Britain sanctioned Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency and summoned Moscow’s ambassador on Thursday after an inquiry concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin was responsible for a nerve agent attack on British soil in 2018.
The government said that the GRU was being sanctioned in its entirely for “reckless” acts including the attack in the city of Salisbury that targeted Sergei Skripal, a former GRU officer who was imprisoned in Russia in 2006 for spying for Britain. He was released as part of a 2010 spy swap and settled in the U.K.
Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal became seriously ill in March 2018 after being exposed to the nerve agent Novichok, which had been smeared on the handle of the ex-spy’s front door. A police officer, Nick Bailey, also was sickened. All three survived.
Three months later, a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, and her partner collapsed after they found a discarded perfume bottle containing Novichok. Sturgess had sprayed the contents of the bottle on her wrist and died days later. Her partner survived.
Moscow has denied any role in the poisonings. In 2018, Putin dismissed Sergei Skripal as “just a scumbag” of no interest to the Kremlin.
Former U.K. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Hughes, who led an inquiry into Sturgess’ death, said that the attack on the Skripals “must have been authorized at the highest level” by Putin.
He concluded that Sturgess was “an innocent victim of an attempt by officers of a Russian state organization to conduct an assassination on the streets of Salisbury using a highly toxic nerve agent.”
Britain has charged three alleged GRU agents over the attack on the Skripals, but the U.K. has no extradition agreement with Russia, so there is little prospect of putting them on trial.
Novichok is a class of military-grade nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. Western weapons experts believe it was only ever manufactured in Russia, though Moscow has said that the U.S., U.K. and other countries have the expertise to make it.
The U.K. sanctions announcement also named eight alleged cyber military intelligence officers for working for the GRU. Britain’s Foreign Office said that they targeted Yulia Skripal with malware five years before the Novichok attack.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that Hughes’ 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,” he said.