Russian President Vladimir Putin says that two Russian nationals accused of poisoning British citizens in an attempted assassination of a former military intelligence officer, are just ordinary citizens themselves and not Russian agents.
British Prime Minister Theresa May begs to differ. May told Parliament last week that the two Russian suspects are “officers from the Russian military intelligence service” whose actions had been approved at “a senior level of the Russian state”.
How did we get here and why are experts so concerned about what they see as a shift in Russian tradecraft? Cipher Brief Expert and Former Senior Member of the British Foreign Office, Nick Fishwick answers both questions.
At the end of 2004, a Russian military intelligence officer named Sergei Skripal was arrested, tried and subsequently imprisoned in Russia as an alleged British agent. In 2010, in a classic cold-war style “spy swap”, Mr. Skripal and three other alleged western agents were exchanged for several Russian agents, including the notorious Anna Chapman. The exchange happened on a tarmac at an airport in Vienna. Afterward, Mr. Skripal settled into an unremarkable house in an unremarkable town in England – Salisbury - and began to live a rather unremarkable life, minding his own business. This is how spy swaps are ‘supposed’ to end.
But then, on March 2 of this year, two Russians turn up. They first check into a cheap hotel in London’s east end. Then, on Saturday March 3, they show touching faith in the British rail system, and travel to Salisbury, in broad daylight, to snoop around for a couple of hours before returning to their hotel in London. The following day, showing still greater faith in the rail system, they go back to Salisbury, spend another couple of hours there, then again travel back to London and on to Heathrow for a flight back to Moscow later that evening. We know this because their actions were conducted in broad daylight and were duly captured by CCTV. By the next day, Mr. Skripal and his daughter Yulia, started to feel ill straight after lunch.
The pair began showing unusual symptoms and an investigation revealed that an attempt had been made to kill Mr. Skripal using the nerve agent Novichok.
Three months later, a few miles from Salisbury, an innocent British woman, Dawn Sturgess, and a friend found a perfume bottle that contained Novichok. Ms. Sturgess died from her exposure and her friend suffered grievous illness, but like Mr. Skripal and his daughter, the friend survived the initial exposure. But what authorities found, was that there was enough Novichok contained in that perfume bottle to have killed maybe four thousand other people.
Perhaps the two Russians just liked Salisbury (though only for a couple of hours at a time), loved the British rail system, adored one star hotels in east London, but had to get back to Moscow for work on Monday. Perhaps there’s a lot of Novichok just scattered around south western England. Or perhaps, the Russians were on a state-sponsored assassination mission, and they couldn’t be too fussed about what they did with the Novichok that was left over after the attempt to kill Mr. Skripal, as they clearly weren’t fussed about the rest of their tradecraft. Yulia Skripal was almost killed as “collateral”: Ms. Sturgess was killed: if someone had found the Novichok container and taken it into a school or a football stadium, maybe a few thousand more would have died. Collateral.
The Russian state, which these days includes most of its media, has been trying hard to explain away what the rest of the world sees, to use the British phrase, as “bleedin’ obvious”.
But they are not fooling many people. Russian diplomats and intelligence officers across the planet have been expelled: a national humiliation and a disruption to intelligence activity. Sanctions are getting ever tougher and are strangling the Russian economy.
Mr. Putin and his intelligence chiefs presumably thought that it would be a good idea to make the point that a “traitor” has nowhere to hide. Not even if he has been pardoned, not even if he was released as a grown-up arrangement between grown-up governments. And Russia clearly still sees the need to act ruthlessly, more often than more successful countries need to. One used to respect Russian intelligence officers as often, smart, professional and aware of the rules of the game. But now the world sees that Russia has acted stupidly, in blatant contempt for law and human life.
I have faith enough that Mr. Putin and his cronies can see that very clearly. There will not, of course, be any public admission of guilt or responsibility. But perhaps Mr. Putin will tell his mates to give assassinations a miss for the time being.
