Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal

The poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, also known as the Salisbury poisonings, was a failed assassination attempt to poison Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies in the city of Salisbury, England, on 4 March 2018. Sergei and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, were poisoned by means of a Novichok nerve agent. 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 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" (outside The Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury). 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.

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