In part three of our three-part series on "Putin & Poison" " two men attempted to kill ex-spy Sergey Skripal in a sleepy English town using the deadly nerve agent Novichok.
In this episode, we'll discover how this brazen attack unfolded and the trail of evidence it left back pointing directly to the Russian state
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part three of this three-part mini-series on the theme of “Putin and Poison”.
[00:00:30] In part one we had a very broad overview of the life of Vladimir Putin, and of his rise to power.
[00:00:38] In part two we learned about the time his former KGB colleague, Alexander Litvinenko, took a sip of tea in an upmarket London hotel and ended up dying from radiation poisoning.
[00:00:52] And today, in part three, we are going to talk about the time that two men travelled from Moscow to the sleepy English market town of Salisbury in an attempt to murder a double agent.
[00:01:06] Yes, it is another story about poison, but it’s very different to the Litvinenko story in that it happened 12 years later, was even more brazen, and crucially, it didn’t work.
[00:01:19] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:01:26] The town of Salisbury, in the south of England, is the kind of place where there was more going on 800 years ago than there is today.
[00:01:36] It was previously a Roman settlement, and in the Medieval era, it became a major regional centre and home to one of the largest and most impressive churches in the UK: Salisbury Cathedral.
[00:01:52] Nowadays, it’s a sleepy market town, just under 50,000 inhabitants, restaurants, shops, a small theatre, and not much more than that.
[00:02:04] The only real things of note that might bring someone to Salisbury are the cathedral, which I just mentioned, Stonehenge, the prehistoric stone circle, which is 13 kilometres northwest of the town, and a small Roman settlement just outside.
[00:02:23] But in March of 2018, two men decided that it was worth a trip.
[00:02:30] They took a flight from Moscow to London on Friday, stayed a night in London before heading off to Salisbury, which is just over an hour away on the train.
[00:02:42] They wandered around the town a bit, before heading back to London for the night.
[00:02:48] Clearly not content with their trip, they returned the following day, visited the cathedral and Stonehenge before getting a train back to London and catching the 10.30 pm flight back to Moscow that evening.
[00:03:04] Earlier on that day, however, something suspicious was discovered in the sleepy market town of Salisbury.
[00:03:12] In the mid-afternoon, at 4.15 pm to be precise, a man and a woman had been found unconscious on a public bench in Salisbury town centre.
[00:03:26] From a distance, passersby initially thought they were just another pair of locals who’d had too much to drink, but as they got closer, they realised something was deeply wrong.
[00:03:39] They were not tired or drunk; the woman had gone completely white, her eyes were wide open and she was foaming at the mouth.
[00:03:50] Emergency services were called. The pair were rushed to hospital and placed in intensive care where doctors fought to save their lives.
[00:04:01] They weren’t sure exactly what was wrong with them, but when they discovered the man’s identity they got a hint of what they might be up against.
[00:04:12] Unlike Alexander Litvinenko, who initially told doctors his name was Edwin Carter, this man did not operate under a pseudonym.
[00:04:23] His name was Sergey Skripal.
[00:04:26] He was a former Russian intelligence officer who had switched sides and become a double agent, secretly passing classified information to the British.
[00:04:38] He had been arrested, tried and sentenced to 13 years in prison for high treason in Russia back in 2004.
[00:04:48] But he was released in a prisoner swap for a bunch of sleeper agents, including, by the way, Anna Chapman, who you might remember from our episode on the Art of Espionage, episode number 524.
[00:05:03] Anyway, he was practically the definition of an enemy of the Russian state, and there he was, unexpectedly unconscious on a park bench.
[00:05:15] The woman who was found unconscious next to him was his daughter, whose only crime, by the way, was having a double agent for a parent.
[00:05:24] Although the British authorities didn’t know exactly what had gone on, and the police even released a statement saying that they weren’t yet sure whether a crime had been committed, they declared it a “major incident”.
[00:05:39] And the clues as to what might have happened came in an unfortunate fashion.
[00:05:46] The police had sent an officer to go and check out Sergey Skripal’s house, to check if there were any other people in it or if there was any information about what could have happened to the 66-year-old Russian man.
