Site ID’S other Russian in duo sought by U.K.

LONDON — One of the two suspects in the poisoning of an ex-spy in England is a doctor who works for Russian military intelligence and traveled to Britain under an alias, investigative group Bellingcat reported Monday.

Bellingcat said on its website that the man British authorities identified as Alexander Petrov is actually Alexander Mishkin, a doctor working for the Russian military intelligence unit known as the GRU.

British officials said when they charged two Russians last month in the March nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury that they believed Petrov was an assumed name.

The other suspect also traveled under an alias, Ruslan Boshirov, but is a decorated Russian agent named Anatoly Chepiga, Bellingcat reported last month.

The group said that on Tuesday it will provide forensic evidence and other information used to conclude Petrov is Mishkin.

The poisoning of Skripal, a former Russian agent who was convicted of spying for Britain, became a major international incident. British authorities said the former spy and his daughter, Yulia, were sickened by a Soviet-made nerve agent.

Bellingcat’s latest investigation said Mishkin was born in 1979 in the Archangelsk District and graduated from the elite Military Medical Academies, where he was trained for medical work in the Russian navy.

He was recruited by the secretive GRU and made multiple trips to Ukraine, the investigative group said.

The use of a banned nerve agent produced by the Soviet Union during the Cold War in a small English city has focused attention on the GRU, a Russian military intelligence unit that Western officials say is linked to a number of recent computer security hacks.