Putin authorized 2018 ex-spy poisoning that killed civilian woman, UK inquiry says

PHOTO CAPTION: Illustrative photo — Forensic investigators, wearing protective suits, emerge from the rear of John Baker House, after it was confirmed that two people had been poisoned with the nerve-agent Novichok, in Amesbury, Britain, July 6, 2018. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

By Michael Holden

LONDON  -  Russian President Vladimir Putin must have ordered the Novichok nerve agent attack on Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in 2018, in a "reckless" display of power that led to the death of an innocent woman, a UK public inquiry concluded on Thursday.     

Skripal was found along with his daughter Yulia slumped unconscious on a public bench in the southern English city of Salisbury in March 2018 after Novichok was applied to the front door handle of his nearby home.

About four months later, mother-of-three Dawn Sturgess, 44, died from exposure to the poison after her partner found a counterfeit perfume bottle which Russian spies had used to smuggle the military-grade nerve agent into the country, the inquiry said.

'OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE OF RUSSIAN STATE INVOLVEMENT'

The Skripals, and a police officer who went to Skripal's house, were left critically ill from its effects, but recovered.

In his conclusions, the chair, former UK Supreme Court judge Anthony Hughes, said he was certain a team of GRU military intelligence officers had attempted to murder Skripal, who sold Russian secrets to Britain and moved there after a 2010 spy swap.  

"I have concluded that the operation to assassinate Sergei Skripal must have been authorised at the highest level, by President Putin," Hughes said in his report. 

"The evidence that this was a Russian state attack is overwhelming."

Russia has always denied any involvement, casting the accusations as anti-Russian propaganda. The Russian embassy in London did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Hughes said the two Russians who had smeared Novichok on Skripal's door had discarded the bottle containing the poison without any regard to the danger it posed to innocent people. 

The inquiry was told the contaminated perfume bottle had contained enough poison to kill thousands of people.

These "astonishingly reckless" actions meant the would-be assassins, their GRU superiors and those who authorised the attack, up to Putin himself, bore moral responsibility for Sturgess' death, Hughes said.

UK ISSUES NEW SANCTIONS AGAINST GRU

British police have already charged in absentia the three suspected members of the Russian hit team.

On Thursday the government announced new sanctions against the GRU intelligence agency and summoned the Russian ambassador over what it called Moscow's "ongoing campaign of hostile activity". 

"The UK will always stand up to Putin’s brutal regime and call out his murderous machine for what it is," British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement. 

The Salisbury incident triggered the biggest East-West diplomatic expulsions since the Cold War, and relations between Moscow and London have deteriorated still further since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with Britain providing large amounts of military aid to Kyiv.

Two of the Russians accused by Britain of carrying out the poisoning later appeared on Russian TV to deny involvement, saying they had been innocent tourists visiting the city's cathedral. All three have denied any involvement.

POISONING WAS 'A PUBLIC STATEMENT'

Hughes said Russia had an "increased risk appetite", citing the annexation of Crimea and the downing of the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet, both in 2014, and said the attack was expected to stand as a vivid demonstration of Russian power. 

"The attack on Sergei Skripal by Russia was not, it seems clear, designed simply as revenge against him, but amounted to a public statement, for both international and domestic consumption, that Russia will act decisively in what it regards as its own interests," the report said.

Although Putin had previously denounced Skripal as a traitor, the inquiry said there was nothing to suggest the double agent had been imminently at risk or that more could have been done to protect him.  

Thursday's report is the second major investigation to blame Putin for attacks on British soil against his perceived enemies.

An inquiry in 2016 concluded that Putin had probably ordered the murder in London of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian dissident and former agent of the FSB security service, using radioactive polonium-210.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Mark Heinrich // REUTERS)