[00:06:01] By this point, they had figured out who he was–he wasn’t using a fake identity, so a simple Google search did the job. And given who he was, and knowing the methods often employed by the Russian state, the police decided to go into the house in protective clothing.
[00:06:21] Remember, the poisoning of Litvinenko was just 12 years before, by this point, the Russian state had quite the reputation for poison being its weapon of choice, so the police decided to take precautions.
[00:06:35] They managed to get a spare key from the neighbour and unlocked the door.
[00:06:41] There was nothing particularly unusual or incriminating about what they found in the house, but within a few hours the police officer who had been the first to enter the property–a man named Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey–started to feel ill.
[00:07:00] Within a few days, he was critically ill and was rushed to hospital.
[00:07:06] He had been wearing protective clothing, but whatever it was, it was clearly powerful enough to have got through it.
[00:07:15] Meanwhile, Sergey and Yulia Skripal were slipping in and out of consciousness, doctors fighting to save their lives.
[00:07:25] On March 12th, just over a week after they had been found unconscious, the then British Prime Minister, Theresa May, released a statement.
[00:07:35] She said that toxic analysis had shown that all three had been poisoned by the deadly nerve agent, Novichok.
[00:07:45] Now, Novichok is not your average poison.
[00:07:49] It's one of the deadliest chemical weapons ever created, and was first developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It's not something you stumble across or buy off the black market. It’s a state-controlled substance, requiring advanced facilities to produce and handle.
[00:08:09] The name means “newcomer” in Russian, and it refers to a series of nerve agents designed to be more potent and harder to detect than anything the West had at the time.
[00:08:22] Now, Novichok works by disrupting the nervous system, causing muscles to seize up, organ failure, and, in many cases, death.
[00:08:33] Even the smallest amount can be fatal, and the fact that it was used in Salisbury, in the middle of a peaceful English town, was both shocking and brazen.
[00:08:45] Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, made it clear that the substance could only have come from Russia.
[00:08:52] And she said there were two possibilities about what could have happened.
[00:08:58] Either it was a state-sponsored attack, an attempted murder orchestrated by the Russian state.
[00:09:05] Or that Russia had lost control of its nerve agent stockpile and had let this deadly chemical get into the hands of rogue agents.
[00:09:16] Either way, it had come from Russian labs, so what was it, a state-sponsored murder or bureaucratic incompetence?
[00:09:25] Most commentators in the UK saw this as May not directly attacking Putin, but at least offering the possibility of incompetence.
[00:09:36] However, to the British authorities, it became increasingly probable it was the former, not the latter.
[00:09:44] And this was deeply problematic.
[00:09:48] Sergey Skripal might have been charged as a traitor in Russia but he was not in Russia, and he had been officially pardoned in 2010, eight years before.
[00:10:00] And not only that.
[00:10:02] He had been given British citizenship and was living quietly in the UK.
[00:10:08] Now I should add that it has since been claimed that Skripal was not living quite as quiet a life as it was originally made out and he was still doing some intelligence work on the side, thereby making him a slightly more legitimate target.
[00:10:24] This has not been publicly confirmed.
[00:10:27] And in any case, he was a middle-aged British civilian who seemed to have put his previous life behind him.
[00:10:35] And the assassination of a British citizen in Britain, regardless of what he might have done in a previous life, would have required authorisation from Putin himself, so the British intelligence authorities believed.
[00:10:51] In other words, like the poisoning of Litvinenko, Putin either ordered it or approved it.
[00:10:58] It was done on his wishes and/or with his blessing.
[00:11:03] Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin denied everything.
[00:11:07] They claimed it was an anti-Russian conspiracy and flatly denied any involvement.
[00:11:13] However, as the investigation progressed, more and more evidence started to emerge that was hard to explain.
[00:11:22] CCTV footage from both London and Salisbury showed the two Russian men you heard about at the start of the episode.
[00:11:31] It didn’t show exactly where they had gone, but the surveillance cameras picked them up at various locations throughout Salisbury, locations–I should add–that no normal tourist would go to.
