Third suspect in Skripal attack linked to poisoning of three victims in Bulgaria

THE third Russian agent implicated in the Salisbury nerve agent attack has been linked to the poisoning of up to three people in Bulgaria.

The existence of a third man – identified as a 45-year-old Russian travelling under the alias Sergey Vyacheslavovich Fedotov – was first revealed by The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday.

Fedotov, a senior GRU officer who was in the UK at the time of the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal in March, is believed to have arrived in Bulgaria in 2015 just days before a local entrepreneur and his son became seriously ill after being poisoned with an unidentified substance.

Like the other two suspects, GRU officers Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, Fedotov’s identity was created in 2010, with no prior records of a person with this name ever existing.

It has been revealed by the investigative publication Bellingcat alongside its Russian partner The Insider that on April 24 2015, Fedotov flew from Moscow to Burgan in Bulgaria. He had been due to board a return flight a week later on April 30 from Sofia to Moscow.

However, he did not show up for the return flight. Instead, late on the evening of April 28, he showed up at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport and bought a last-minute ticket to fly to Moscow.

Earlier that same day, Emilian Gebrev was taken to hospital after collapsing at a reception he was hosting in Sofia. At around the same time, his adult son and another man fell ill. All three were taken to hospital with symptoms of severe poisoning.

Doctors believed that the poison had been applied or consumed in the day or days preceding April 28.

This revelation comes days after The Telegraph exclusively revealed that Fedotov failed to board his scheduled flight back to Moscow following the Skripal poisoning, showing a clear resemblance to the attack in Bulgaria.

Fedotov returned to Bulgaria later in 2015 after Mr Gebrev was taken ill, and once again did not show up for his scheduled flight home, instead booked a last minute ticket two days later from Serbia to Moscow.

Fedotov’s true identity has not yet been uncovered.