A man accused of being attacked by nerve agents is a Russian intelligence officer

UK-based investigative group says one of two men accused of attempted murder in Sergei Skripal's nerve poisoning earlier this year is a highly decorated military intelligence officer Russian.

Bellingcat, an open source investigation site into the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, says one of the two men – whose passport name is Ruslan Boshirov – is actually Anatoly Chepiga, deployed to Chechnya three times and in 2014 gave the quotation "Hero of the Russian Federation", the highest distinction of the country.

Boshirov and another man whose passport name is Alexander Petrov were indicted in the UK during the Salisbury bombing in March against former Russian agent Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Novichok, a neurotoxic agent developed in the EU. Soviet. the 1980s

US officials said they thought the men accused of aggression were working for the Russian military intelligence cell (GRU).

The Skripals survived the poisoning, but weeks later, two others, Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, were accidentally exposed to Novichok. Sturgess died later in the hospital.

As the Associated Press explains:

Bellingcat said he had received advice from former Russian military officers and read photos of graduates of Russian military academies, found a Boshirov-like man in a group and searched official databases to find personal information.

"He identified the man as Chepiga and eventually found his passport file, dated 2003, with an image that closely resembles that of Boshirov."

According to British officials, the CCTV video shows that Boshirov and Petrov monitored Skripals' home at least once and returned to Moscow the day they were poisoned.

Moscow has denied any involvement in the attacks. In a Facebook post, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described Bellingcat's claim as an anti-Russian "information campaign".

Boshirov and Petrov appeared in an interview on RT TV in Russia earlier this month to proclaim their innocence, saying they had come mainly to Salisbury to see the city's "world-famous" cathedral. Interviewed by the interviewer about their employer, the men only said they were "in the fitness industry".

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the two men were "civilians".

Bellingcat claims that his findings "clearly contradict the statements of this man, as they were made during a television interview with the Russian network RT, and the claims of President Vladimir Putin that the person in question is simply a civilian named Ruslan Boshirov. "