National Post (National Edition)
NERVE agent attackon former Russian SPY escalates TENSION between Kremlin & the West
USE OF RARE NERVE AGENT POINTS TO STATE-BACKED ATTACK ON PAIR IN BRITISH PARK
Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal shops at a store in Salisbury, England, days before he and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent. British police confirmed Wednesday it was a targeted murder attempt.
ARussian ex-spy and his daughter fighting for their lives in an English hospital were attacked with a nerve agent in a targeted murder attempt, British police said Wednesday.
A British police officer was also seriously ill and in intensive care last night after being poisoned by the nerve agent when he came to the aid of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.
The unnamed officer was one of the first on the scene on Sunday when Skripal and his daughter were attacked by would-be assassins.
The policeman was initially treated in hospital as a precaution and then discharged, but his condition deteriorated and he was readmitted on Tuesday and taken into intensive care.
The disclosure of the officer’s condition will add to growing pressure on the British government to take a hardline approach against Russia if state involvement is confirmed.
Last night, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson described the events as “very troubling.” He said: “If this does turn out to be in any way the result of hostile activity by another government, or directed, led, by another government, then the people of this country can be absolutely sure that the U.K. will respond robustly.”
Home Secretary Amber Rudd chaired a meeting of the government’s emergency committee, known as Cobra, to discuss the investigation, which is now in the hands of counterterrorism police.
“We need to keep a cool head and make sure we collect all the evidence we can,” Rudd said. “And then we need to decide what action to take.”
Counter-terrorism specialists have confirmed that the substance used in the attack was a known nerve agent, and have said they are treating the incident as attempted murder. Last night, it was reported that the nerve agent may have been developed in the notorious Yasenevo laboratory of Russia’s foreign intelligence service near Moscow.
The use of a rare chemical weapon appears to confirm the theory that this was a state-backed assassination attempt, rather than an organised crime hit. Security sources said the substance was only held in a “very small number of places,” making it easier to identify where it might have come from.
Skripal, who was recruited by Britain to spy on the Russian military during the 1990s, remained in a critical condition in hospital last night, alongside his 33-year-old daughter.
Scotland Yard’s Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the head of national counterterrorism policing, said hundreds of detectives had been deployed to the investigation: “This is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder by the administration of a nerve agent.
“We believe the two people who originally became unwell were the specific targets and are focused on identifying and finding those responsible.”
It also emerged last night that the British operative who recruited Skripal to work for MI6 has links to Christopher Steele, the intelligence agent who helped compile the infamous Donald Trump dossier.
As detectives continued to hunt for the attackers, sources said the fact a police officer had been injured increased the seriousness of the situation, with some directly blaming Russia. One source said there was now a widespread feeling in government that “Putin’s hands are all over this.”
If the investigation does, in fact, reveal that Skripal was poisoned by his fellow Russians, it wouldn’t be the first time such an incident has occurred.
Russia is suspected of having organized the killings of at least 14 other people on U.K. soil over the last two decades, according to an extensive BuzzFeed investigation.
Until recently, Britain has struggled to investigate suspicious deaths as assassinations. As BuzzFeed explained: “The reasons for Britain’s reticence ... include fear of retaliation, police incompetence, and a desire to preserve the billions of pounds of Russian money that pour into British banks and properties each year. As a result, Russia is making what one source called increasingly ‘bold moves’ in the U.K. without fear of reprisals.”
The incident has echoes of the murder of police officer Yvonne Fletcher, who was shot dead in 1984 outside the Libyan embassy in London. Her murder led to a complete breakdown of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Skripal was convicted of spying for Britain in 2006 and was sentenced to 13 years in prison. However, he was pardoned by Dmitry Medvedev, then the Russian president, in 2010 and granted asylum in the U.K. as part of a prisoner exchange, which included the glamorous spy Anna Chapman being returned to Moscow.
Experts initially cast doubt on whether Russia was behind the attack, because protocols signed during the prisoner exchange would have meant Skripal was “off limits.”
But Rob Wainwright, the head of the law enforcement agency Europol, offered a hint about where he thought responsibility for the attack lay in a comment on Twitter. “Whoever is responsible — and there are not 101 likely offenders — this is an outrageous affront to our security in Europe and our way of life,” he wrote.
A BRITISH POLICE OFFICER WAS ALSO SERIOUSLY ILL.