UK poisonings leave Soviet defector’s family in fear
LONDON: The family of a Soviet defector who died in Salisbury in 2001 is living in fear following the recent poisoning of a Russian ex- spy in the same English city, according to his son.
Nikita Pasechnik, whose scientist father Vladimir Pasechnik defected to Britain in 1989 and suffered a stroke 12 years later, said his relatives are now ‘scared to death’.
“Every normal person would fear,” Nikita Pasechnik told AFP in a recent interview in the southwest English county of Dorset where he lives, blaming the death on Russian security services.
Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury in March with the Soviet-made Novichok nerve agent.
They spent weeks recovering in hospital. Britain has blamed the attempted assassination on Moscow, which has denied involvement.
Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year- old English woman who also came into contact with the toxin along with her surviving partner Charlie Rowley in nearby Amesbury, died on July 8 and was cremated this week.
“Even here in the UK, I don’t feel safe – that was one of their goals with Skripal,” Pasechnik said.
“These two cases are different but the similarity between them is that I believe they killed my father.
“They poisoned him and they poisoned Skripal,” he alleged.
Pasechnik, an IT specialist, wants his father’s death 17 years ago probed.
But other relatives worry it could make them targets.
“My family don’t want to be exposed. They’re scared to death,” the 53-year- old father said. Vladimir Pasechnik was a senior biologist who fled the Soviet Union as the Cold War was ending and exposed its vast clandestine programme adapting germs and viruses for military use.
He defected in Paris and settled near Salisbury, working at a public health microbiological research centre at Porton Down, where the British military also has research facilities.
His family joined him in stages through the 1990s.
In November 2001, aged 64, he was hospitalised after suffering a stroke and died within weeks.
Local authorities ruled his death was from natural causes, and no inquest or criminal investigation was launched.
But Pasechnik said the doctors who treated him said they could not pinpoint its cause and the stroke was more widespread than normal.
“There were many clots simultaneously,” he said.
“Basically two-thirds of the brain was affected and the doctor said ‘ It’s very unusual. It is strange.’”
Vladimir Pasechnik had voiced concerns he would be targeted, according to his son.