Friendly ex-spy in suburbia who had scratch cards habit ...while daughter hit out at Putin
THE daughter of Sergei Skripal remarked ‘nice’ when a friend said he hoped Vladimir Putin would be jailed, it was revealed last night.
Yulia, 33 – believed to have been struck down by the same unknown substance as her father – commented on a letter posted on Facebook which accused Putin of being ‘the worst president in the world’.
Yulia’s social media page shows she moved to London in 2010, the same year her father was granted refuge in Britain.
Having left Russia in an extraordinary ‘spy swap’, the colonel and his family moved into a semi-detached house on the edge of Salisbury, southern England, two years later.
The £350,000 four-bedroom house was paid for in cash, having previously been owned by Wiltshire Police.
The family’s neighbours in the neat and tidy road described him as a ‘happy’ man who drove a BMW 3 Series and lived in a ‘normal house’.
But relatives of the former spy said he believed the Russian special services could come after him at any time.
Mr Skripal often went to his local shop to buy a particular type of Polish sausage and spent up to £40 a time on lottery scratch cards. He was described as a ‘polite’ and ‘kind’ customer.
Neighbours said they didn’t know him well, although he organised a house-warming party shortly after moving in, inviting people by dropping notes through doors.
Mr Skripal lived on the street with his wife Lyudmila until she died in October 2012 at the age of 59.
Her death certificate said she died from womb cancer which she was diagnosed with before moving to England. The death was reported to Wiltshire Council by Yulia, who recorded her father’s occupation as a ‘retired local government planning officer’.
Last year Mr Skripal’s son also died. He was admitted to a hospital in St Petersburg with liver failure while visiting Russia with his girlfriend, according to reports. Both the ex-spy’s children appear to have travelled freely between Russia and the UK.
In November 2013, Yulia posted the word ‘nice’ in response to her friend’s antiPutin letter, written to practise his English and corrected with the teacher’s red ink.
It read: ‘I want to put in to jail Vladimir Putin, because I think that he is the worst president in the world. He stole so much money that they can feed a small starving country.’
It is understood Yulia had moved back to Russia and was visiting her father when they were taken ill.
Mr Skripal’s housekeeper, who asked not to be named, broke down in tears as she described finding out the former spy was critically ill. She said: ‘He is a lovely, friendly and kind-hearted man and I was shocked when I found out it was him who was in hospital.’
It is understood that Mr Skripal, who was allegedly paid £78,000 in exchange for passing classified information to MI6, was entitled to claim a pension in Britain.
Security sources said he sometimes visited MI6 and military academies and lectured students about the GRU, Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency, as part of consultancy work.
Away from work, he had joined the £10-a-year Railway Social Club in Salisbury.
Local shopkeeper Ebru Ozturk, 41, said Mr Skripal came into her store once a week to buy Polish sausage and scratch cards. She said he was ‘like a grandfather’.