conference room where he and litvinenko had met two weeks before the pine bar encounter. was anything spilled on the table? translator: richard, you are asking questions. i remember some things. i don t remember other things. i cannot answer these questions because these can be used against me in the court, which is done frequently. as for his last meeting with litvinenko at the pine bar, lugovoi says there s no way he brought polonium on that trip because his wife and children were with him. translator: a person s weakest spot is his family. and i m a rational man. even if i had taken part in an operation, even if i had known what was in the container, would i take my family along? i m a rational man. i couldn t do it. not only did he continue to maintain his innocence, he offered his own theory about who poisoned the tea. could someone had put something
someone who was washing dishes in the pine bar or in a hotel, cleaning crew, do we know, ultimately? five months after litvinenko s death, scotland yard issued an arrest warrant for lugovoi. kovtun s would come later. the two responded with a press conference in moscow stating their innocence. [ speaking russian ] russia refused to extradite them, so we traveled to moscow to find the men who are wanted in connection with litvinenko s murder. coming up, the stakes get even higher as we confront a top russian official when dateline continues. saturdays happen.
someone s tea cup and everyone s laughing at it? i mean, the state cannot be involved in that. litvinenko s friend paul joyal, who believes he was the target of a botched assassination, agrees that in some ways litvinenko s killers were indeed clumsy and careless. but he says that s because they were probably just pawns in a much bigger game. do you think that any of them knew what that substance was? do you think that they knew they were handling polonium? why wouldn t they have known what they were handling? because you don t want them to know. but they could have done a better job not spreading it all over the place if they knew. they also might say no, there s no way i m going to do that. i don t want to handle that radioactive material? i am not going to kill myself in the process. to get closer to the truth about who killed litvinenko, we had to talk to the suspects themselves, andrei lugovoi and dmitri kovtun. in kovtun s case, it wasn t easy.
russian business partner that you ve been shot, you clearly didn t think this was a botched robbery, carjacking. you thought this was related to your work, related to your russian connections? well, i don t think there s any doubt. someone had tried to kill nem, just like the other guy in in london. the other guy? a former kgb agent and friend of joyal s killed three months earlier in london, assassinated with a weapon so frightening and exotic, investigators almost missed it, a weapon that raised the specter of state-sponsored murder. coming up, we trace the steps of a mysterious attack from bus to bar to deathbed. he was going through unspeakable torment. when dateline continues. when dateline continues ed . i can still keep my eyes on the road. ed . my truck doesn t have that. it offers an optional technology package
i got out of my car. there were two men waiting in the bushes. they jumped me. one man i fought with, and we ended up on the ground in a tussle. o and this one man said to someone else i didn t see, shoot him. so i covered my heart with my arms, i turned to the side. and a shot went through me. one shot. one shot, and then i heard the click. another click. right. and nothing happened. so you re shot once. right. you re rolling to protect yourself. right. i hear a chamber to clear it, gun jammed. at that point in time, the lights went on in my house. joyal s wife elizabeth heard the commotion.