[00:11:45] They were seen in surveillance footage in a residential area close to the nondescript suburban house that Sergey Skripal called home, and there is really no reason for any tourist to go here, especially if they have flown over from Moscow for a 48-hour trip.
[00:12:05] The British authorities identified these men as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.
[00:12:12] They even managed to get their mobile phone location data, which helped British authorities plot their movements when they were in the UK.
[00:12:21] If you've ever flown into London, you might have done a similar thing as these two men did: going through passport control at Gatwick airport, catching the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station, getting the tube to their hotel, then getting the tube to Waterloo station before catching a train to Salisbury.
[00:12:41] Suspiciously, however, the two men turned off their mobile phones before getting to Salisbury, only turning them back on after they had left.
[00:12:52] This was all made public information, which of course, put Moscow in a bit of a bind, a slightly tricky situation.
[00:13:02] There were two men who had been identified as Russian citizens, who were strongly suspected of having tried to kill Sergey Skripal.
[00:13:11] Now, how did this poisoning actually take place?
[00:13:15] Well, in all probability, the Novichok was placed on the door handle of Skripal’s house, and the idea was for Skripal to touch it when entering his home, die an unpleasant but quick death at home, and probably not be found for days or weeks.
[00:13:33] There would be an autopsy, but unless the authorities were specifically looking for a nerve agent like Novichok, they might well have missed it.
[00:13:42] Instead, they would have concluded that the 66-year-old Russian had died of a heart attack or a stroke, like so many other enemies of the Russian state over the past 30 years.
[00:13:54] Fortunately, his life and that of his daughter were saved, and it was clear that he hadn’t had a heart attack but had been the victim of the first state-sponsored use of a nerve agent on European soil since the Second World War.
[00:14:11] The Russian agents had failed in this mission, but there was an unfortunate casualty.
[00:14:18] Four months later, after an extensive attempt by health authorities to clean up the city, a local man found a perfume bottle in a charity bin.
[00:14:30] He had thought it was a gift, and gave it to his partner, a lady called Dawn Sturgess.
[00:14:36] Presumably thinking, “oh, how nice, what a lovely bottle”, she sprayed it on her wrists.
[00:14:43] Unbeknownst to her, this was the bottle in which the Novichok had been stored.
[00:14:50] Within hours, she became critically ill.
[00:14:54] Unlike the Skripals, who eventually recovered, Dawn Sturgess died, becoming an unintended and wholly innocent victim of this reckless operation.
[00:15:06] This was in July of 2018, and so whoever had done this, whoever had brought Novichok to Salisbury, had real blood on their hands.
[00:15:17] It was the start of a major diplomatic incident, with Theresa May again directly accusing the Kremlin, and the Kremlin denying all involvement and accusing Britain of needlessly damaging diplomatic relations.
[00:15:32] However, in September of that year, a few months after the incident, Vladimir Putin said that Russian authorities had found the potential suspects, the two men who by this time had been charged by British authorities in connection with the crime.
[00:15:49] They were civilians, Putin said, and that they would appear soon and tell their own side of the story.
[00:15:58] This sounded strange, but what followed was even stranger.
[00:16:04] There was an interview broadcast on RT, Russian state TV, with the two men who were clearly visible in the CCTV footage acting suspiciously in Salisbury.
[00:16:16] They both seemed nervous, and after admitting that, yes, they were the men in the CCTV footage, they attempted to explain their actions that weekend.
[00:16:28] They said that a friend had recommended them to go to Salisbury, but the more they talked, shifting nervously in their seats, the more surreal the “interview” became.
[00:16:40] The men were clearly very uncomfortable, and their answers were peppered with bizarre details like the exact height of Salisbury Cathedral’s spire as if they’d crammed for a geography quiz rather than rehearsed a believable alibi.
[00:16:58] The interviewer then asked them if they worked for GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency. The men denied it.
[00:17:07] When asked what they did for a job, if not the GRU, one responded, “if we tell you about our business, people we work with will be affected”. And when pressed, he responded, “to cut a long story short, we’re in the fitness industry”.
