The Russia Conundrum

Charlie told the police officers who came to see him that he had discovered a bottle of Nina Ricci perfume in a charity shop bin. After they opened it and Dawn sprayed herself with the contents, they had begun to experience symptoms of dizziness and nausea. When blood samples from Dawn and Charlie were sent for analysis to the British government’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, it became clear that they – like Sergei Skripal and his daughter before them – had been poisoned by the Novichok nerve agent. The BBC reported that police were working on the hypothesis that the fake Nina Ricci bottle had been left over from the attack on the Skripals and had been disposed of ‘in a haphazard way’.

It all made sense. The agents sent by Vladimir Putin to murder a former Russian intelligence operative had assumed their job was done and had simply thrown away a vial of deadly poison, with no regard for the harm it could do to the person who might stumble across it. As it happened, that person was Dawn Sturgess, an innocent woman completely unconnected to the Machiavellian world of the Kremlin, a mother, a friend, a partner, a precious human soul. When Charlie gave her the Nina Ricci perfume, it is easy to imagine how happy it would have made her, how delighted Dawn would have been with such a show of affection. But it would be the cause of their terrible fate.

The unmitigated cynicism of Putin’s regime was demonstrated by its response to the global outrage at its actions. By early September, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – the body that polices compliance with the International Chemical Weapons Convention – had concluded that the Novichok that killed Dawn Sturgess was from the same batch used against the Skripals, and the British police revealed that the two suspects in both cases were serving members of the Russian special services. The Kremlin, as was to be expected, denied any involvement in the attacks – it could hardly do otherwise – but at the same time, it gave Russian state media the go-ahead to glory in its murderous deeds.

The state television station, Channel One, sneered that the accusations against the Russian special services were ‘the usual British Russophobia’, but simultaneously boasted that the Kremlin would always hunt down ‘traitors’ such as Sergei Skripal. ‘Being a traitor to the Motherland … is one of the most hazardous professions,’ gloated the presenter of the evening news, Kirill Kleimenov. ‘Whether you are a professional traitor or you just burn with hatred for your mother country, I would warn you very strongly not to flee to England. There’s obviously something wrong over there – there have been lots of examples … so many strange incidents when people get hanged or poisoned, or they die in helicopter crashes and fall mysteriously out of windows.’

The cynical charade of pleading innocence but confirming with a nod and a wink that ‘we did it’ is characteristic of Putin’s macho posturing. When the two suspects were identified as GRU operatives ‘Alexander Petrov’ and ‘Ruslan Boshirov’, Putin gleefully put them up for an interview with the Russian propaganda channel, RT. The ostensible purpose was for the men to deny they had carried out the deed, but the prepared script they were given to memorise was so ludicrously implausible that it was clear Putin was ridiculing the British authorities and all those involved.

Speaking in a learned-by-rote monotone, Petrov and Boshirov claimed that they had been innocent tourists. ‘Our friends had been suggesting for a long time that we visit this wonderful town [Salisbury]. There is a famous cathedral there. It is famous for its 123-metre-high spire … and for its famous clock, the first clock to be invented in the world.’

When the interviewer seemed mildly surprised that the men had flown all the way from Moscow to visit a clock, Petrov explained, ‘Well, our plan was actually to spend some time in London and then travel to Salisbury. It wasn’t a business trip. We went to the railway station to see the timetable … But when we arrived in Salisbury on 3 March, it was blocked up with snow, so we could only spend half-an-hour there … The town was covered with muddy slush. We went back to the station and took the train back to London.’

Having examined CCTV recordings of Petrov and Boshirov walking in Salisbury, Scotland Yard had concluded that this first visit was a reconnaissance trip to locate and survey the house where their targets – Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia – were living. When they returned the following day and spent much longer in the city, the GRU-men’s presence coincided with the moment the Skripals were poisoned.