High-ranking Kremlin officials spent the weekend mocking Alexander Litvinenko’s boasts after he fled to Britain about his role in their security services.

Sergei Ivanov, the Minister of Defence, claimed that far from being a top KGB spy as he liked to claim, Litvinenko was merely a prison guard.

Mr Ivanov said that Litvinenko never had access to any secret or important information and was “of such poor character” that he was dismissed from the Russian security agency when it was being run by Vladimir Putin.

“He was never a spy and never knew anything of any real value to give to any [foreign intelligence] service,” Mr Ivanov added. “He was just a Russian who meant nothing to us.

“We didn’t care what he said and what he wrote on his deathbed,” he added, referring to the letter in which Litvinenko accused the Kremlin of poisoning him.

Kremlin officials again described the accusations made by Litvinenko and his friends as ludicrous. Valentin Velichko, a colonel who is president of Honour and Dignity, a powerful group of KGB veterans, also dismissed Litvinenko as “a nonentity”.

He said in an interview with the newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta that Litvinenko was never a target for Russian intelligence because he was not important enough to bother with.