[00:17:26] Now, it’s not completely clear who the intended audience of this interview was.
[00:17:33] If it was for an international audience, it certainly didn’t work.
[00:17:38] Not only was it very hard to believe their story, but it also gave internet sleuths, armchair detectives, another very useful piece of evidence.
[00:17:50] The men had identified themselves as Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, but the authorities were fairly sure these were fake identities.
[00:18:02] Using a mixture of data from birth records, passport data, and early photographs, the investigative journalism outlet Bellingcat revealed the true identities of the pair.
[00:18:14] Their names were Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga, and they were, surprise, surprise, GRU agents, agents of the Russian military intelligence agency.
[00:18:28] They were clearly much better military operatives than they were actors, because they were highly decorated members of the Russian military, and there was even a photograph of Mishkin shaking Putin’s hand after being awarded a “hero of the Russian Federation” medal in 2014.
[00:18:48] Given all of this, now it was practically impossible to deny state involvement.
[00:18:55] The men who almost certainly administered the novichok were agents of the Russian state, and Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, told Parliament that “the conspiracy must have been approved at a senior level outside the GRU.”
[00:19:13] This could only mean one thing: the go-ahead came from Vladimir Putin himself.
[00:19:20] But what was actually going to happen?
[00:19:23] Well, on one level, the international fallout from the Salisbury poisoning was significant.
[00:19:29] The UK expelled 23 Russian diplomats, whom it identified as undeclared intelligence officers.
[00:19:36] In response, Russia expelled the same number of British diplomats.
[00:19:41] Western allies, including the United States and various countries in Europe, imposed further sanctions on Russia, deepening its isolation from the international community.
[00:19:52] But, this was really not much more than a slap on the wrist.
[00:19:57] Domestically, it appears that this incident did not harm Putin in the slightest.
[00:20:04] He had just won re-election with 76% of the public vote, and there were all sorts of conspiracy theories being touted in Russia suggesting that British authorities had killed Skripal in an attempt to damage Russia.
[00:20:19] Even the Russian ambassador to the UK hinted at his disbelief in the official verdict, saying that he hadn’t seen any proof that Skripal was even in hospital.
[00:20:31] And domestically, no, Putin hadn’t managed to kill Skripal, but he had sent yet another powerful message, just in case people hadn’t been paying attention to the dozens of opponents who had had mysterious plane crashes, heart attacks or had “tripped” near a fifth-floor window.
[00:20:50] There are no lengths he will not go to to silence an enemy, no matter where they are in the world and even if they are living a quiet and non-confrontational life, as Sergey Skripal is believed to have been.
[00:21:04] Now, to wrap things up, the Salisbury poisoning remains one of the most brazen and shocking acts of state-sponsored aggression in modern history, and certainly in modern British history.
[00:21:17] It was a calculated move, one designed not just to eliminate a perceived traitor, but to send a message to anyone considering betraying the Russian state.
[00:21:28] For Vladimir Putin, the message was simple: no one is beyond his reach.
[00:21:36] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the attempted murder of Sergey Skripal, and with that comes an end to this poison-themed mini-series on Vladimir Putin.
[00:21:48] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:21:52] Again, to state the absolutely blindingly obvious, there is so much more to this story and to the rise and rule of Vladimir Putin.
[00:22:00] I decided to go heavily with the poison angle because these stories are a reminder of the absolute power Putin wields, how vengeful he clearly is, and how bold and shameless he has become in his attempt to silence anyone who goes against him.
[00:22:16] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:22:21] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part three of this three-part mini-series on the theme of “Putin and Poison”.
[00:00:30] In part one we had a very broad overview of the life of Vladimir Putin, and of his rise to power.
[00:00:38] In part two we learned about the time his former KGB colleague, Alexander Litvinenko, took a sip of tea in an upmarket London hotel and ended up dying from radiation poisoning.
[00:00:52] And today, in part three, we are going to talk about the time that two men travelled from Moscow to the sleepy English market town of Salisbury in an attempt to murder a double agent.
[00:01:06] Yes, it is another story about poison, but it’s very different to the Litvinenko story in that it happened 12 years later, was even more brazen, and crucially, it didn’t work.
