Fourth Russian spy named in Skripal case
Investigative website Bellingcat exposes one more Russian spy tied to failed UK Novichok plot
The investigative website Bellingcat has named Egor Aleksandrovich Gordienko as a senior member of the cell of Russian military intelligence officers who attempted to assassinate former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in March 2018. Gordienko is accused of being in “close working contact” in 2017 and 2018 with three GRU agents who plotted and carried out the poisoning of Skripal using the weapons-grade nerve agent Novichok.
A FOURTH member of the gang of Russian agents who carried out the Salisbury nerve agent attack was identified last night.
The investigative website Bellingcat named Egor Aleksandrovich Gordienko as a senior member of the cell of Russian military intelligence officers that tried to assassinate a former Kremlin spy in the Wiltshire city in March 2018.
Gordienko is accused of being in “close working contact” in 2017 and 2018 with three GRU agents who plotted and carried out the poisoning of Sergei Skripal using the weaponsgrade nerve agent Novichok.
Skripal, a former colonel in the GRU who was caught spying for the UK, and his daughter Yulia survived the assassination attempt but Dawn Sturgess, a local woman, died after inadvertently handling a discarded bottle that had contained the nerve agent.
Bellingcat alleges that Gordienko, 40, was based in Geneva where a “clandestine GRU team trained for overseas disruptive operations and extraterritorial assassinations”. It claims the team were part of the elite GRU Unit 29155.
Gordienko was accredited at the time as a member of Russia’s delegation to the World Trade Organisation in Geneva. But the website also claims that for seven years prior to his Geneva posting he had travelled under the alias Georgy Aleksandrovich Gorshkov.
It alleges that in April 2015 he was a member of a three-man hit squad that poisoned – but failed to kill – a Bulgarian arms dealer. It is alleged that Gordienko is one of three men wanted in connection with the attack and that he is wanted on an Interpol red notice that would lead to his arrest if he left Russia.
The leader of the GRU unit has been unmasked as Major General Denis Sergeev, who was in Bulgaria at the time and then in the UK when Col Skripal was poisoned. Sergeev flew into London under the assumed name Sergei
Fedotov, arriving on the same day as Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, the agents who smeared the Novichok on Mr Skripal’s door handle.
In the months prior to the attack, Gordienko was stationed in Geneva. According to Bellingcat, its examination of his phone “shows that in 2017 and 2018 he was in close working contact with Sergeev, Chepiga, Mishkin, and other members of Unit 29155”.
Bellingcat concludes: “Thus, we can assume Gordienko’s interests in Switzerland were similar to those of the other GRU team members, or that he
Bellingcat claims that Gordienko’s phone record shows he was in close working contact with the Salisbury assassins
provided a supporting role under diplomatic cover.”
It also alleges that “it is notable that from December 2017 to February 2018, a constellation of several GRU officers from Unit 29155 travelled to Geneva …. On many occasions, these officers several times postponed the return dates for their trips back to Moscow, indicating they were waiting for something to happen, or someone to arrive”.
The website adds: “These trips occurred only two months before a crucial operation – the poisoning of the former GRU double agent in Salisbury.”