Did Russia poison ex-double agent?
LONDON — A former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent in Britain this week, British police said Wednesday, heightening suspicions that the episode was an assassination attempt by a national government, amid rampant speculation that Russia was responsible.
The development forces the British government to confront the possibility that once again, an attack on British soil was carried out by the government of President Vladimir Putin, which Western intelligence officials say has, with alarming frequency, ordered the killing of people who have crossed it. Prime Minister Theresa May and her Cabinet ministers held a meeting Wednesday of the government’s emergency security committee to discuss the matter.
“This is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder by administration of a nerve agent,” said Mark Rowley, Britain’s chief police official for counterterrorism and international security.
The former spy, Sergei V. Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, 33, “were targeted specifically,” Rowley said. He refused to say what chemical was used, or even whether investigators had identified it.
In 2006, a Russian court convicted Skripal, an excolonel in Russia’s military intelligence, of selling secrets to the British. In 2010, he was released from prison and sent to Britain as part of an exchange of imprisoned spies.
On Sunday afternoon, he and his daughter became severely ill in the quiet cathedral town of Salisbury, England. They lost consciousness and remain in critical condition.
Some of the emergency workers who went to the scene also became ill, and one police officer has been hospitalized in serious condition, Rowley said.
The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the attack, and on Wednesday, Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, said that suggestions of Russian culpability were part of an orchestrated campaign to drive a wedge between Russia and Britain.