[00:01:19] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:01:26] The town of Salisbury, in the south of England, is the kind of place where there was more going on 800 years ago than there is today.
[00:01:36] It was previously a Roman settlement, and in the Medieval era, it became a major regional centre and home to one of the largest and most impressive churches in the UK: Salisbury Cathedral.
[00:01:52] Nowadays, it’s a sleepy market town, just under 50,000 inhabitants, restaurants, shops, a small theatre, and not much more than that.
[00:02:04] The only real things of note that might bring someone to Salisbury are the cathedral, which I just mentioned, Stonehenge, the prehistoric stone circle, which is 13 kilometres northwest of the town, and a small Roman settlement just outside.
[00:02:23] But in March of 2018, two men decided that it was worth a trip.
[00:02:30] They took a flight from Moscow to London on Friday, stayed a night in London before heading off to Salisbury, which is just over an hour away on the train.
[00:02:42] They wandered around the town a bit, before heading back to London for the night.
[00:02:48] Clearly not content with their trip, they returned the following day, visited the cathedral and Stonehenge before getting a train back to London and catching the 10.30 pm flight back to Moscow that evening.
[00:03:04] Earlier on that day, however, something suspicious was discovered in the sleepy market town of Salisbury.
[00:03:12] In the mid-afternoon, at 4.15 pm to be precise, a man and a woman had been found unconscious on a public bench in Salisbury town centre.
[00:03:26] From a distance, passersby initially thought they were just another pair of locals who’d had too much to drink, but as they got closer, they realised something was deeply wrong.
[00:03:39] They were not tired or drunk; the woman had gone completely white, her eyes were wide open and she was foaming at the mouth.
[00:03:50] Emergency services were called. The pair were rushed to hospital and placed in intensive care where doctors fought to save their lives.
[00:04:01] They weren’t sure exactly what was wrong with them, but when they discovered the man’s identity they got a hint of what they might be up against.
[00:04:12] Unlike Alexander Litvinenko, who initially told doctors his name was Edwin Carter, this man did not operate under a pseudonym.
[00:04:23] His name was Sergey Skripal.
[00:04:26] He was a former Russian intelligence officer who had switched sides and become a double agent, secretly passing classified information to the British.
[00:04:38] He had been arrested, tried and sentenced to 13 years in prison for high treason in Russia back in 2004.
[00:04:48] But he was released in a prisoner swap for a bunch of sleeper agents, including, by the way, Anna Chapman, who you might remember from our episode on the Art of Espionage, episode number 524.
[00:05:03] Anyway, he was practically the definition of an enemy of the Russian state, and there he was, unexpectedly unconscious on a park bench.
[00:05:15] The woman who was found unconscious next to him was his daughter, whose only crime, by the way, was having a double agent for a parent.
[00:05:24] Although the British authorities didn’t know exactly what had gone on, and the police even released a statement saying that they weren’t yet sure whether a crime had been committed, they declared it a “major incident”.
[00:05:39] And the clues as to what might have happened came in an unfortunate fashion.
[00:05:46] The police had sent an officer to go and check out Sergey Skripal’s house, to check if there were any other people in it or if there was any information about what could have happened to the 66-year-old Russian man.
[00:06:01] By this point, they had figured out who he was–he wasn’t using a fake identity, so a simple Google search did the job. And given who he was, and knowing the methods often employed by the Russian state, the police decided to go into the house in protective clothing.
[00:06:21] Remember, the poisoning of Litvinenko was just 12 years before, by this point, the Russian state had quite the reputation for poison being its weapon of choice, so the police decided to take precautions.
[00:06:35] They managed to get a spare key from the neighbour and unlocked the door.
[00:06:41] There was nothing particularly unusual or incriminating about what they found in the house, but within a few hours the police officer who had been the first to enter the property–a man named Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey–started to feel ill.
[00:07:00] Within a few days, he was critically ill and was rushed to hospital.
[00:07:06] He had been wearing protective clothing, but whatever it was, it was clearly powerful enough to have got through it.
