the capital were put at risk. We will consider our response with the deliberation and seriousness that it deserves," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.
Litvinenko, who lived in north London with his wife and young son, died last November, aged 44, three weeks after being poisoned at the Millennium hotel in London. His associates later claimed that he wrote a deathbed statement accusing Putin of being behind the crime.
The presence of polonium in his system was not detected until a few hours before his death. Once discovered, technicians found traces of it in hotel rooms, on aircraft seat armrests, on banknotes and cutlery, and built up a detailed map showing the killer's movements before and after the poisoning. It is now thought that the same radioactive isotope has been used before in Russia, by murderers who thought it would never be detected in their victims' bodies.
The Kremlin linked British requests for Lugovoi's extradition with their own demands that Boris Berezovsky, the multi-millionaire Russian businessman living in Britain, be sent back to Russia to stand trial.
Russian authorities have made several failed attempts to seek Berezovsky's extradition, and last week charged him in his absence with conspiring to seize power after he told the Guardian newspaper that he was plotting the overthrow of Putin.
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