RUSSIAN POISONINGS: SERGEI SKRIPAL (PART 4)

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In this series, we have covered the poisonings of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia Skripal. We explored the events that led up to the pair comatose on a park bench and fighting for their lives. In Part 3, we looked at how two individuals, Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, where responsible for the attack. Eventually, investigative journalists found that Ruslan Boshirov was GRU Colonel Anatoliy Vladimirovich Chepiga, and Alexander Petrov was, in fact, Alexander Mishkin. He is a doctor in the GRU. 

In the final instalment of this series, we will have a look at the devastating death of Dawn Sturgess. A British national that thought she got some nice perfume as a present, but instead it was a death sentence. We will also check what the international and British reaction was to these tragic events. 

DAWN STURGESS 

On June 30th, Charlie Rowley found a bottle of perfume called Premier Jour by Nina Ricci. It was wrapped up in plastic, so he thought he scored a good find, which he took home and gave it as a present to his partner, 44-years-old Dawn Sturgess. 

Dawn Sturgess

Dawn was a lovely, and very helpful person, by accounts of family and friends. She was born to parents Stephen and Caroline Sturgess. She had three children, two boys and one girl. And of course, her current partner Charlie. Dawn was supposed to move Amesbury quite soon, to be together with Charlie. 

When he gave her the perfume bottle, she was ecstatic. Charlie helped get the small bottle out of its packaging. Unfortunately, the liquid got all over his hands when he went to assemble the nozzle, but Charlie went to wash his hands. 

Dawn sprayed the liquid on her wrists and rubbed them together, thinking she was smart to apply the fragrance on her pulse points. After fifteen minutes she started to develop a headache, and asked Charlie if he had any headache medication. He went to find some painkillers for her. Upon his return, to his horror, Dawn was lying fully clothed in the bath tub looking very ill.  Charlie also collapsed in a coma. 

Both people were taken to hospital. When Charlie woke up from his coma, he was informed that he was poisoned by Novichok, a deadly Russian nerve agent. He was one of four people in the world who have been poisoned with novichok and survived. The other three being the Skripals and Nick Bailey, an officer who attended the Skripal crime scene. 

Charlie Rowley in his interview with ITV 

Dawn, sadly, did not wake up from her coma. She was in hospital for eight days until she passed away, 8 July 2018. 

One month after her death, Charlie gave an interview describing the harrowing experience. He had been unable to return to his home as it was now being decontaminated, but he also didn't wish to come back. "Too many bad memories there for me", he said in the same interview. 

Now a public inquiry has been called for to analyse what had happened to the perfume bottle and why it was not detected for four months between the Skripals' poisoning and the death of Dawn Sturgess. There has been a few sessions already on the case, and public inquiry will be held in 2022. 


ENGLAND STRIKES BACK 

England's prime minister, Theresa May, was under a lot of pressure to have a strong reaction against the perpetrators. The English government said that if Russia was found accountable for this attack on British soil, they would be punished severely. 

On 12 March, Prime Minister May came out and publicly accused Russia in her speech to the House of Commons. After this, investigations were opened into 14 other cases of suspicious deaths of Russian exiles and businessmen in the United Kingdom. 

Britain decided to take a very hard stance on displaying their displeasure with Russia by:

  • Freezing Russian owned state assets where there was evidence that they could be used to harm a British national or resident. 
  • Making plans considering new laws to increase defences against hostile state activity portrayed by another country. 
  • Boycotting of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, that was held in Russia, by UK ministers and the Royal family. 
  • Expelling 23 diplomats from United Kingdom. 
Many other countries joined Britain in expelling Russian diplomats from their countries by the end of March 2018. In total, over 150 diplomats were sent back to Russia. In response, Russia retaliated by expelling a similar amount of diplomats for each country. 

On top of that, US closed the Russian embassy in Seattle, and they also agreed to place sanctions on Russian banks and exports. The European Union placed sanctions on the four individuals that were suspected in this attack: Mishkin, Chepiga, and also the head of the GRU Igor Kostyukov and the deputy head Vladimir Alexseyev. They froze any assets that they owned in the EU, and also banned them from travelling to EU, and banning any companies or people to help them financially that were based in the EU. 

NATO also gave an official response that they were concerned about this attack on its territory and said that this was in breach of national treaties. The alliance, along with the UK, called on Russia to provide a ''full and complete disclosure'' on the Novichok programme to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. 

RUSSIA'S RESPONSE

Of course, Russia denied any accusations that it was involved in such an assassination plot. It was declared by the Kremlin as a prefabrication that was created to undermine Russia. They blamed the UK and United States Intelligence to stage such a farce on Russia. 

Andrey Lugovoy

On 6th of March, 2018, Andrey Lugovoy said in a interview that: ''Something constantly happens to Russian citizens who either run away from Russian justice, or for some reason choose for themselves a way of life they call a change of their Motherland. So the more Britain accepts on its territory every good-for-nothing, every scum from all over the world, the more problems they will have.'' 

If we remember Andrey Lugovoy's claim to fame is being a suspect in the poisoning, and subsequent death, of Alexander Litvinenko. Mr Lugovoy in now a Deputy of the Russian State Duma. 

When questioned at an event in September 2018, Vladimir Putin answered that the individuals, Mishkin and Chepiga, were known to the Russian authorities, and in their opinion these two individuals are civilians who have not committed any crimes. He also invited them to come forward and tell their side of the story.  This is when the two men appeared on television channel RT, that is state-funded from Russia's coffers, and said that they are just sports nutritionists who were in Salisbury for a short holiday and looking for nutrition products. They claimed they returned to Salisbury for a second time because their first day was slushy and snowy, and they felt this ruined their visit. 

President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin

CONCLUSION

This has been a very interesting case, it has certainly caused a lot of furore in the intelligence and international community. It is said that Mr Skripal and his daughter are now living under new identities in New Zealand, but there is no sources to confirm this. His neighbours have said that they received a card from him for Christmas, so I guess Sergei and his daughter are now in good health and living under the radar. 

Ms Skripal's fiancé, who was left in Russia, while she was visiting her father in England, has not been seen since the attack. I guess we can surmise that he followed his future wife and their baby to that secret location. 

Alexey Navalny 

Russia, it seems didn't learn anything as just two years later, in 2020, Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny was the next victim of a Novichok attack. We will do a deep dive into this case as our next instalments of this Russian Poisonings series. 

References 




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