British charges against a Russian businessman over the murder of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko will not harm bilateral relations, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Wednesday, according to DPA. His remarks came as Russian prosecutors said they would not extradite Andrei Lugovoy, the Russian who is to be charged, but that they would review the British evidence and complete their own investigation. Russia's refusal to "give a citizen to a foreign state," as prosecutors have referred to the extradition request, has enlivened talk by many of a post-Soviet low in Moscow-London relations. Ivanov, however, said he did not see any reason for ties to suffer. "I honestly don't see a big connection between Litvinenko's death and Russian-British relations on the whole," Ivanov, one of Russia's most powerful politicians and a potential presidential candidate in 2008, told reporters in Moscow. "If you want to talk about the Litvinenko affair - or now Lugovoy, I don't even know what to call it - we have a court, we have a prosecution, which are independent from executive power," he said in remarks quoted by Interfax. "The relations themselves, in my opinion, are developing fine, there is a growth in trade," he added, saying in English, "No problem."
