Category Archives: Sergei Skripal

Russian TV news head hints at country’s role in Skripal poisoning

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Editor of state-owned RT network Margarita Simonyan appears to contradict Kremlin position in post about Darya Dugina killing

The influential head of Russia’s RT news network has hinted at Russia’s role in the poisoning of the former spy Sergei Skripal, in a remarkable post that contradicts the Kremlin’s official position on the incident.

In a post on her Telegram channel on Monday, Margarita Simonyan appeared to acknowledge Russia’s part in the Skripal poisoning when she wrote that Russian “professionals who want to admire spires” should travel to Estonia to go after the alleged killer of Darya Dugina, the daughter of an ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue who was killed in a car bomb on Saturday night.

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Dominic Raab: UK fully supports Czech hunt for Skripal suspects

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Foreign secretary hints he believes same Russian cell behind Salisbury poisoning and Czech explosion

The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said the UK stood in “full support” of the Czech Republic after the country’s police announced they were hunting two Russians, suspected of carrying out the Salisbury poisonings, in relation to an explosion at an arms depot.

The Czech authorities said on Saturday they were seeking Alexander Petrov, 41, and Ruslan Boshirov, 43, in connection with a previously unexplained 2014 explosion at a munitions dump in Vrbětice, which left two dead.

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Czech police hunt two men with names matching Skripal suspects

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News follows announcement of expulsion of 18 Russia diplomats identified as spies linked to 2014 blast that killed two people

Czech police have said they are seeking two Russian men in connection with a 2014 blast that killed two people. The men, they said, hold passports used by the suspects in the attempted poisoning of Sergei Skripal.

The names match those used by the two men accused of poisoning Skripal and his daughter Yulia with the Soviet-era nerve agent novichok in the English city of Salisbury in 2018. Russia denied involvement in the poisoning, but about 300 diplomats were sent home in subsequent tit-for-tat expulsions.

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Police officer poisoned by novichok in Salisbury to quit

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DS Nick Bailey says he ‘can no longer do the job’ despite trying hard to ‘make it work’

The police officer who almost died after he was exposed to novichok during the Salisbury poisonings in 2018 has announced he is quitting the force.

DS Nick Bailey, who came into contact with the nerve agent when he and two colleagues searched the Salisbury home of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, said he was leaving Wiltshire police after 18 years because he “can no longer do the job”.

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Russia offered bounty to kill UK soldiers

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Moscow accused of trying to give money to the Taliban as part of its campaign to destabilise America and its allies

The Russian intelligence unit behind the attempted murder in Salisbury of the former double agent Sergei Skripal secretly offered to pay Taliban-linked fighters to kill British and American soldiers in Afghanistan, according to US reports.

The revelation piles pressure on the UK to take robust action against the Kremlin amid continuing anger over the government’s delay in publishing a key report on Russian attempts to destabilise the UK.

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UK government discloses existence of body monitoring foreign spies

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Cross-Whitehall team set up in 2017 in response to growing threat of foreign interference

The UK government has established a cross-Whitehall body to monitor the threat from foreign spies, it has been revealed.

The Joint State Threats Assessments Team (JSTAT) was set up in 2017 in response to the growing threat of espionage and subversion by foreign powers.

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Trump told Theresa May he doubted Russia was behind Skripal poisoning

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The US president reportedly disputed UK’s ‘overwhelming evidence’ of Russian involvement in Salisbury attack

Donald Trump disputed that Russia was behind the attempted murder of a former Russian spy in a tense call with Theresa May, it has emerged.

Despite the widespread conclusion that Vladimir Putin’s regime was behind the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia last year, the US president is said to have spent 10 minutes expressing his doubts about Russian involvement.

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Emergency services scrap £900k of vehicles after Salisbury attack

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Police and ambulance units replaced 24 cars, vans and 4x4s due to novichok contamination

Emergency services spent hundreds of thousands of pounds scrapping and replacing contaminated vehicles after the Salisbury nerve agent poisonings, it has been revealed.

Police and ambulance services had to destroy 24 cars, vans and 4x4 vehicles following the attack on the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. The pair collapsed after coming into contact with novichok at Skripal’s home in Salisbury on 4 March last year. DS Nick Bailey, 39, was also taken to hospital.

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Skripal poisoning suspects received mystery phone call following attack

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Detectives think pair may have been awaiting signal that operation had been successful before returning home

The Russian men suspected of poisoning Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury received a phone call after returning to London on the day of the alleged attack, raising the possibility that a backup team played a role in the operation.

One theory being considered by investigators is whether the call, which has not been disclosed before, was a signal to tip them off that the operation had been a success.

