The delicate issue of human rights seemed to be, from the very outset, implicated in David Miliband’s ice-breaking trip to Moscow.  The trip coincided with the third anniversary of the death of Kremlin critic and ex-KGB man Alexander Litvinenko, the event which precipitated the initial freeze in relations.  Indeed, the case of the poisoned Russian (who had a painful, lingering and widely-publicised death by polonium), as the Times commentator cited below suggests, could be seen to reflect Russia’s broadened trend of human rights violations:

This is not an obscure dispute over an awkward happenstance, in which the demands of realpolitik trump the requirements of justice. Litvinenko was a British citizen. His murder was an act of unspeakable brutality, committed in the heart of London. His fate replicated that of other critics of Mr Putin, such as Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist, who was shot dead in Moscow in 2006. The charge that Litvinenko’s was state-sponsored cannot be refuted, because Moscow has ensured that no trial can take place.