Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Spy who loved me
MOD aide lays flowers at Sergei relatives’ graves amid fears pair are still Putin target
A VISITOR lays flowers at the graves of Sergei and Yulia Skripal’s tragic family yesterday – in a poignant moment the Russian pair may never experience again.
A year on from the horrific novichok assassination bid on the father and daughter, they still live in fear Vladimir Putin’s ruthless henchmen will return to finish the job properly.
It means former spy Sergei is in hiding with Yulia and has been robbed of their regular visits to the grave of his wife Liudmila and son Alexander, who would have turned 45 yesterday.
Instead, a worker from the MOD unit that helped save them when they were poisoned arrived to lay flowers and tend the plots in Salisbury on their behalf.
A security source said: “Aside from the high drama of the
Skripal story there is a human side too and UK intelligence agencies and other agencies do keep to their duty-of-care responsibilities.
“But while every effort is made to make both father and daughter safe, while thoroughly investigating who is behind the attack, they will feel terribly affected by what has happened to them. “Psychologically the experience will affect them deeply and they will have to support each other. Holding on to memories of the wife and son must be made very difficult by the serious threat to their lives they are experiencing and have suffered from already.
“Not being able to visit their graves, perhaps never again, is simply heartbreaking and so the delivery of flowers to the graveside, just knowing it was happening, may be a comfort.”
It is feared Sergei, 67, and 34-year-old Yulia are so much in danger from Russian assassins they
may have to be moved to America to start a new life with secret identities. But as they continue their recoveries from the near-death poisoning, the pair will remain at a secret countryside home in England, far away from Salisbury.
It is too unsafe for them to pay their respects to Liudmila, who was 59 when she lost her battle with cancer in 2012, and Alexander. He died of liver failure in 2017 while on holiday in St Petersburg at the age of 43.
Alexander was cremated and his ashes buried near his mother but there was a lingering doubt in the family’s mind at the time that the circumstances of his death were suspicious.
The last time Sergei and Yulia paid their respects in person to the pair was on March 4 last year – the fateful day when they were allegedly targeted at their home in Salisbury by Ruslan Boshirov and Anatoliy Chepiga. The pair were said to be assassins from Moscow’s military intelligence unit the GRU.
After the worker from the Mod’s elite Defence Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear unit arrived at the cemetery, she spent less than 10 minutes tending the two graves.
She lay a pot plant of purple flowers on each one.
Friends confided to the Mirror in January how Sergei and Yulia would be heartbroken they cannot go back to be close to their loved ones for fear of Russian reprisals.
They were spirited away by MI5 officers investigating the attempted killing and their movements are carefully monitored by security officials, aware they are top of Putin’s hit list. The Russian president has always denied Moscow was involved in the attack, which left Yulia in a critical condition for three weeks before she was discharged in April. Sergei regained consciousness a month after the assassination attempt and was discharged in May.
Apart from a brief appearance by Yulia to say they were “lucky to be alive” the pair have never been seen in public again.
She came to the UK last year to mark her brother’s birthday and pay respects to her mum who left Russia when it was revealed Sergei was a double agent.
Salisbury was yesterday declared decontaminated of novichok after a year-long clean-up operation.
Sergei is being consulted on the future of his house, which is still covered in tarpaulin. He bought it for £260,000 in 2011 and it is today valued at £306,000.