What is not in dispute is that there is a readiness in the west to believe the worst about Vladimir Putin's government.

It seems Westerners remember only bad habits of losers in the Cold War, and forget that their hands were (and are) not so clean.

Mutual disillusionment is real, hypothetic crisis (as Guardian believes) inside Russia or in EU-Russia relations (even because of Polish thorns) is pure speculation.

Mr Litvinenko have lead highly controversial life of traitor, he lied about bomb explosions in Moscow and was said to be paid by Mr Berezovsky, one of the shameless sharks who robbed Russia in the 1990's. It is easy to imagine that such person may have many enemies, enemies with means at their disposal. I would not discard possibility of poisoning him by some rogue elements in Russian secret service, however frequency of contract killings (not always political or highly publicized) tells many things about current state of Russian society and its moral. Yeltsin era was time of lowering moral standards and many middle class people, businessmen (like Mr Khodorkovsky) developed highly violent habits. It is sad.
I hope that with time all people who breached human and moral laws and first of all Mr Yeltsin will be punished. And Mr Litvinenko will not be exclusion.