LONDON—A former Russian spy fighting for his life in a London hospital after being poisoned was the target of a Kremlin-backed plot, a close friend said on Monday, a claim Moscow called "nonsense".
The first pictures of Alexander Litvinenko released since he ingested the highly toxic chemical thallium on Nov. 1 showed him in a hospital bed, looking wan and completely bald, hooked up to medical equipment.
An effect of thallium is that its victims' hair falls out.
A Kremlin spokesman dismissed allegations that Russian security services had tried to murder the exiled former Russian agent, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
British police are investigating after Litvinenko, a former colonel in Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), successor to the KGB, said he fell ill after meeting a contact at a sushi restaurant while probing journalist Anna Politkovskaya's murder.
The hospital said Litvinenko's condition had deteriorated slightly overnight and he had been transferred to intensive care. Doctors say he has only a 50/50 chance of surviving.
Alexander Goldfarb, who helped Litvinenko defect to Britain six years ago, told Reuters the former spy was the victim of a plot directed from the heart of the Russian government.
"This is a Kremlin-backed operation of Russian intelligence services -- whether it goes to the top of the Kremlin or to the top of the Russian secret service I cannot say," said Goldfarb, himself a Russian dissident who now has U.S. citizenship.
In Moscow, deputy Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "There is no need to comment on statements that are pure nonsense." An FSB spokesman declined comment and the Russian embassy in London described Litvinenko's case as an "accident".
Asked why he suspected Kremlin involvement, Goldfarb said Litvinenko was one of Putin's fiercest critics.
"I have no direct evidence of course that the president ordered it," he said. "What I do know is that the president of Russia knows about this case, he personally knows Mr. Litvinenko—they were both colonels in the same organization—and that Mr. Litvinenko has been one of the most vocal critics of Mr. Putin's policies... and had threats made against his life."
One Gram Can Kill
Litvinenko, now a British citizen, co-authored a book in 2002 entitled "Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within", in which he alleged FSB agents co-ordinated apartment block bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people in 1999.
The bombings, which authorities blamed on Chechen rebels, led to a shift in public opinion in Russia, affording Putin popular backing for his decision to move troops into Chechnya.
London police said they were investigating "a suspected deliberate poisoning of a 41-year-old man in London".
Litvinenko was admitted to hospital at the beginning of the month but a toxicology report has only recently identified the cause of his illness.
John Henry, a clinical toxicologist, told BBC radio there was no doubt Litvinenko had been poisoned by thallium. "It is tasteless, colourless, odourless. It takes about a gram... to kill you."
Poison and murder are tools of Cold War spycraft that may be making a comeback. Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko fell ill after dining with security service leaders before an election in 2004. Doctors found he was poisoned with dioxin.
Russian Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of Putin, was shot dead at her apartment in central Moscow in early October.
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