Polonium traces detected in two Lithuanian citizens after they visited London

Upon returning from London, two citizens of Lithuania underwent medical examination, which showed that they were "contaminated with polonium," Vigaudas Ushatskas, Ambassador of Lithuania to Great Britain, has reported.

Answering the question whether these Lithuanian victims could have contact with former employee of Russian special agencies Alexander Litvinenko, who died in London on November from polonium poisoning, Mr. Ushatskas said that he did not possess any information to this end, the "Interfax" reports.

Meanwhile, British experts have detected the traces of the radioactive isotope in all the three London hotels, where Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoj stayed after October 16. These are hotels Parkes (check-in on October 16), Sheraton Park Lane (check-in on October 25) and Millennium (check-in on October 31 and November 1). It was supposed earlier that the polonium-210, used to poison Alexander Litvinenko, was brought to Britain on October 25 in an aircraft from Moscow.

By all appearances, Axexander Litvinenko's poisoning took place on November 1 after he left home and before 5:15 p.m., when Akhmed Zakaev came to pick him up to the centre of the city. Later, traces of polonium-210 were found in Zakaev's car, while no traces were detected in the other car that brought him to the centre in the morning.

At the same time, Russian citizen Dmitri Kovtun, now a witness in Litvinenko's case, stated that he could have received a polonium-210 contamination dose, when he had met Litvinenko in mid-October, the Spiegel TV reports. In his words, it could have happened well before he met Andrei Lugovoj and Litvinenko on November 1; the latter felt bad after that meeting and subsequently died on November 23.

In the experts' opinion the cost of the amount of polonium-210, with which ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned, makes about $25 million, the RIA "Novosti" reports with a reference to the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung, which, in its turn, was quoting an anonymous employee of German law enforcement bodies.