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LONDON – The British authorities on Wednesday named two Russian suspects wanted for a brazen attack with the Novichok neurological agent on a former Russian spy and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury.
For the first time, Prime Minister Theresa May accused the two suspects of being Russian military intelligence agents who had traveled from Moscow to London, using Russian passports bearing false names.
British authorities on Wednesday posted detailed footage of surveillance cameras and other information, tracking the two men crossing Gatwick International Airport, London's railway and metro stations and the streets of Salisbury, while carrying military poison .
May told Parliament on Wednesday: "Based on a body of information, the government has concluded that the two police appointees are agents of the Russian military intelligence service, also known as the GRU.
"It was not a rogue operation," said the British leader. "It was almost certainly approved outside the GRU at a higher level of the Russian state."
[What is Novichok, the nerve agent identified in the Salisbury spy attack?]
The two men, named Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, were charged with the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his adult daughter, Yulia Skripal.
The former Skripal was a Russian military intelligence officer, who then changed sides and acted as a double agent in the service of the British. He was imprisoned in Moscow at the end of 2004, then released in Britain during a spy exchange in 2010.
Police said the Skripals had been poisoned in March at the entrance to their home in Salisbury, a quiet tourist town in the southern English countryside near the Stonehenge ruins.
Four months after the Skripal attack, another couple was poisoned in a town just north of Salisbury. A British national named Charlie Rowley had found what appeared to be a bottle of perfume in a charity box and had given it to his girlfriend, Dawn Sturgess.
The vial of perfume contained rather Novichok.
Sturgess, 44, a mother of three, died later in a hospital after being exposed to the same neurotoxic agent as the Skripals. Rowley was sick but later recovered.
There has been intense international interest in the case – and a broad condemnation that not only has Russia continued to manufacture and stock Novichok but that it would deploy an outlawed nerve agent on soil foreign.
As a result of the poisoning, the Trump administration, alongside British and European countries, has expelled hundreds of Russian diplomats suspected of being spies.
The two Russians have also been accused of the attempted assassination of Nick Bailey, a British policeman who fell ill with the nerve agent while helping with the Skripal investigation in his early hours. He and the Skripals have since recovered.
"It was a disgusting and despicable act in which a devastating nerve agent – known as Novichok – was used to attack our country. He let four people fight for their lives and an innocent woman died, "said May.
Russian officials on Wednesday denied any responsibility for the poisoning and reiterated their claims that the British were spreading false statements and refusing to allow Russia to see evidence.
"We think it's a provocation," state television spokesman Alexander Shulgin said Wednesday, Russia's permanent representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
"We said right away that Russia had nothing to do with the Salisbury incident," Shulgin said.
The British Prime Minister said: "We have repeatedly asked Russia to report what happened in Salisbury in March and they responded with obscurities and lies.
She added, "Their attempts to hide the truth by putting a deluge of misinformation into place only reinforces their guilt."
[Britain demands Russia explain ‘what has gone on’ after latest nerve agent poisoning]
British police have described their investigation as massive.
"Today marks the highlight of what has been one of the most complex and intensive investigations in the field of counter-terrorism," said Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Neil Basu, head of counter-terrorism at Scotland Yard.
More than 250 investigators, along with dozens of forensic scientists and health investigators, worked on the case, Basu said. The team took 1,400 statements and reviewed 11,000 hours of video surveillance recorded on large CCTV camera systems in the UK.
Police also released images of the perfume bottle, which has been found to contain Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent produced by the former Soviet Union.
the distributor was a counterfeit Nina Ricci perfume bottle with a modified nozzle. According to experts, to activate Novichok, it is necessary to mix inert components to produce the poison.
The police called on the public to provide any information regarding the suspects or the perfume bottle.
"We have now linked the attack on the Skripals and the events in Amesbury that affected Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley," said Basu, the head of counterterrorism, at a press conference . "He is now forming an investigation. We do not believe that Dawn and Charlie were deliberately targeted, but that they became victims because of the carelessness with which such a toxic nerve agent was eliminated. "
[Novichok survivor speaks out about poisoning that killed his girlfriend]
The police also released a detailed – and terrifying – schedule of the two suspects' moves and asked the residents of Salisbury where they had seen the men.
Police said the two men arrived at Gatwick Airport in London on Friday, March 2, and stayed in a hotel in East London, where traces of Novichok were found later.
On Saturday, March 3, they traveled to Salisbury for "reconnaissance" and returned to the southern city the next day, Basu said.
That's when "we think they contaminated the entrance to Novichok," said Basu, referring to the Skripals' home.
The two alleged attackers took some of London's busiest subway and train stations, including Victoria and Waterloo.
On the evening of Sunday 4 March, the two men boarded an Aeroflot aircraft at Heathrow Airport and returned to Moscow.
"We have no evidence that they have returned to the UK after that date," said Basu, adding that public health officials did not think there was a risk for people traveling on the same flights.
On the same day, March 4, the Skripals were found slumped on a park bench in Salisbury. Yulia Skripal, 33, was unconscious. Sergei Skripal, 66, seemed to hallucinate.
First responders initially thought that it was a drug overdose, but later in the hospital, doctors suspected intoxication. The British military research laboratory confirmed that poison was a neurotoxic agent of the Soviet era.
Sue Hemming, director of legal services at the Crown Prosecution Service, said Britain would not ask Russia to extradite the men because the country's constitution does not permit the extradition of Russian nationals.
But Hemming said that Britain had obtained a European arrest warrant for Petrov and Boshirov.
[British lab confirms Novichok was used in spy attack but can’t determine source]
In Moscow, the Russian authorities were contemptuous.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax news agency: "From the beginning, Russia was ready to cooperate with Scotland Yard in the Skripal investigation, but was struck by a refusal or a silence.
"The names, just like the photos, published in the media do not tell us anything," said spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova, according to Interfax.
"We once again call on the United Kingdom to move away from public accusations and manipulations of information and to cooperate effectively between law enforcement agencies," she said.
The names of the two men, "Alexander Petrov" and "Ruslan Boshirov", are equivalent to "John Smith" in Russia and Russian Muslim areas and are supposed to be pseudonyms, analysts said in Moscow.
Jonathan Eyal, International Director of the London-based think-tank Royal United Services Institute, said that, in addition to trying to identify those responsible for an assassination attempt, the publication of details on Wednesday also contributed to strengthen British credibility. it seemed "worthy of a fictional novel".
Eyal said that although many governments have publicly supported the British official position, "privately, there was this feeling: can you give yourself more meat? Can you give something to answer the torrent of conspiracy theories published by Moscow? "
For Moscow, "we must not be very happy that it is finally, despite all the bravado, a failed operation," added Eyal. "The guy [Sergei Skripal] is alive and the people engaged in this activity have been identified.
"They showed that they were ready to kill anyone who would betray Russia in the future, but apart from the value of deterrence, the operation was a failure," Eyal said.
Amie Ferris-Rotman in Moscow contributed to this report.
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