[00:07:15] Meanwhile, Sergey and Yulia Skripal were slipping in and out of consciousness, doctors fighting to save their lives.
[00:07:25] On March 12th, just over a week after they had been found unconscious, the then British Prime Minister, Theresa May, released a statement.
[00:07:35] She said that toxic analysis had shown that all three had been poisoned by the deadly nerve agent, Novichok.
[00:07:45] Now, Novichok is not your average poison.
[00:07:49] It's one of the deadliest chemical weapons ever created, and was first developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It's not something you stumble across or buy off the black market. It’s a state-controlled substance, requiring advanced facilities to produce and handle.
[00:08:09] The name means “newcomer” in Russian, and it refers to a series of nerve agents designed to be more potent and harder to detect than anything the West had at the time.
[00:08:22] Now, Novichok works by disrupting the nervous system, causing muscles to seize up, organ failure, and, in many cases, death.
[00:08:33] Even the smallest amount can be fatal, and the fact that it was used in Salisbury, in the middle of a peaceful English town, was both shocking and brazen.
[00:08:45] Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, made it clear that the substance could only have come from Russia.
[00:08:52] And she said there were two possibilities about what could have happened.
[00:08:58] Either it was a state-sponsored attack, an attempted murder orchestrated by the Russian state.
[00:09:05] Or that Russia had lost control of its nerve agent stockpile and had let this deadly chemical get into the hands of rogue agents.
[00:09:16] Either way, it had come from Russian labs, so what was it, a state-sponsored murder or bureaucratic incompetence?
[00:09:25] Most commentators in the UK saw this as May not directly attacking Putin, but at least offering the possibility of incompetence.
[00:09:36] However, to the British authorities, it became increasingly probable it was the former, not the latter.
[00:09:44] And this was deeply problematic.
[00:09:48] Sergey Skripal might have been charged as a traitor in Russia but he was not in Russia, and he had been officially pardoned in 2010, eight years before.
[00:10:00] And not only that.
[00:10:02] He had been given British citizenship and was living quietly in the UK.
[00:10:08] Now I should add that it has since been claimed that Skripal was not living quite as quiet a life as it was originally made out and he was still doing some intelligence work on the side, thereby making him a slightly more legitimate target.
[00:10:24] This has not been publicly confirmed.
[00:10:27] And in any case, he was a middle-aged British civilian who seemed to have put his previous life behind him.
[00:10:35] And the assassination of a British citizen in Britain, regardless of what he might have done in a previous life, would have required authorisation from Putin himself, so the British intelligence authorities believed.
[00:10:51] In other words, like the poisoning of Litvinenko, Putin either ordered it or approved it.
[00:10:58] It was done on his wishes and/or with his blessing.
[00:11:03] Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin denied everything.
[00:11:07] They claimed it was an anti-Russian conspiracy and flatly denied any involvement.
[00:11:13] However, as the investigation progressed, more and more evidence started to emerge that was hard to explain.
[00:11:22] CCTV footage from both London and Salisbury showed the two Russian men you heard about at the start of the episode.
[00:11:31] It didn’t show exactly where they had gone, but the surveillance cameras picked them up at various locations throughout Salisbury, locations–I should add–that no normal tourist would go to.
[00:11:45] They were seen in surveillance footage in a residential area close to the nondescript suburban house that Sergey Skripal called home, and there is really no reason for any tourist to go here, especially if they have flown over from Moscow for a 48-hour trip.
[00:12:05] The British authorities identified these men as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.
[00:12:12] They even managed to get their mobile phone location data, which helped British authorities plot their movements when they were in the UK.
[00:12:21] If you've ever flown into London, you might have done a similar thing as these two men did: going through passport control at Gatwick airport, catching the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station, getting the tube to their hotel, then getting the tube to Waterloo station before catching a train to Salisbury.
[00:12:41] Suspiciously, however, the two men turned off their mobile phones before getting to Salisbury, only turning them back on after they had left.
[00:12:52] This was all made public information, which of course, put Moscow in a bit of a bind, a slightly tricky situation.
[00:13:02] There were two men who had been identified as Russian citizens, who were strongly suspected of having tried to kill Sergey Skripal.
