Skripal case adds to list of suspected Russian assassination targets
The widow of Alexander Litvinenko has said she fears the case of Sergei Skripal bears striking similarities to the murder of her husband.
Marina Litvinenko said if Col Skripal was found to have been poisoned, it showed “nothing has changed” since her husband died.
A public inquiry found Litvinenko was probably killed in 2006 on the direct orders of Vladimir Putin.
The former KGB officer died from radiation poisoning, and was killed by two Russian agents, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, the inquiry report said.
There was a “strong probability” they were acting for the Russian FSB secret service, the report added. Mrs Litvinenko told the Telegraph: “It looks similar to what happened to my husband but we need to know more. What was the substance? Was it radioactive? We don’t have enough information about what definitely happened.”
She added: “I cannot say I am worried but it is really strange. I need to know what happened and why.
“Logically it is very strange to do this before a presidential election. It is really difficult to know who might be behind this.
“The only thing I can say is if this is a poisoning it means nothing has changed since my husband died.”
Poisoning was also behind a notorious UK mystery of the Cold War, when Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident, was poisoned on the orders of his country’s secret service, using the poisoned tip of an umbrella in London.
More recent high-profile deaths of Russians in the UK have resulted in more assassination theories.
An inquiry is ongoing into the death of Alexander Perepilichny, a Russian whistleblower who fled to the UK after lifting the lid on a £166million tax fraud by corrupt Russian officials. Mr Perepilichny died while jogging in Surrey in 2012.
Surrey Police and his wife do not believe his death was suspicious, but an inquest has heard his stomach showed traces of a rare deadly plant poison.
An inquest into the death of Boris Berezovsky, a billionaire critic of Vladimir Putin found hanged at his UK home in 2014, recorded an open verdict after experts disagreed over whether he could have been murdered.