Moscow accused of spying before attack

Victims: Security adviser says email accounts of Yulia Skripal were targeted as far back as 2013

Britain has accused Russian intelligence agencies of spying on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter for at least five years in the run up to the Salisbury nerve agent attack.

The Government’s National Security Adviser Sir Mark Sedwill said cyber specialists from the GRU – Russian military intelligence – had targeted Yulia Skripal’s email accounts as far back as 2013.

In an account based in part on declassified UK intelligence, Sir Mark also said the Russians had developed a programme in the 2000s to train personnel from “special units” in the use of chemical warfare agents.

Among the techniques they had investigated for delivering nerve agents was applying them to door handles, he said.

The strongest concentration of the Novichok nerve agent found in the Salisbury incident was on the front door handle of Mr Skripal’s home.

Russia’s ambassador to the UK Alexander Yakovenko said the claims were a “big surprise” and complained they had not been formally notified of the allegations by the UK authorities.

“It is not the right way how the serious people handle these issues,” he told a news conference at the embassy in London.

Sir Mark’s account – set out in a letter to Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg – represents the most detailed explanation yet by the UK as to why it holds Moscow responsible for the poisoning of the Skripals.

It follows the confirmation on Thursday by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that the toxin used in the Salisbury incident was Novichok – a military grade nerve agent developed by Russia in the 1980s.

In his letter, Sir Mark argued that only Russia had the “technical means, operational experience and the motive” to carry out such an attack.

He said Russia had a “proven record of conducting state-sponsored assassination”, including the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.

It was “highly likely”, he said, that some defectors – like Mr Skripal, a former GRU officer who was convicted of treason in 2006 and exchanged in a spy swap in 2010 – were regarded as “legitimate targets”.

“We have information indicating Russian intelligence service interest in the Skripals dating back at least as far as 2013, when email accounts belonging to Yulia Skripal were targeted by GRU cyber specialists,” he said.

Sir Mark also identified the key institute for developing Novichok in the former Soviet Union as a branch of the State Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology at Shikany near Volgograd.

Mr Yakovenko however insisted that Russia had destroyed all its chemical weapons and had never possessed Novichok. A baby wallaby is being hand reared in a rucksack after being abandoned by his mother.

The red-necked wallaby, nicknamed Newt, was rescued after being let out of his mother’s pouch during snowy weather at Longleat in Wiltshire.

Police community support officers at the Salisbury home of Sergei Skripal where he and his daughter were poisoned by a substance on their door handles. Picture: PA.

Sergei and Yulia Skripal were targeted in a nerve agent attack.