Double agent “poisoned”

A former Russian intelligence officer who worked as a double agent for MI6 was in a critical condition in a Wiltshire hospital this week, having apparently been poisoned, along with his daughter. Sergei Skripal, 66, and Yulia Skripal, 33, were found unconscious on Sunday on a bench outside a shopping centre in Salisbury. Both were taken into intensive care. A retired colonel, Skripal was jailed in Russia in 2006 for passing secrets to MI6, but was allowed to move to the UK in 2010 as part of the largest spy swap between Washington and Moscow since the Cold War. He settled in Salisbury the next year, where he lived quietly and told locals he was a retired official. His daughter is believed to have been visiting him from Moscow. MI5 has linked the suspected poisoning to Moscow, and on Tuesday, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told MPS that the Government would respond “robustly” if evidence of state involvement was found; he described Russia as a “malign and disruptive force”, and suggested that UK officials and dignitaries might not attend the football World Cup in Russia in the summer. A meeting of the Cobra crisis committee was held on Wednesday. The case is being investigated by counterterrorism police, who will also look into the recent deaths of other members of Skripal’s family, including his wife and son. The Kremlin says it has no information relating to the incident, which has drawn comparisons with the 2006 poisoning of the EX-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. In 2016, an inquiry found that it was “probably” a state-sanctioned killing.