On April 10, 2024, in Manhattan, federal judge John P. Cronan delivered the verdict in my defamation lawsuit against Channel One Russia, a key pillar in President Putin’s propaganda machine. The judgment awarded me $25 million in damages for their baseless accusation that I poisoned my dear friend Alexander “Sasha” Litvinenko, using the radioactive element polonium, and further alleging that I murdered my own wife, Svetlana, as a means of concealing my involvement.
On November 23, 2006, I had stood outside the London hospital where Sasha had just died and read out a letter he had written: “You, Mr. Putin, managed to silence one man, but in doing so you have shown your barbarism and cruelty to the whole world.” On that day, Sasha’s widow, Marina, the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, whom Sasha was closely aligned with, and I took on a solemn mission to convince the world that Sasha was right in naming Putin as his killer.
