LONDON — A British inquiry concluded Thursday that a botched “assassination” attempt ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin killed a British civilian and sickened two Russians in Salisbury, England, in 2018. The findings drew swift condemnation from London and a battery of new sanctions against Russia’s military intelligence service.
The 33-month, $11-million inquiry, chaired by a former Supreme Court justice, detailed a plot that was as hapless as it was deadly: Two Russian operatives transported a vial of the banned nerve agent Novichok to Salisbury in a fake perfume bottle intending to kill former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal.
Skripal and his adult daughter, Yulia, were left critically ill after touching their front doorknob, which was dabbed with the poison. They survived, but months later the discarded perfume container was found by a local man and given to his partner, Dawn Sturgess, 44, a mother of three. Sturgess sprayed it on her wrist and died eight days later.
Following public and classified fact-finding sessions, the final report released Thursday concluded that the operation was authorized at the highest level of the Russian state and dubbed Putin “morally responsible” for Sturgess’s death and the deployment of the military-grade chemical weapon on British soil.
“Deploying a highly toxic nerve agent in a busy city was an astonishingly reckless act,” said Lord Anthony Hughes, the commission head.
The finger-pointing at Moscow is not new. Then-Prime Minister Theresa May blamed Russia for the nerve agent assault at the time. Such examples of Putin’s behavior, described by successive British leaders as reckless and lawless, have been one of the driving forces behind the U.K.’s staunch support for Ukraine and its push to help Europe rearm against a growing Russian threat.
Thursday’s report, however, provided a definitive public record and crystalized common assumptions into formal findings. The British government responded immediately, announcing sweeping new sanctions against 11 individuals identified in the report and against the entirety of Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper also summoned the Russian ambassador Thursday to answer the report’s findings.
“The Salisbury poisonings shocked the nation and today’s findings are a grave reminder of the Kremlin’s disregard for innocent lives,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement. “Dawn’s needless death was a tragedy and will forever be a reminder of Russia’s reckless aggression.”
The report is unlikely to bring any of the suspects to justice. Long before the formal review began in 2022, British investigators and open-source researchers identified the suspects. Bellingcat, an internet sleuthing collective, traced travel documents and public records to show, it said, that two men who traveled to Salisbury under the names “Alexander Petrov” and “Ruslan Boshirov” were, in fact, GRU officers Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin.
The two denied involvement, telling Russian state television that they had traveled only briefly to Salisbury as tourists to see the spire on Salisbury Cathedral. “Our friends had been suggesting for a long time that we visit this wonderful town,” Petrov said.
British prosecutors authorized charges against both men in absentia in 2018, but no arrests have been made, and the suspects remain in Russia. The Kremlin has dismissed the accusations, calling Britain’s description of events “a frank lie.”
Russian officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The commission directed some criticism at British intelligence services for aspects of its handling of Skripal, a former GRU colonel who was convicted of treason by Russia. Skripal came to the U.K. in 2010 as part of a high-profile spy swap and had lived quietly in Salisbury before he and his daughter were found unconscious on a park bench in 2018.
Local officials complained that they had no warning of a potential Russian target living in the community. The report found that senior local police officials should have been updated and that intelligence agencies should have made more frequent assessments of risks to the former Russian spy.
The case, with its deadly novelties, continues to reverberate across Britain and the West as a disturbing marker of ruthless covert action in the 21st century: an assassination attempt using a banned chemical weapon carried out in a peaceful English cathedral town; a victim by accidental contact with military-grade poison; internet investigators who assembled puzzle pieces faster than official bodies; and a democratic government trying to respond with sanctions and diplomatic pressure even as arrests effectively remain impossible.
Sturgess’s family said that seven years after her death, the commission report left them “some answers, but also a number of unanswered questions.”
“There should, there must, be reflection and real change,” the family said in a statement.
The post U.K. report formally blames Russian agents, Putin in 2018 poisoning death appeared first on Washington Post.
