POISONING SUSPECT WAS ‘GOOD KID:’ LOCALS

The man accused of poisoning Sergei Skripal grew up in a family with ties to the Russian army and signed up for officer training straight after school, according to neighbours from his hometown.

Anatoly Chepiga, which neighbours confirm is the true name of one of the Salisbury attackers, was raised in a single-storey white-brick house near the school where he was a soccer star.

Many here have fond memories of the special forces colonel as a conscientious student whose glittering military career made his family proud.

“Yes, that’s him. He was a good kid,” Anatoly Chepaikin said when shown photographs. British authorities last month charged two Russians travelling under the aliases Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov with the Salisbury attack.

Multiple neighbours confirmed that Boshirov and Chepiga are the same man.

“Oh, how he’s aged! He looks so old! That’s because he was at war,” Chepiga’s former neighbour Valentina Kharchenko said.

“We heard he was a Hero of Russia. He made his family proud,” said Tatyana Mironenko.

Locals were shocked that he had been accused of trying to kill Skripal, with several doubting the allegations or whether there had been any poisoning at all.