UK warrant for 2 Russian officers over spy attack
london — British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday that two Russian military intelligence officials carried out a nerve agent attack on a former spy on British soil, as prosecutors issued a warrant for the suspects’ arrest.
Police identified Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov as the men who allegedly tried to kill Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with Novichok in the city of Salisbury in March.
May told MPs the pair “are officers of the Russian military intelligence service, also known as the GRU”, adding the attack had been sanctioned from higher up.
“The GRU is a highly-disciplined organisation with a well-established chain of command. So this was not a rogue operation,” she told parliament. “It was almost certainly also approved outside the GRU at a senior level of the Russian state.”
London and its allies had previously blamed Moscow for the attack, which Russia angrily denied. —
london — Britain charged two Russians on Wednesday with the attempted murder of a former Russian spy and his daughter, describing the suspects as military intelligence officers almost certainly acting on behalf of the Russian state.
British police revealed images of the two men they said had flown to Britain for a weekend in March to kill former spy Sergei Skripal with Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent.
Skripal’s daughter Yulia and a police officer who attended the scene also fell ill in the case, which has caused the biggest East-West diplomatic expulsions since the Cold War. A woman later died from Novichok poisoning after her partner brought home a contaminated bottle of counterfeit perfume.
Prime Minister Theresa May lay the blame clearly with the Russian state, describing the suspects as officers in Russia’s GRU military intelligence. “The GRU is a highly disciplined organisation with a well-established chain of command, so this was not a rogue operation. It was almost certainly also approved outside the GRU at a senior level of the Russian state,” May told parliament.
Russia’s foreign ministry said the names given by Britain did not mean anything to Moscow, which has repeatedly denied any involvement in the attack. The “remarkably sophisticated attack” appeared to be a clear assassination attempt, said Neil Basu, head of UK Counter Terrorism policing.
The two men arrived in Britain from Moscow on March 2 at London’s Gatwick airport on an Aeroflot flight, and left on March 4. They spent two nights in a London hotel, making two day trips by train to Salisbury, the first for reconnaissance, the second to kill Skripal.
Basu said they were around 40 years old. They travelled under genuine Russian passports although their names are believed to be aliases. It was not their first trip to Britain.
“We would like to hear from anyone who knows them,” Basu said.
Basu said the two men had been filmed by CCTV cameras near Skripal’s house, where Novichok, a nerve agent developed by the Soviet military in the 1970s and 1980s, was sprayed on the front door. Traces of Novichok contamination were found in the London hotel room where the two men had stayed. —