polonium is? someone who was washing dishes in the pine bar or in a hotel, cleaning crew, do we know, ultimately? reporter: 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 ] reporter: 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. with this one little
no polonium in his body or anywhere he d been. so scotland yard took a hard look at the two russians, lugovoi and kovtun. when detectives retraced their steps, they found polonium contamination everywhere. we see the same fingerprints of the polonium in multiple places where they were. reporter: business offices, hotels, a hookah bar, a strip club, a soccer stadium. and the millennium hotel s pine bar where they last met litvinenko? that s were investigators hit the jackpot. these 3-d graphics put together by scotland yard, show the entire pine bar was contaminated with polonium with extreme hot spots on a table and chair. and the levels found inside this teapot? off the charts. paul joyal wonders how many people were unwittingly exposed. do we know, ultimately, what the final cost of this use of
certificate as death unknown. he would have been put in the ground, and it would have been just a mystery. unknown unknown assailants. turn the page, move on. it s the key of this murder. polonium 210 was discovered and now we know exactly sasha was killed by polonium 210. reporter: it s an almost perfect murder weapon. polonium has no smell, little taste, and without specialized equipment, it s undetectable. reporter: the amount that killed litvinenko, slipped into something he ate or drank, was no larger than a grain of salt. but that s still a thousand times the lethal dose. and that tiny bit of polonium would have been enormously expensive. $8 million to $12 million to be able to get the portion that went into him. reporter: but who could get hold of such an expensive and exotic weapon? and just how did they deliver the fatal dose? when detectives went step by
the sake of passing it. you have to have somebody in mind. reporter: seven months after the law was passed, someone was liquidated. a prominent russian journalist, shot in the head outside her moscow apartment. she was a friend of litvinenko. three weeks later, litvinenko himself was poisoned with polonium 210. duma leader zhirinovsky certainly didn t shed any tears when that happened but laughs off the notion that the russian state was connected in any way. for one simple reason. he thinks russian agents would have done a better job. translator: i m surprised that the uk special services and the uk court accuses russia and lugovoi that with a bag of polonium they came to london and were just throwing it around. reporter: it just doesn t make sense to a lot of people that russia didn t kill him. translator: for a hundred years, the russian special services have been using the kind of substances for killing people that you never will be able to recognize.
that s because they found polonium on the table in a 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. reporter: 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. reporter: not only did he continue to maintain his innocence, he offered his own theory about who poisoned the tea. could someone had put something