What were assassins up to in their jaunts across Europe?
THE two-man hit squad charged with the attempted murder of the Skripals travelled extensively across Europe under their aliases, it was claimed last night.
Using the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, the Russians apparently visited Amsterdam, Geneva, Milan and several times Paris with their state-issued passports.
Petrov made a trip to Britain in February last year, a leading Russian news agency said last night. British investigators will be scrambling to work out exactly what the Russian spies were doing on their trips over the past two years.
Theresa May said yesterday that both work for the GRU, the military intelligence service. Their travel documents have issue codes just a few numbers apart – suggesting they were created at almost exactly the same time.
Russia’s Fontanka news agency said their passports were around two years old and were regular documents rather than biometric.
By publishing pictures of the hitmen, the authorities are trying to prevent them from travelling again.
They are subject to a European Arrest Warrant and an Interpol red notice, meaning they are likely to be arrested if they leave the safety of their home country. Petrov had travelled to London at least once before the novichok poisoning, from February 28 to March 5 last year, according to data obtained by the Russian news agency.
It said that the pair had two sets of return tickets from Heathrow to Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow to use after the Skripal poisoning – one for a flight this March 4 and one for a flight on March 5. British police yesterday said they left the country on March 4.
The news agency said it could find very little information on anyone using the name ‘Ruslan Boshirov’ with the same date of birth as given on his documents.
It appeared he was born on April 12, 1978, in Dushanbe,
Tajikistan, and was registered as living in a 25-storey building on a street in north-west Moscow.
Neighbours said they had only ever seen an ‘ old woman’ living in that apartment.
A Facebook profile using the name Ruslan Boshirov was created in 2014 and had just one friend – a Ukrainian woman called Yulia Chopivskaya. She said she met a man called Ruslan Boshirov for about half an hour at a cafe in Prague around five years ago.
The woman said she had not seen him since and was yesterday inundated by inquiries. She did not recognise him from the picture released by police in London, she said. ‘This is a nightmare. I haven’t stayed in touch with this person and I don’t know him,’ she said. ‘I deleted him from my friend’s list. I don’t know if this is a real last name or not.
‘In 2013 or 2014 I met a guy who introduced himself as Ruslan, it was in Prague. Then he asked how to find me on Facebook and added me there.
‘We chatted for half an hour maximum and said goodbye to each other at that very cafe.’
Even less is known about the alias of Alexander Petrov, a very common name in Russia.
The news agency said his birth date is July 13, 1979.