Expected only a month after its programming across the Channel, this production in four episodes "resonates particularly with the news", argued the director of acquisitions of the French channel, Bérengère Terouanne, during a videoconference.

"It's a story that deserves to be known to the general public", she insisted, specifying that ITV Studios had presented the series to her "a few days alas before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia" in February 2022.

M6, which broadcast the HBO series "Chernobyl" in 2021, will also offer two documentaries on Thursday evening on the Litvinenko affair and on the great hunt for the Russian oligarchs.

Marina Litvinenko lent herself upstream to the game of questions and answers with the French press, thus continuing the fight started at the death of her husband more than 16 years ago.

"This series is very close to reality", assured the one who had already collaborated with the journalist and co-producer of the series Richard Kerbaj for a documentary.

Before dying, "Sacha (diminutive of Alexandre) told me that I had to let people know what happened to us", she added, rejoicing as such to see their story, which has already inspired a play and an opera, brought to the screen.

A police vehicle in front of the house of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with polonium, on November 24, 2006 in London © ODD ANDERSEN / AFP/Archives

Written by the creator of "Lupin", George Kay, the series retraces the investigation of the two Scotland Yard officers who questioned Alexander Litvinenko during his slow agony in hospital.

Litvinenko is camped there by David Tennant ("Doctor Who", "Broadchurch"), unrecognizable, as was his model, appeared livid and hairless on his deathbed in a famous press photo, his wife being interpreted by the Russian-born actress Margarita Levieva.

"Help Ukraine"

His assassination led to a diplomatic crisis between London and Moscow, whose relations soured again in 2018 after another poisoning case, which nearly cost the lives of ex-Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia , in the south of England.

A former KGB and then FSB agent, exiled to the United Kingdom after sulphurous, often unverifiable revelations, Litvinenko died at the age of 43 on November 23, 2006, about twenty days after being poisoned with polonium 210, a radioactive substance. extremely toxic.

Marina Litvinenko, the widow of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, on February 24, 2020 in London © Tolga AKMEN / AFP/Archives

In a letter published the next day posthumously, the opponent to the Kremlin accuses Vladimir Putin of being responsible for his death, which the Russian president has always denied.

Since then, the British public inquiry concluded in 2016 that the leader had "probably approved" of the murder, carried out according to it by the businessman Dmitry Kovtoun and the former secret agent turned MP, Andrei Lugovoi, with whom Alexander Litvinenko had tea on November 1, 2006.

Similarly, the European Court of Human Rights found Russia "responsible" for this assassination in 2021.

Does Marina Litvinenko hope to one day get justice in her native country?

“When you just hope, nothing happens,” she replies.

"We must act, we must help Ukraine. When Ukraine wins, we can have a new Russia and I can obtain justice there".

"It's not just about me, my story is a chapter in the same book bringing together the crimes committed by this regime (of Vladimir Putin), such as the war in Georgia (in 2008), the war in Ukraine, the assassination of opposition leaders in Russia, poisonings in Europe...", she says.

Marina Litvinenko would like politicians to watch the series after having, according to her, "closed their eyes" to Vladimir Putin for commercial considerations related to "gas and oil".

While waiting for the "collapse" of her regime and the advent of a "truly democratic Russia", she plans to launch a charity action for Ukrainian children.

© 2023 AFP