The father of murdered Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko has dramatically withdrawn his claims that his son was killed in London on Vladimir Putin's orders, branding his own son a traitor who may have deserved to die, the Telegraph writes.
 
Speaking to Russian state TV in his tiny flat in Italy, Walter Litvinenko, 73, said he deeply regretted accusing the Russian prime minister and FSB security service of involvement in his son's death, saying he hoped to be forgiven and allowed to return to Russia.

"Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin). If you are watching this programme please forgive me for all the slander that I said and wrote about you, for all the hatred I had for you," he told RT, the Kremlin's English-language satellite TV channel.

"If only I had known that my son had worked for British intelligence I would not have talked about his death. He could easily have been shot as a double agent. Traitors should be shot."

Suggesting his son was involved in a murky espionage world who may have been the author of his own demise, he conceded he could not be 100 per cent sure that he really did work for MI6 however.

Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB security service agent and outspoken Kremlin critic, died in London in 2006 after drinking a cup of tea laced with radioactive polonium 210 in a top London hotel.

Britain has repeatedly tried and failed to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, the chief suspect in the case and a former KGB bodyguard who has since become a Russian MP.

But his father, who cut a pitiful and desperate figure in the interview, said he had changed his mind about what really happened after Marina Litvinenko, his late son's widow, revealed that Alexander had actively co-operated with MI6.

"I was guided only by anger over my son's death at the time," he said. "I was sure the Russian special services did it."

Calling his murdered son "a disgrace to me, to all our family," he gave a similar interview to Russia's main state-controlled Russian-language news channel in which he explained that learning his son had worked with British intelligence "had flicked a switch" in his head.