Suspicious poisoning honored by Putin in 2014, UK group says

LONDON – One of the two suspects in the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy in England is a military intelligence officer who was made a hero of the Russian Federation by President Vladimir Putin in 2014, the British investigative group Bellingcat said Tuesday.

The group identified the suspect in the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter as Alexander Mishkin, a doctor who works for Russia's GRU intelligence agency.

British police say two GRU officers traveled under the aliases Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Borishov and used a Soviet-made nerve agent to poison the Skripals in the English city of Salisbury.

Bellingcat said it relies on documents and other research to conclude Mishkin was the known Petrov. Last month, it named the other suspect, "Borishov," as GRU Col. Anatoly Chepiga.

Moscow declined to be commented on.

Bellingcat is a team of volunteer digital detectives that scours social media and open-source records to investigate crimes. Other cases it focuses on the downing of a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine and chemical attacks in Syria.

Mishkin through passport information, residents' databases, records and records, and personal testimony from people who know him.

The group said Mishkin was born in 1979, grew up in the remote marshland village of Loyga in northern Russia and studied medicine at the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg.

Two trainers at the academy Mishkin was the man British authorities identified as Alexander Petrov, Bellingcat reported. So did seven residents of his home village visited by the Insider, the British group's Russian partner organization.

"They confirmed that their homeboy Alexander Mishkin was the person who moved to the military and became a famous military doctor and who received the award from the President Putin," Bellingcat investigator Christo Grozev said at a news conference at Britain's Parliament.

Traveling under his assumed name from Petrov, Mishkin went to Ukraine and other neighboring countries to Russia between 2011 and 2013, Bellingcat said.

In 2014, he was active in military operations in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists lead a violent breakaway movement. The same year, he was given one of Russia's highest honors.

Mishkin's grandmother has a photograph, "President Putin shaking Mishkin's hand and giving him the award," Grozev said.

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Kremlin would not discuss investigative reports and media articles on the poisoning. He reiterated Tuesday the government 's claim that Britain stonewalled.

Skripal, a Russian military intelligence officer with dual agent for Britain, and his visiting daughter in Salisbury attack. In June, two areas residents who have apparently traveled across the country to the poison fell ill; one of them died.

Britain claims the poisoning of the Russian state – claim Moscow denies. The Skripals' poisoning ignited a diplomatic confrontation in which hundreds of envoys were expelled by both Russia and Western nations.

The attack on the Skripals has focused global attention on the GRU, an intelligence unit that Western officials say is linked to computer hacking and other covert operations around the world.

British, Dutch, and U.S. officials have accused the world of virtual machines, masterminding a devastating 2017 cyberattack on Ukraine and being behind stolen emails that roiled the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Last week, authorities in the Netherlands alleged that the GRU had been tried and failed to hack the world's chemical weapons watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The U.S. Justice Department is also one of the world's largest international hacking experts, with more than 250 athletes at the Pennsylvania-based nuclear energy company, a Swiss chemical laboratory and the chemical weapons watchdog.

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Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this story.

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