On 4 March 2018 in the city of Salisbury, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia became victim of an assassination attempt through a Novichok nerve agent. He is a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies. Both spent several weeks in hospital in a critical condition before being discharged. A police officer, Nick Bailey, was also taken into intensive care after attending the incident and was later discharged.
The British government accused Russia of attempted murder and announced a series of punitive measures against Russia, including the expulsion of diplomats. The UK's official assessment of the incident was supported by 28 other countries which responded similarly. Altogether, an unprecedented 153 Russian diplomats were expelled by the end of March 2018. Russia denied the accusations, expelled foreign diplomats in retaliation for the expulsion of its own diplomats, and accused Britain of the poisoning.
On 30 June 2018, a similar poisoning of two British nationals in Amesbury, 11 km (7 mi) north of Salisbury, involved the same nerve agent. Charlie Rowley found a perfume bottle, later discovered to contain the agent, in a litter bin somewhere in Salisbury and gave it to Dawn Sturgess, who sprayed it on her wrist. Sturgess fell ill within 15 minutes and died on 8 July, but Rowley, who had also come into contact with the poison, survived after treatment. British police believe this incident was not a targeted attack, but a result of the way the nerve agent was disposed of after the poisoning in Salisbury. A public inquiry was launched into the circumstances of Sturgess's death.
On 5 September 2018, British authorities identified two Russian nationals, using the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, as suspected of the Skripals' poisoning, and alleged that they were active officers in Russian military intelligence. Later, investigative website Bellingcat stated that it had positively identified Ruslan Boshirov as being the highly decorated GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, that Alexander Petrov was Alexander Mishkin, also of the GRU, and that a third GRU officer present in the UK at the time was identified as Denis Vyacheslavovich Sergeev, believed to hold the rank of major general in the GRU. The pattern of his communications while in the UK indicates that he liaised with superior officers in Moscow.
The attempted assassination and subsequent agent exposures was an embarrassment for Russian president Vladimir Putin and for Russia's spying organisation. It was allegedly organised by the secret Unit 29155 of the Russian GRU, under the command of Major General Andrey Averyanov. On 27 November 2019, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) added Novichok, the Soviet-era nerve agent used in the attack, to its list of banned substances.
Chronology of events
Incident
3 March 2018
- At 14:40 GMT, Yulia Skripal, the 33-year-old daughter of Sergei Skripal, a 66-year-old resident of Salisbury, flew into Heathrow Airport from Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, Russia.
4 March
- At 09:15 Sergei Skripal's burgundy 2009 BMW 320d was seen in the area of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road at Salisbury.
- At 13:30 Skripal's car was seen on Devizes Road on the way towards the town centre.
- At 13:40 the Skripals arrived in the upper level car park at The Maltings, Salisbury and then went to the Bishop's Mill pub in the town centre.
- At 14:20 they dined at Zizzi on Castle Street, leaving at 15:35.
- At 16:15 an emergency services call reported that a man and woman, later identified as Sergei and Yulia, had been found unconscious on a public bench outside The Maltings shopping centre in the centre of Salisbury by the passing Chief Nursing Officer for the British Army and her daughter. An eyewitness saw the woman foaming at the mouth with her eyes wide open but completely white. According to a later British government statement they were "slipping in and out of consciousness on a public bench".
- At 17:10, they were taken separately to Salisbury District Hospital by an ambulance and an air ambulance.
5 March
- At 09:03 the following morning, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust declared a major incident in response to concerns raised by medical staff; shortly afterwards this became a multi-agency incident named Operation Fairline.
Consequent events
Health authorities checked 21 members of the emergency services and the public for possible symptoms; two police officers were treated for minor symptoms, said to be itchy eyes and wheezing, while one, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, who had been sent to Skripal's house, was in a serious condition. On 22 March, Bailey was discharged from the hospital. In a statement he said "normal life for me will probably never be the same" and thanked the hospital staff.
On 26 March, Skripal and his daughter were reported to still be critically ill. On 29 March it was announced that Yulia's condition was improving and she was no longer in a critical condition. After three weeks in a critical condition, Yulia regained consciousness and was able to speak. Sergei was also in a critical condition until he regained consciousness one month after the attack. On 5 April, doctors said that Sergei was no longer in critical condition and was responding well to treatment. On 9 April, Yulia was discharged from hospital and taken to a secure location. On 18 May, Sergei Skripal was discharged from the hospital too. On 23 May, a handwritten letter and a video statement by Yulia were released to the Reuters news agency for the first time after the poisoning. She stated that she was lucky to be alive after the poisoning and thanked the staff of the Salisbury hospital. She described her treatment as slow, heavy and extremely painful and mentioned a scar on her neck, apparently from a tracheotomy. She expressed hope that someday she would return to Russia. She thanked the Russian embassy for its offer of assistance but said she and her father were "not ready to take it".
On 5 April, British authorities said that inside Skripal's house, which had been sealed by the police, two guinea pigs were found dead by vets, when they were allowed in, along with a cat in a distressed state, which had to be put down.
On 22 November the first interview with DS Bailey was released, in which he reported that he had been poisoned, despite the fact that he inspected the Skripals' house wearing a forensic suit. In addition to the poisoning, Bailey and his family had lost their home and all their possessions, because of contamination. Investigators said that the perfume bottle containing Novichok nerve agent, which was later found in a bin, had contained enough of the nerve agent to potentially kill thousands of people.
