The Kremlin Thursday dismissed the results of a British inquiry into the poisoning death of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, calling it possibly "a joke" after a London judge pointed the finger at Russian President Vladimir Putin. 


"Maybe this is a joke," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. 


"More likely it can be attributed to fine British humor - the fact that an open public inquiry is based on the classified data of special services, unnamed special services, and that the verdict which has been made on the basis of this flimsy data has been made public with the copious use of the words 'probably' and 'likely.'" 


A British inquiry into Kremlin critic Litvinenko's agonizing death by radiation poisoning in 2006 found that Putin and security chief Nikolai Patrushev had "probably approved" the killing. 


Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive tea at an upmarket London hotel in 2006

Source: NNA