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A group of investigative journalists and researchers on Monday identified a military doctor employed by a Russian intelligence agency as one of two men suspected by British authorities of attempting to kill a former spy Russian with a powerful neurotoxic agent in Britain earlier this year.
The group, which named the other suspect in poisoning about two weeks ago, identified the doctor as Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin. He was a graduate of an elite military medicine academy and had been recruited by a military intelligence agency known as G.R.U.
Last month, British prosecutors launched criminal proceedings against two Russian men who reportedly went to Salisbury in March, where they allegedly poisoned former spy Sergei Skripal, by applying to the nervous agent the police. agent on the door handle of his home. Mr. Skripal's daughter, Yulia, was also poisoned.
Authorities said the men captured on a surveillance video near Mr. Skripal's home were taken to Britain under the pseudonyms Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. While men have been identified as G.R.U. officers, their real names have not been disclosed.
The British authorities could not be contacted immediately on Monday night to comment on the new report, prepared by British and Russian researchers and journalists.
The Russian authorities denied any involvement in the poisoning and, a few days after the charges were laid, the two suspects gave an interview to Russian national television in which they claimed to be sports nutritionists. They said that they had gone to Salisbury to admire its Gothic cathedral.
But in a series of reports over the past month, researchers from the Bellingcat investigation group and a Russian media outlet, The Insider, have attempted to reveal details about the suspects. They claimed to have discovered passport information related to men's aliases reporting numerous trips, as well as links to Russian security services. And they published the names.
"The Bellingcat identification process included multiple open sources, testimonials from people close to the person as well as copies of personal identification documents," the group said.
Dr. Mishkin received his pseudonym, Alexander Petrov, during his move to Moscow in 2010, reported Bellingcat. Before traveling to Salisbury, he would have used this identity to travel regularly in the former Soviet Union, including for several trips to Ukraine as well as to the Moldovan separatist republic of Transnistria.
The group also indicated that, until 2014, the registered address of Dr. Mishkin in Moscow was the same as the registered office of Georgia.
Bellingcat said he would release a more comprehensive report on Mishkin on Tuesday, when he is scheduled to present his findings in the House of Commons with a British MP. The UK authorities have so far refused to confirm the true identity of the suspects.
Seven months after the poisonings, they remain a point of contention between Russia and the West. After the attack, new sanctions were imposed on Russia and about 150 Russian diplomats were expelled from Western countries.
Mr. Skripal and his daughter were found slumped on a park bench in Salisbury on March 4, one day after Yulia Skripal arrived from Moscow to tell her father that she was planning to get married.
Mr Skripal, a former military intelligence colonel who was jailed for selling secrets to the British Intelligence Service and released to Britain in a spy exchange in 2010, has not been publicly informed since that day. Yulia has since issued a written statement and once appeared in front of the camera, claiming that she was hoping to return to Russia one day.
A police officer who responded to the poisoning was also made ill by the Novichok neurotoxic agent and survived. A few months later, two other British citizens were exposed to the police when they took a bottle of perfume. The British authorities said the two killers carried the nerve agent. One of them, Dawn Sturgess, has passed away.
