Russians charged over UK nerve agent attack on former spy
● PM says suspects will be arrested if they ever leave Russia ● CCTV traces pair to double agent’s front door on day of attack
Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, who have been charged with the attempted murder in the UK of a former spy using poison, are members of Russian military intelligence, Theresa May revealed yesterday. She said the attack would ‘almost certainly’ have been approved at a senior level in Russia.
Two men charged with the attempted murder of a former Russian spy using military-grade poison are serving members of Russian military intelligence, Theresa May revealed yesterday, taking Russia’s relations with the west to a new low.
Police and prosecutors announced they had enough evidence to charge the men, named as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, over the poisoning in March.
Updating MPS following the naming of the two suspects, the Prime Minister said the assassination attempt would “almost certainly” have been approved at a “senior level of the Russian state”.
Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia became seriously ill after coming into contact with a nerve agent believed to have been made in the former Soviet Union. A police officer was also hospitalised. Dawn Sturgess died and her partner Charlie Rowley fell ill after coming into contact with a perfume bottle that contained the poison used in the attack.
The alleged perpetrators were identified in a joint police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) press conference. Detectives believe it is likely the pair, thought to be aged around 40, travelled under aliases and that petrov and boshirov are not their real names.
It is thought the front door of Mr Skripal’s Salisbury home was contaminated with Novichok on Sunday 4 March.
Police said CCTV shows the two suspects in the vicinity of the property on that date.
Hours later, the men left the UK on a flight from Heathrow to Moscow – two days after they had arrived at Gatwick.
“Based on a body of intelligence, the government has concluded that the two individuals named by the police and CPS are officers of the Russian military intelligence service, also known as the GRU,” Mrs May told MPS.
“The GRU is a highly-disciplined organisation with a well-established chain of command. So this was not a rogue operation. It was almost certainly also approved outside the GRU at a senior level of the Russian state.”
With Russian law forbidding the extradition of its own nationals, Mrs May said a European Arrest Warrant had been sought for Petrov and Boshirov’s arrest. “Should either of these individuals ever travel outside Russia, we will take every step to extradite them to face justice here”, she added.
“We will deploy the full range of tools across our security apparatus in order to deter the threat from the GRU.”
The Prime Minister told the Commons that around 250 detectives had trawled through 11,000 hours of CCTV footage to identify the attackers and had taken more than 1,400 statements.
“Working around the clock, they have carried out painstaking and methodical work to ascertain exactly which individuals were responsible and the methods they used to carry out the attack,” she told MPS.
When asked to account for what happened, Mrs May said Russia had replied with “obfuscation and lies”, including claims that she had invented Novichok.
The Prime Minister added: “Their attempts to hide the truth by pushing out a deluge of disinformation simply reinforces their culpability.”
It should have been fairly obvious from the outset who was behind the attacks on Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia and British police officer Nick Bailey.
No-one else had a combination of the motive – revenge against a former Russian spy who gave secrets to the West – the means – not too many criminals have access to nerve agents like Novichok – or the previous form of similar attacks, such as killing Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London with a radioactive material and, almost certainly, the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko, the former president of Ukraine.
The use of polonium-210 against Litvinenko was widely seen as a way of sending a message that Russia was responsible without a public admission, as acquiring enough of it to kill someone would need a sophisticated laboratory and a nuclear reactor. There was an echo of this strategy in the use of Russianmade Novichok. It is a tactic known as “implausible deniability”, one the Kremlin also used over allegations of US election tampering, according to former US national security adviser H R Mcmaster.
The Russian reaction to the accusations by the UK government was to issue threats, invent laughable conspiracy theories and make bad jokes. This is not behaviour expected of an innocent party, rather it smacks of a bully who believes they will escape any kind of punishment. But the wheels of British justice are turning, with the police and security services turning up hard evidence in the case, which is also linked to the later death of Dawn Sturgess and the serious illness of her partner Charlie Rowley. The Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service now say there is enough evidence to charge two men, known as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, believed to be officers in Russian military intelligence.
Given all these facts, it is beyond comprehension that anyone from the UK would seek to aid the propaganda machine of the Russian state, so Alex Salmond, who hardly has his troubles to seek, should now resign from his Russia Today show – a sentiment expressed yesterday by the SNP’S House of Commons’ leader Ian Blackford.
If the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine wasn’t a big enough clue, Putin’s Russia is a hostile rogue state, prepared to use military force, murder and fake news against peaceful, democratic nations.