Specialist officers in protective suits secure a police forensic tent covering the bench where Sergei Skripal was found with his daughter Yulia. Photo / Getty Images
Vladimir Putin ordered the Salisbury poisoning to demonstrate Russian strength around the world, a public inquiry has concluded.
Lord Hughes of Ombersley, the chairman of an inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, a mother of three, said Russian spies carried out an “astonishingly reckless act” when they took a highly toxic nerve agent into a busy city in a botched attempt to assassinate the double agent Sergei Skripal in March 2018.
Sturgess died after coming into contact with a liquid in a sample bottle of Nina Ricci perfume laced with Novichok, a deadly nerve agent. The Russian spies had used the bottle to hold the toxin and they discarded it after targeting Skripal.
It had been given to the 44-year-old by her boyfriend Charlie Rowley, who had found it discarded four months after the attack on Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies.
In his report, Hughes said: “The attack on Sergei Skripal by Russia was not, it seems clear, designed simply as revenge against him, but amounted to a public statement, for both international and domestic consumption, that Russia will act decisively in what it regards as its own interests.
“Notwithstanding the fact that the attack constituted a significant geopolitical risk, a public demonstration of Russian state power for both international and domestic impact is, I conclude, the most likely analysis of what occurred.”
The attack is believed to have been carried out by two Russian agents going by the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, after travelling to Salisbury together. These were aliases, with their real names later revealed to be Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga.
Hughes added: “The conduct of Petrov and Boshirov, their GRU superiors and those who authorised the mission, up to and including, as I have found, President Putin, was astonishingly reckless. They, and only they, bear moral responsibility for Dawn’s death.”
However, the judge found that the level of risk against Skripal had not been severe enough to justify forcing him to adopt a false identity before the poisoning attack on him.
Hughes stated in his report that it was unlikely the “brazen and reckless” Novichok attack could have been avoided by “additional security measures”, such as changing Skripal’s name, severing any links with his family and “abandoning any form of normal life”.
After the report, the Foreign Office said the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, had been sanctioned.
Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary, has also called for the Russian ambassador to the UK to be summoned to the Foreign Office to respond to the finding.
Sir Keir Starmer said: “The Salisbury poisonings shocked the nation and today’s findings are a grave reminder of the Kremlin’s disregard for innocent lives. Dawn’s needless death was a tragedy and will forever be a reminder of Russia’s reckless aggression. My thoughts are with her family and loved ones.”
The £8.03 million public inquiry makes no substantial criticism of the British secret intelligence services or the police.
The senior judge wrote in his 173-page report: “It would require a very high level of risk to justify measures such as those suggested, but prior to 2018, there was nothing to indicate that level of risk.
“The reality is that the only security arrangements for Sergei Skripal which could have prevented the kind of attack which happened – employing a novel weapon in the form of a lethal nerve agent – would have been to hide him entirely from view.
“That would be justified only if the risk to him of assassination on UK soil stood at a high level, and it did not.
“Living under an alias is complicated and fraught with the risk of accidental disclosure; Sergei Skripal was not of a character readily to adapt to it. Such measures could only have been accomplished with his consent, and he plainly would not willingly have accepted them.”
The inquiry – parts of which were heard in secret and will never be revealed – heard in a statement from Skripal that he felt “quite safe” in Salisbury and did not see the need to adopt a false identity, even though he blamed Russia’s president for the eventual attempt on his life.
After the attack, Skripal and his daughter, who was also contaminated and fell ill, moved to an undisclosed country where they are now living under assumed identities.
Matt Western, the Labour MP and chairman of the national security strategy committee, criticised the lack of protection for Skripal.
He told the House of Commons: “Post-Litvinenko, how can it be that our country can afford protection for, say, a former prime minister such as Liz Truss, but not for an asset such as Sergei Skripal?”
The report found that Sturgess died of hypoxic ischaemic brain injury and intracranial brain haemorrhage, eight days after falling into a coma within moments of spraying herself with the sample bottle of perfume laced with Novichok.
And the Supreme Court judge said it would not have been reasonable to warn the public against picking up any discarded objects on the ground after the attack on the Skripals. This advice was eventually only issued after the poisoning of Sturgess.
The inquiry was told that the sample bottle “had enough Novichok to kill thousands”.
Hughes concluded that Skripal had been the target of a botched assassination attempt carried out by two Russian GRU officers, Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, with a third agent, Denis Sergeev, based in London.
He said: “Deploying a highly toxic nerve agent in a busy city was an astonishingly reckless act. The risk that others beyond the intended target, Sergei Skripal, might be killed or injured was entirely foreseeable. The risk was dramatically magnified by leaving in the city a bottle of Novichok disguised as perfume.”
Chepiga and Mishkin later claimed in an interview with the Russian state broadcaster RT that they had briefly travelled to the city as tourists only to see its “famous 123m spire and famous clock”.
Commenting on the interview in his report, Hughes said some of their accounts “must be false, not to say ludicrous”, adding: “It may well be that neither these two men, nor those to whom they answered, ever expected this account to be accepted; it seems to be more consistent with making a formal denial for public purposes, which only the credulous would be likely to take seriously.”
Speaking after the publication of the report, Sturgess’ family criticised the lack of recommendations in the report as “a real concern” which had left them with “a number of unanswered questions”.
“We have always wanted to ensure that what happened to Dawn will not happen to others; that lessons should be learned; and that meaningful changes should be made. The report today contains no recommendations. That is a matter of real concern. There should, there must be, reflection and real change.”
Hughes’ report criticised the lack of regular written assessments of the threat posed to Col Skripal by the Putin regime, leading Sturgess’ family to say they believed this “put the British public at risk, and led to Dawn’s death”.
They stated: “Today’s report does not set out, publicly, how the risks that led to Dawn’s death will be prevented in future.”
Her father, Stan Sturgess, told reporters his family “can have Dawn back now”, adding: “She’s been public for seven years. We can finally put her to peace.”
Michael Mansfield KC, who represented Sturgess’ family throughout the inquiry, said her relatives would stop short of describing the report as a whitewash, but said they felt “very uneasy about a situation where this could happen again”.
Addressing journalists, he added that the lack of recommendations meant there was a real risk more lives could be lost.
“They do feel let down, because obviously it may not have ended up like this [if Skripal had been protected].”
He added: “We should leave this building today feeling that the government of the day is on top of it and I don’t think they feel today that the government is on top of this – whoever is in charge and whoever has authority.
“Otherwise, it would be in that report in no uncertain terms that we are all perfectly safe.”
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