In early 2019, building contractors built a scaffolding "sealed frame" over the house and the garage of Skripal's home. A military team then dismantled and removed the roofs on both buildings over the course of two weeks. Cleaning and decontamination was followed by rebuilding over a period of four months. On 22 February 2019, Government officials announced that the last of the 12 sites that had been undergoing an intense and hazardous clean-up – Skripal's house – had been judged safe.
In May 2019, Sergei Skripal made a phone call and left a voice message to his niece Viktoria living in Russia. This was the first time after the poisoning that his voice had been heard by the public.
In August 2019 it was confirmed that a second police officer had been poisoned while investigating, but only in trace amounts.
Investigation
The first public response to the poisoning came on 6 March. It was agreed under the Counter Terrorism Policing network that the Counter Terrorism Command based within the Metropolitan Police would take over the investigation from Wiltshire Police. Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, head of Counter Terrorism Policing, appealed for witnesses to the incident following a COBR meeting chaired by Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
Samples of the nerve agent used in the attack tested positive at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down for a "very rare" nerve agent, according to the UK Home Secretary.
180 military experts in chemical warfare defence and decontamination, as well as 18 vehicles, were deployed on 9 March to assist the Metropolitan Police to remove vehicles and objects from the scene and look for any further traces of the nerve agent. The personnel were drawn mostly from the Army, including instructors from the Defence CBRN Centre and the 29 Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Search Group, as well as from the Royal Marines and Royal Air Force. The vehicles included TPz Fuchs operated by Falcon Squadron from the Royal Tank Regiment. On 11 March, the UK government advised those present at either The Mill pub (now, The Bishops Mill, 7, The Maltings) or the Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury on 4 and 5 March to wash or wipe their possessions, emphasising that the risk to the general public was low.
Several days later, on 12 March, Prime Minister Theresa May said the agent had been identified as one of the Novichok family of agents, believed to have been developed in the 1980s by the Soviet Union. According to the Russian ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, the British authorities identified the agent as A-234, which is derived from an earlier version known as A-232.
By 14 March, the investigation was focused on Skripal's home and car, a restaurant in which they dined, a pub where they had drinks, and a bench where the two fell unconscious. A recovery vehicle was removed by the military from Gillingham in Dorset on 14 March, in connection with the poisoning.
Subsequently, there was speculation within the British media that the nerve agent had been planted in one of the personal items in Yulia Skripal's suitcase before she left Moscow for London, and in US media that it had been planted in their car.
Ahmet Üzümcü, Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said on 20 March that it will take "another two to three weeks to finalise the analysis" of samples taken from the poisoning of Skripal. On 22 March, the Court of Protection gave permission for new blood samples to be obtained from Yulia and Sergei Skripal for use by the OPCW. By 28 March, the police investigation concluded that the Skripals were poisoned at Sergei's home, with the highest concentration being found on the handle of his front door. On 12 April the OPCW confirmed the UK's analysis of the type of nerve agent and reported it was of a "high purity", stating that the "name and structure of the identified toxic chemical are contained in the full classified report of the Secretariat, available to States Parties".
A declassified letter from the UK's national security adviser, Sir Mark Sedwill, to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, stated Russian military intelligence hacked Yulia Skripal's email account since at least 2013 and tested methods for delivering nerve agents including on door handles.
The Department for Environment confirmed the nerve agent was delivered "in a liquid form". They said eight sites require decontamination, which will take several months to complete and cost millions of pounds. The BBC reported experts said the nerve agent does not evaporate or disappear over time. Intense cleaning with caustic chemicals is required to get rid of it. The Skripals' survival was possibly due to the weather – there had been heavy fog and high humidity, and according to its inventor and other scientists, moisture weakens the potency of this type of toxin.
On 22 April 2018, it was reported that British counter-terror police had identified a suspect in the poisoning: a former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer (reportedly a 54-year-old former FSB captain) who acted under several code names including "Gordon" and "Mihails Savickis". According to detectives, he led a team of six Russian assassins who organised the chemical weapons attack. Sedwill reported on 1 May 2018 however that UK intelligence and police agencies had failed to identify the individual or individuals who carried out the attack.
On 3 May 2018, the head of the OPCW, Ahmet Üzümcü, informed the New York Times that he had been told that about 50–100 grams of the nerve agent was thought to have been used in the attack, which indicated it was likely created for use as a weapon and was enough to kill a large number of people. The next day however the OPCW made a correcting statement that the "quantity should probably be characterised in milligrams", though "the OPCW would not be able to estimate or determine the amount of the nerve agent that was used".
On 19 July the Press Association reported that police believed they had identified "several Russians" as the suspected perpetrators of the attack. They had been identified through CCTV, cross-checked with border entry data.
On 6 August 2018, it was reported that the British government was "poised to submit an extradition request to Moscow for two Russians suspected of carrying out the Salisbury nerve agent attack". The UK has no extradition treaty with Russia. The Metropolitan Police used two super recognisers to identify the suspects after trawling through up to 5,000 hours of CCTV footage from Salisbury and numerous airports across the country.
British Prime Minister Theresa May announced in the Commons the same day that British intelligence services had identified the two suspects as officers in the G. U. Intelligence Service (formerly known as GRU) and the assassination attempt was not a rogue operation and was "almost certainly" approved at a senior level of the Russian government. May also said Britain would push for the EU to agree new sanctions against Russia.