[00:13:11] Now, how did this poisoning actually take place?
[00:13:15] Well, in all probability, the Novichok was placed on the door handle of Skripal’s house, and the idea was for Skripal to touch it when entering his home, die an unpleasant but quick death at home, and probably not be found for days or weeks.
[00:13:33] There would be an autopsy, but unless the authorities were specifically looking for a nerve agent like Novichok, they might well have missed it.
[00:13:42] Instead, they would have concluded that the 66-year-old Russian had died of a heart attack or a stroke, like so many other enemies of the Russian state over the past 30 years.
[00:13:54] Fortunately, his life and that of his daughter were saved, and it was clear that he hadn’t had a heart attack but had been the victim of the first state-sponsored use of a nerve agent on European soil since the Second World War.
[00:14:11] The Russian agents had failed in this mission, but there was an unfortunate casualty.
[00:14:18] Four months later, after an extensive attempt by health authorities to clean up the city, a local man found a perfume bottle in a charity bin.
[00:14:30] He had thought it was a gift, and gave it to his partner, a lady called Dawn Sturgess.
[00:14:36] Presumably thinking, “oh, how nice, what a lovely bottle”, she sprayed it on her wrists.
[00:14:43] Unbeknownst to her, this was the bottle in which the Novichok had been stored.
[00:14:50] Within hours, she became critically ill.
[00:14:54] Unlike the Skripals, who eventually recovered, Dawn Sturgess died, becoming an unintended and wholly innocent victim of this reckless operation.
[00:15:06] This was in July of 2018, and so whoever had done this, whoever had brought Novichok to Salisbury, had real blood on their hands.
[00:15:17] It was the start of a major diplomatic incident, with Theresa May again directly accusing the Kremlin, and the Kremlin denying all involvement and accusing Britain of needlessly damaging diplomatic relations.
[00:15:32] However, in September of that year, a few months after the incident, Vladimir Putin said that Russian authorities had found the potential suspects, the two men who by this time had been charged by British authorities in connection with the crime.
[00:15:49] They were civilians, Putin said, and that they would appear soon and tell their own side of the story.
[00:15:58] This sounded strange, but what followed was even stranger.
[00:16:04] There was an interview broadcast on RT, Russian state TV, with the two men who were clearly visible in the CCTV footage acting suspiciously in Salisbury.
[00:16:16] They both seemed nervous, and after admitting that, yes, they were the men in the CCTV footage, they attempted to explain their actions that weekend.
[00:16:28] They said that a friend had recommended them to go to Salisbury, but the more they talked, shifting nervously in their seats, the more surreal the “interview” became.
[00:16:40] The men were clearly very uncomfortable, and their answers were peppered with bizarre details like the exact height of Salisbury Cathedral’s spire as if they’d crammed for a geography quiz rather than rehearsed a believable alibi.
[00:16:58] The interviewer then asked them if they worked for GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency. The men denied it.
[00:17:07] When asked what they did for a job, if not the GRU, one responded, “if we tell you about our business, people we work with will be affected”. And when pressed, he responded, “to cut a long story short, we’re in the fitness industry”.
[00:17:26] Now, it’s not completely clear who the intended audience of this interview was.
[00:17:33] If it was for an international audience, it certainly didn’t work.
[00:17:38] Not only was it very hard to believe their story, but it also gave internet sleuths, armchair detectives, another very useful piece of evidence.
[00:17:50] The men had identified themselves as Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, but the authorities were fairly sure these were fake identities.
[00:18:02] Using a mixture of data from birth records, passport data, and early photographs, the investigative journalism outlet Bellingcat revealed the true identities of the pair.
[00:18:14] Their names were Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga, and they were, surprise, surprise, GRU agents, agents of the Russian military intelligence agency.
[00:18:28] They were clearly much better military operatives than they were actors, because they were highly decorated members of the Russian military, and there was even a photograph of Mishkin shaking Putin’s hand after being awarded a “hero of the Russian Federation” medal in 2014.
[00:18:48] Given all of this, now it was practically impossible to deny state involvement.
