The Kremlin dismissed as “nonsense” on Monday suggestions that a dissident former Russian security agent living in Britain was poisoned in a Moscow-led plot, Reuters reports.

Friends of Alexander Litvinenko say they suspect the Russian government was involved in a plot to poison him, though they offered no proof. Litvinenko is seriously ill in a London hospital.

Asked to respond to the allegations, Kremlin deputy spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters: “There is no need to comment on statements that are pure nonsense.”

A spokesman for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) declined to comment. Litvinenko worked for the FSB, a successor organization to the Soviet-era KGB, until he left and turned whistle-blower in the 1990s.

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