SPOOK BOOK
Former spy and Novichok victim used invisible ink to pass on Kremlin secrets
Novichok victim Sergei Skripal passed on Kremlin secrets to his MI6 bosses using invisible ink, a new book has claimed.
The Russian double- agent dispatched his wife to Spain with a novel containing top secret information he had scribbled inside.
Liudmila Skripal made the journey to Alicante with their daughter Yulia and posed as a tourist when her husband could not travel abroad.
His handler headed back to London with the tome after the meeting in 1997 so experts could find the sensitive content.
Author Mark Urban reveals Skripal informed MI6 about Russian spies operating in the United Kingdom. They were then given false information to report back to Moscow.
He also provided updates about the rivalry between Russia’s military intelligence service the GRU and its federal security service, the FSB.
Liudmi la repeated the mission the following year when she travelled to Malaga for a second rendezvous with a British intelligence officer.
Ex- paratrooper Skripal – recruited by M16 while based in Malta in 1996 – was head of the GRU’s personnel department at the time. Urban interviewed the spy last year during research for a book about the Cold War.
But the writer decided to write about Skripal instead after the spy was poisoned in Salisbury, Wiltshire, with his daughter Yul ia in March. Russian president Vladimir Putin denied the state had sanctioned the murder bid.
Skripal told Urban, a BBC journalist, that he decided to pass secrets to MI6 af ter becoming disillisioned by the political changes in Russia and the break- up of the Soviet Union. Skripal tried to resign from his post in 1992 but was told he could not leave and promised a top job in Paris.
The offer was withdrawn and he was sent to Madrid.
It was towards the end of the three-year post that he decided to become a double agent.
He told Urban: “When I came to Spain I was already thinking about a life outside Russia. I wanted to make business contacts, get some money, and then maybe later, resign from the GRU.”
His recruitment was the first time the British had a GRU insider for 30 years and he was given the codename Forthwith.
Skripal lef t the GRU in 1999 but was sti ll able to provide information using his network of friends within the agency. Mark Urban’s book The Skripal Files is released this month.