Angry in the Great White North

From the Independent, Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika says something that clearly could not be true:

Russia will not extradite suspects in the Alexander Litvinenko case to Britain, its chief prosecutor said today.

Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika also insisted that the radioactive element used to poison the former spy could not have come from Russia.

In a press conference today, Mr Chaika said the polonium 210 found in Mr Litvinenko's system could not have originated in Russia.

I wonder how he can say that. Does he mean that the Russians have such tight controls on radioactive material that no amount could have been used as a poison?

That's absurd, since it is well known that in the chaos that is post-Soviet Russia, anything can be had for a price. And in any case, the suspicion is that this was a government operation, so if polonium-210 was under the control of the government, then clearly it could be diverted for this purpose.

Or does Chaika mean that there is no polonium-210 in Russia at all? There was plenty in 1970, when it was used for the Lunokhod missions:

Lunokhod (Russian for "Moon walker") 1 and 2 were a pair of unmanned lunar rovers landed on the Moon by the Soviet Union. They were in operation conterminously with the Zond series of flyby missions. The Lunokhod missions were primarily designed to explore the surface and return pictures. This complemented the Luna series of missions that were intended to be sample return missions and orbiters. They were designed by NPO Lavochkin.

The [Lunokhod 1] rover would run during the lunar day, stopping occasionally to recharge its batteries via the solar panels. At night the rover would hibernate until the next sunrise, heated by the radioactive energy source...During the lunar nights...a polonium-210 heat source kept the internal components at operating temperature.

Power [for Lunokhod 2] was supplied by a solar panel on the inside of a round hinged lid which covered the instrument bay, which would charge the batteries when opened. A polonium-210 radioactive heat source was used to keep the rover warm during the long lunar nights.

Lunokhod 1 worked for nearly a year, and Lunokhod 2 operated for over four months. It would take a lot of polonium-210 to generate that much heat over that period of time.

Russia had plenty of polonium-210 on hand in 1970, and nothing has changed. These sorts of absurd statements serve no purpose except to dramatically increase the suspicion that the Russian government has something to hide.