Hitman’s grandmother vanishes:
‘Proud’ relative of Russian agent disappears after telling friends that he received medal from Putin
THE grandmother of the military doctor outed as a Salisbury assassin has disappeared after disclosing her grandson had been awarded Russia’s highest honour by Vladimir Putin.
Nina Mishkina, whose grandson Alexander Mishkin was unmasked by The Daily Telegraph as one of two hitmen behind the Novichok attack, vanished three days ago following reports that his real name was about to be revealed.
Mishkin, 39, a senior member of the GRU, the Russian military intelligence, was given the Hero of the Russian Federation award by Mr Putin at a ceremony in 2014.
Mishkina, now in her 90s, proudly showed to friends a photograph of her grandson shaking hands with the Russian president at the event.
Mishkin had travelled to the UK under the assumed name Alexander Petrov with another Russian agent Anatoliy Chepiga, who had the false identity of Ruslan Boshirov.
Chepiga had also received the same Hero of the Russian Federation honour suggesting both men were known to Mr Putin, who previously insisted the men were civilians.
In fact they are both senior members of the GRU, the Russian military intelligence unit behind the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in March.
It has emerged that both Mishkin and Chepiga were given new flats in Moscow in autumn 2014 shortly after Mr Putin bestowed the honours upon them. Mishkin’s flat, according to the investigative website Bellingcat, was worth £350,000 and Chepiga’s £430,000.
Two months after the Salisbury mission, Chepiga sold his year-old £70,000 Mercedes Benz, a luxury SUV with a vanity number plate, to Mishkin.
According to the independent Conflict Intelligence Team, Mishkin picked up a speeding ticket a month after buying the high performance car.
In Loyga, the remote village where Mishkin grew up, neighbours said his grandmother, a trained doctor, had disappeared three days ago. This was soon after Bellingcat, an investigative website working with Russian website The Insider, announced it was about to reveal her grandson’s identity.
The Insider reported that a close female friend had been shown the photograph of Mr Putin shaking hands with Mishkin and giving him a medal. Former neighbours confirmed to The Telegraph that “Petrov” was Mishkin and he had been awarded the country’s highest honour.
“I remember his father, we played chess together,” said Alexander Kalashnikov, a long-time resident of Loyga. “His son is a Hero of Russia.”
The gold star medal is typically presented by the president in person, although news about the award may be kept secret if the individual was on sensitive state missions.
Mishkin was enrolled at the “S Kirov” military medical academy in St Petersburg. The institute trains doctors for Russia’s naval armed forces.
Mishkin specialised in undersea and hypobaric medicine and graduated in 2003 or 2004 with a medical degree and the rank of senior lieutenant.
The GRU recruited Mishkin during his studies and in 2006, he was stationed with naval special forces outside the Arctic city of Murmansk.
Vladimir Putin appears to be the only person on the planet who remains resolutely unamused by the clownish antics of Russia’s GRU. While the rest of us have enjoyed a hearty chuckle at the expense of the spy agency, first over its inept involvement in the Salisbury poisoning, and then over its equally hapless operation to bug the offices of chemical weapons inspectors in Amsterdam, Mr Putin has had a serious sense of humour failure.
And it only gets worse. For now, thanks to the efforts of the investigative website Bellingcat, we know the real identities of the two GRU officers who visited Salisbury. After the first assassin was identified as Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, a decorated GRU officer, Bellingcat has unmasked his accomplice as Alexander Mishkin, a doctor who also served as a military intelligence officer, whom Mr Putin personally gave the Hero of the Russian Federation award in 2014.
It is unlikely further awards will be forthcoming for either man. According to Russian media reports, they are more likely to be on the receiving end of a Stalinesque purge of the GRU’S ranks as Mr Putin vents his anger at the performance of what is supposed to be Russia’s elite military outfit.
Yet, while there can be no doubt recent revelations have damaged the GRU’S standing, it would be foolhardy to write off an organisation that remains in the vanguard of the Kremlin’s campaign against the West.
You have only to look at the GRU’S track record to see that, despite its recent setbacks, it remains a formidable and well-resourced adversary. Crimea, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, the Baltics and the Balkans are just some of the recent conflict zones where the GRU has proved its operational effectiveness.
And, with the Syria conflict winding down, the latest intelligence reports suggest the GRU is trying to move into Libya, allowing Mr Putin, as one Whitehall security official commented, to make the war-torn North African nation “his new Syria”, thereby allowing him to challenge Nato’s southern flank.
The GRU, therefore, remains a formidable enemy, one that may well seek to avenge its recent setbacks by intensifying its efforts to target Britain.
It is certainly a scenario that ministers need to take on board and, in view of their response to the Salisbury poisoning so far, it raises significant questions about the Government’s willingness to confront such threats.
Ministers will point to the detailed exposé they provided on the Salisbury attack as evidence of their determination to hold Moscow to account. This included explicit calls to action, with Theresa May promising to orchestrate an international campaign against the GRU, and the Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, demanding tougher sanctions.
Fighting talk indeed. Yet, in terms of the follow-through, Whitehall appears a great deal more reluctant to engage in direct confrontation with the Russians. It is curious, for example, that MI6, whose constitutional duty is to prevent foreign powers from attacking the UK, appears so relaxed about Bellingcat grabbing all the limelight by revealing the true identities of the GRU assassins.
MI6 and its sister service, MI5, have known for months the GRU officers’ real names (they have also identified a third GRU officer who scouted out the Skripals’ home), as well as all the detailed background information that has now appeared on the Bellingcat website. Which begs the question: are British spooks attempting to use the independent status of Bellingcat to cover their tracks in the same way that Russian intelligence used Julian Assange’s Wikileaks to leak embarrassing details of the 2016 US presidential election campaign?
Whitehall’s disinclination, moreover, to take the lead role in naming and shaming the would-be GRU assassins is symptomatic of the Government’s wider reluctance to pursue hostile groups. The refusal to take back Islamist terrorists who have fought in Syria; the unwillingness to join the US in confronting Iran; the failure to tackle the ability of Russian oligarchs to use London as a moneylaundering base. All of these signify a Government that is all too willing to dodge difficult issues when it comes to national security.
Another example of Britain’s disinclination to follow words with action is reflected in its attitude towards the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a key ally of Mr Putin. In America, the FBI has reportedly frozen Mr Deripaska’s assets as part of its continued crackdown on Mr Putin’s allies. By contrast, the British Government is ignoring efforts by Tory peer Lord Barker to restructure another of Mr Deripaska’s assets, the London-based energy company EN+, which critics claim is being undertaken to avoid US sanctions.
This is not the conduct one would expect from a Government that claims to be serious about confronting Britain’s enemies, whether in Russia or elsewhere. And the concern must be that, if Westminster continues to behave in this vein, it will not be long before we become a laughing stock ourselves.