Alexander Goldfarb cleared his name from allegations that he had any connection with the death of Alexander Litvinenko.

Human rights activist and biologist Alexander Goldfarb announced on 10 April that he’s won a defamation lawsuit against Russia’s public television company Pervy Kanal – the Kremlin’s primary propaganda weapon. 

The Manhattan District Court in New York, according to Goldfarb, has awarded him $25 million in compensation. He paid his lawyers with money donated via crowdfunding platforms. Marina Litvinenko, the victim’s widow, joined the lawsuit as a co-plaintiff. 

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The scientist, a Soviet-born emigrant with Israeli and US citizenship who settled in the United States in the 1980s, filed the lawsuit in 2018. In March that year the Pervy Kanal aired a staged show called “Let Them Talk” in which the father of Alexander Litvinenko – a former officer at the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) who defected to the United Kingdom – accused Goldfarb of poisoning his son at the orders of the Central Intelligence Agency and with the support of the fugitive oligarch Boris Berezovsky.

No evidence of this allegation was provided.

Alexander Litvinenko at his deathbed in London.

Litvinenko, a fierce critique of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and whistleblower about the Russian network of spies and killers in Europe, died in November 2006 in a London hospital after being poisoned with Polonium-210, a highly radioactive substance.

The former FSB officer had claimed, among others, that Putin was a pedophile, something that infuriated the Kremlin leader.

UK investigators have proved that Litvinenko was poisoned during a meeting with Russian intelligence officers Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun, at a London hotel. The two operatives poured the toxic isotope in Litvinenko’s tea before leaving a radioactive trail along their journey to the U.K. 

Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun at a press conference in Moscow.

The European Court of Human Rights holds the Russian authorities responsible for the defector’s murder. Russia denies its involvement in Litvinenko's death.

RT, another Russian propagandist channel, was initially a co-defendant in the case for spreading the lie, but successfully challenged the US jurisdiction in the matter.

It is unlikely that the Pervy Kanal or the Russian government, which controls the station, will pay any compensations to Goldfarb as long as the Putin regime stays, with the scientist calling the outcome a “moral victory” over the evil.

The court ruling, however, allows the plaintiff to ask seizure of Russian public properties in countries that comply with the ruling.

Boris Berezovsky speaking to journalists in London.

Alexander Goldfarb never denied he had known Alexander Litvinenko. In the early 1990s, Goldfarb returned to Russia for work at the Soros International Science Foundation in Moscow, but in 2000 he moved back to the United States for fears of arrest. In 1995, at the request of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, the scientist helped Litvinenko escape from Russia, fleeing to the U.K. via Turkey.

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The Pervy Kanal has not deleted the show featuring the libel message from its website.

Boris Berezovsky died in London in March 2013, under unclear circumstances, with FSB suspected to be behind his death.

Lugovoy has made a fulminating political career in Moscow. Kovtun died from Covid-19 in June 2022.

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