Smash hit

Mr Lugovoy was a KGB officer from the late 1980s. He left the FSB in 1996, after which he worked as head of security for the billionaire Boris Berezovsky, a Russian expatriate who has lived in the UK since falling out with the Kremlin.

He now helps to run a soft drinks company.

Lugovoy was treated late last year in an isolated unit at a Moscow hospital that treated the victims of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. He refused to say what he was being treated for, but some media reported he had radiation poisoning.

Sir Ken's CPS statement made no reference to any other possible suspects in the case, including the two other Russians thought to have been with Mr Lugovoy and Mr Litvinenko when they met at the Millennium Hotel on November 1 - Dmitry Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko. The CPS chief did not take any questions.

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BACKGROUND

• Lies and the spies: I must have justice

• Shadowy ex-KGB major takes cover

• Of course the Russians did it. They’re the experts

• The Litvinenko File

• Litvinenko was told that he was marked for death

Related Links

• Comment: Lugovoy charge will cause huge fallout

• Full CPS statement on Litvinenko killing

Litvinenko himself directly accused Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, of being behind his murder in a dramatic deathbed statement. "You may succeed in silencing me, but that silence comes at a price," he said, addressing the Kremlin leader. "You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed."

The former KGB officer was poisoned only days after meeting Mario Scaramella, an Italian academic, at a sushi bar in Piccadilly where it is said that he received documents claiming to name the killers of Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken Russian journalist and critic of the Putin regime.

Anglo-Russian relations have already been strained by the UK's refusal to extradite Mr Berezovsky and the Chechen separatist envoy Akhmed Zakayev - who were both associates in London of Litvinenko. Russia has a constitutional bar on extraditing its own citizens, but nevertheless signed the 2001 European Convention on Extradition.

Mr Blair's official spokesman declined to comment on what the British Government’s reaction would be if the Putin administration refused to hand over the suspect. "Let us deal first of all with the legal process," he said. "Let the legal process take its course."

But he added: "Nobody should be under any doubt as to the seriousness with which we are taking this case. Murder is murder and therefore it is very serious and the nature of this murder also is very serious.

"Obviously we have political and economic connections with Russia and Russia clearly plays an important role in international affairs. There are major issues, such as Iran, Kosovo and climate change, where we have to have - given the nature of the world today - serious dialogue with Russia.

"However, what that doesn’t in any way obviate is the need for the international rule of law to be respected and we will not in any way shy away from trying to ensure that that happens in a case such as this. That is the basis on which we proceed."

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