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London (AFP) – The Bellingcat investigation group on Monday identified the second suspect in the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal as a doctor employed by the GRU military intelligence services in Moscow .
The Kremlin has rejected past accusations about its involvement in the case as fabrications aimed at discrediting Russia.
However, analysts will read the latest Bellingcat publication to get more clues about the alleged operation of a Russian spy agency at the center of several international conflicts.
"We have now identified" Alexander Petrov "as actually being Dr. Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin, a military doctor trained in the use of GRU," said the group based in Britain in a report published on its website .
Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by a Soviet-styled chemical agent named Novichok in the English city of Salisbury in March.
Britain accuses the Russian government of trying to kill Skripal as a vengeance for its ongoing work with European intelligence agencies.
Russia says that Britain has no evidence.
The Skripal affair and last week's revelations that the GRU also allegedly attempted to hack the chemical weapons watchdog in the Netherlands further tore the tense ties between Moscow and the West.
Bellingcat has become a thorn in the Kremlin detailing his alleged crimes during the wars in Syria and Ukraine.
He worked with the Insider's Russian investigation team to name the first of two Skripal suspects, Anatoly Chepiga, GRU's agent, last month.
Bellingcat said that Chepiga had been awarded in 2014 the country's most prestigious award at a secret ceremony in the Kremlin.
"While the true personality of Alexander Mishkin has an even larger digital footprint than that of Anatoly Chepiga, Bellingcat was able to establish some key facts from his background," he writes.
The group showed an apparent digitization of its real national identity card – called a passport in Russia – dating back to 2001.
Mishkin was identified as having been born in July 1979 in the northwestern region of Arkhangelsk.
Bellingcat said he was a graduate of one of Russia's elite military medicine academies and that he had become a doctor of Russian naval forces.
"During his medical studies, Mishkin was recruited by the GRU and in 2010 he moved to Moscow, where he received his undercover identity – including a second national identity card. and a travel passport – under the pseudonym Alexander Petrov, "said Bellingcat.
Mishkin would have made several trips to Ukraine and reportedly even declared the address of the GRU headquarters.
Bellingcat stated that it collected information from open sources and "testimonies from persons close to the person".
– Weird maintenance –
The two suspects gave a bizarre interview to a Russian television channel after the British government released a video of their trip to Salisbury just as the Skripals had been poisoned.
They explained that they had gone to the small town as tourists and had always wanted to see his turn.
The interview was not only widely ridiculed, but also left security analysts unable to explain why Russia would organize their unfortunate staging on TV.
British intelligence has suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to publicly punish the two men for being caught and caught.
Putin added to the mystery by launching a new attack on Skripal at an energy forum in Moscow last week.
"He's just a jerk," Putin said of Skripal. "He's just a spy, a traitor to the homeland."
Putin himself was a foreign intelligence agent based in Dresden, in the years leading up to the fall of the Soviet Union.