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Trump wrote off novichok attack of defector as ‘spy games’ – report

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Trump reportedly wrote off Skripal poisoning as business as usual among spies and was at first reluctant to expel 60 Russians

Donald Trump was reluctant to expel suspected Russian spies after the novichok chemical weapons attack in Salisbury, viewing the poisoning of a defector as “part of legitimate spy games”, according to a new report.

According to the New York Times, Trump reacted sceptically to a British request in March 2018 for a strong punitive response to the use of the nerve agent against the former spy, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. A local resident, Dawn Sturgess, was killed three months later when she came in contact with the chemical.

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Syria, Skripal and MH17: how Bellingcat broke the news – podcast

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In 2012, Eliot Higgins began blogging about the news from his front room in Leicester. Seven years later, his investigative website Bellingcat has been responsible for revealing key aspects of some of the world’s biggest stories. And: Jonathan Freedland on the result of Theresa May’s meaningful vote

Eliot Higgins first became known for his investigations into the Syrian civil war, which he published on his blog Brown Moses. Higgins then went on to found Bellingcat, an investigative website that uses open source tools to expose the truth behind global news stories.

Higgins, who is the subject of a new documentary, tells Anushka Asthana how he and his international team of volunteers have gone about investigating some of the biggest stories of recent times, including the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in Ukraine and the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the UK. He examines the importance of this type of work in an era of fake news and the impact it has had on his professional and personal life.

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‘The whole world knows us’: Salisbury one year on from novichok attack

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Some talk of anxiety following the Skripal poisoning, yet the city is determined to move on

A year after the nerve agent attack on Salisbury, Jason Regent is still startled by the sound of sirens.

“Every time I hear an ambulance I think: ‘Is it happening again?’” says Regent, who runs a tailoring shop in the city. “I’m a little bit scarred. It was like being in a film with all the helicopters clattering overhead.

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Salisbury officially ruled safe 12 months after Skripal poisoning

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Huge and hazardous military clean-up operation on 12 sites comes to an end

The city of Salisbury has been judged safe almost 12 months after the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal was poisoned with the nerve agent novichok.

The former spy’s house and 11 other potentially infected sites will be officially ruled safe on Friday following a huge and hazardous clean-up.

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Russian flag hung on Salisbury Cathedral year after novichok attack

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Staff have since removed flag hung on scaffolding before anniversary of poisoning of Skripals

A Russian flag was hung briefly from scaffolding on Salisbury Cathedral on Saturday night, almost a year after the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with novichok in the city. The flag was taken down on Sunday after cathedral staff were made aware of it.

It is thought that someone climbed the scaffolding and put the flag there during the hours of darkness. The first anniversary of the nerve agent attack on Skripal, 67, and his daughter Yulia, 33, who were discovered collapsed on a park bench in the city centre, will fall on 4 March.

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Novichok victim Dawn Sturgess’s parents tell of their anger and hurt

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Exclusive: Family break silence to express concerns that UK settled former spy in Salisbury

The parents of the woman who died in the Wiltshire novichok poisonings have broken their silence to express their anger and hurt at losing their daughter in an extraordinary international incident and say they believe there could be more of the nerve agent yet to be found.

Speaking as the first anniversary of the poisonings nears, Stan and Caroline Sturgess also revealed their concerns that the UK authorities chose to settle the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, exposing residents to risk.

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Salisbury poisoning: website says it has identified third GRU suspect

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Denis Sergeyev named as involved in suspected poisoning in Bulgaria in 2015 by website Bellingcat

A third suspect linked to the poisoning of the former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury has been identified as a high-ranking officer in Russian military intelligence by the investigative website Bellingcat.

Bellingcat reported that Denis Sergeyev, a graduate of the Military Diplomatic Academy, a training ground for intelligence officers, is the real identity of a man operating under the cover persona of Sergey Fedotov.

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Skripal poisoning: UK team looks into possible Bulgarian case link

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Bulgarian PM says UK team is on ground to investigate suspected poisoning of local arms dealer

A team of British investigators is in Bulgaria looking into whether the 2015 suspected poisoning of a local arms dealer has links to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter last year in Salisbury.

“There is a British team here on the ground,” Bulgaria’s prime minister, Boyko Borisov, told the Guardian in an interview in Sofia. “They are jointly conducting an investigation with Bulgarian law enforcement authorities.”

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George Galloway censured over Salisbury poisoning claims

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Ofcom says ex-MP breached impartiality guidelines on radio show when casting doubt on Russian role

George Galloway breached broadcasting impartiality rules when he used his radio show to cast doubt on Russian involvement in the poisoning of Yulia and Sergei Skripal in Salisbury last year, according to media regulator Ofcom.

The former MP used his weekly programme on TalkRadio to repeatedly criticise claims of Russian involvement in the incident. He mocked those who agreed with the UK government that the Kremlin was behind the novichok nerve agent attack on the former Russian security agent and his daughter.

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