Kremlin: This is a matter of verification
ON UK BEING OPEN TO ATTACKS
poisoned in London in 2006. Mr Kalugin said: “He met with his killers more than once without MI5 intervening or getting close protection.
“It didn’t take a genius to work out Litvinenko’s life was deeply in danger.”
Mr Kalugin was called an American stooge by Putin. He said: “I publicly accused Putin of being a mass murderer for waging war in Chechnya.
“I’ve also had the guts to attack Putin in a book. If I had been living in Britain instead of the US, I would have been dead long ago.”
And he warned it was possible British intelligence services still have Russian double agents within them.
Mr Kalugin said: “We had between 10 and 20 agents inside MI5 and MI6 when I was in charge of foreign counter-intelligence. Russia’s intelligence services, who took over from the KGB, still have that capability.”
He added of Salisbury: “I think more will emerge in the next few weeks.” RUSSIA bizarrely demanded more information yesterday to help identify the two men behind the nerve agent attacks in Salisbury.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: “It is necessary to identify these people, whether there are such citizens or not. This is a matter of verification.
“We want to do this as quickly and efficiently as possible, so we once again call on the United Kingdom to help identify these people.”
But the UK Government believes the Kremlin knows both men, who have been named as spies from Russia’s GRU military intelligence.
If I lived in Britain instead of the US, I’d be dead by now
OLEG KALUGIN
DECONTAMINATING
The pair, operating under the aliases Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, were pictured on CCTV arriving at Gatwick before the attack in March. They were pictured going to Salisbury by train twice – the second time to apparently daub novichok on Sergei Skripal’s door handle.
Meanwhile, specialist military teams began decontaminating the house where ex-spy Sergei, 67, and daughter Yulia, 33, were poisoned.
Scotland Yard handed control of the site over to Wiltshire Council earlier this week, meaning it is no longer classed as a crime scene.
Council sources said they had to get permission from Sergei, who still owns the property, to begin the work.
Locals have called for the house to be demolished, with one saying: “Enough is enough, why don’t they just raze that bloody house of horrors and be done with it so we can all go back to normal?”