[00:18:55] The men who almost certainly administered the novichok were agents of the Russian state, and Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, told Parliament that “the conspiracy must have been approved at a senior level outside the GRU.”
[00:19:13] This could only mean one thing: the go-ahead came from Vladimir Putin himself.
[00:19:20] But what was actually going to happen?
[00:19:23] Well, on one level, the international fallout from the Salisbury poisoning was significant.
[00:19:29] The UK expelled 23 Russian diplomats, whom it identified as undeclared intelligence officers.
[00:19:36] In response, Russia expelled the same number of British diplomats.
[00:19:41] Western allies, including the United States and various countries in Europe, imposed further sanctions on Russia, deepening its isolation from the international community.
[00:19:52] But, this was really not much more than a slap on the wrist.
[00:19:57] Domestically, it appears that this incident did not harm Putin in the slightest.
[00:20:04] He had just won re-election with 76% of the public vote, and there were all sorts of conspiracy theories being touted in Russia suggesting that British authorities had killed Skripal in an attempt to damage Russia.
[00:20:19] Even the Russian ambassador to the UK hinted at his disbelief in the official verdict, saying that he hadn’t seen any proof that Skripal was even in hospital.
[00:20:31] And domestically, no, Putin hadn’t managed to kill Skripal, but he had sent yet another powerful message, just in case people hadn’t been paying attention to the dozens of opponents who had had mysterious plane crashes, heart attacks or had “tripped” near a fifth-floor window.
[00:20:50] There are no lengths he will not go to to silence an enemy, no matter where they are in the world and even if they are living a quiet and non-confrontational life, as Sergey Skripal is believed to have been.
[00:21:04] Now, to wrap things up, the Salisbury poisoning remains one of the most brazen and shocking acts of state-sponsored aggression in modern history, and certainly in modern British history.
[00:21:17] It was a calculated move, one designed not just to eliminate a perceived traitor, but to send a message to anyone considering betraying the Russian state.
[00:21:28] For Vladimir Putin, the message was simple: no one is beyond his reach.
[00:21:36] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the attempted murder of Sergey Skripal, and with that comes an end to this poison-themed mini-series on Vladimir Putin.
[00:21:48] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:21:52] Again, to state the absolutely blindingly obvious, there is so much more to this story and to the rise and rule of Vladimir Putin.
[00:22:00] I decided to go heavily with the poison angle because these stories are a reminder of the absolute power Putin wields, how vengeful he clearly is, and how bold and shameless he has become in his attempt to silence anyone who goes against him.
[00:22:16] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:22:21] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is part three of this three-part mini-series on the theme of “Putin and Poison”.
[00:00:30] In part one we had a very broad overview of the life of Vladimir Putin, and of his rise to power.
[00:00:38] In part two we learned about the time his former KGB colleague, Alexander Litvinenko, took a sip of tea in an upmarket London hotel and ended up dying from radiation poisoning.
[00:00:52] And today, in part three, we are going to talk about the time that two men travelled from Moscow to the sleepy English market town of Salisbury in an attempt to murder a double agent.
[00:01:06] Yes, it is another story about poison, but it’s very different to the Litvinenko story in that it happened 12 years later, was even more brazen, and crucially, it didn’t work.
[00:01:19] So, let’s not waste a minute, and get right into it.
[00:01:26] The town of Salisbury, in the south of England, is the kind of place where there was more going on 800 years ago than there is today.
[00:01:36] It was previously a Roman settlement, and in the Medieval era, it became a major regional centre and home to one of the largest and most impressive churches in the UK: Salisbury Cathedral.
[00:01:52] Nowadays, it’s a sleepy market town, just under 50,000 inhabitants, restaurants, shops, a small theatre, and not much more than that.
[00:02:04] The only real things of note that might bring someone to Salisbury are the cathedral, which I just mentioned, Stonehenge, the prehistoric stone circle, which is 13 kilometres northwest of the town, and a small Roman settlement just outside.
[00:02:23] But in March of 2018, two men decided that it was worth a trip.
[00:02:30] They took a flight from Moscow to London on Friday, stayed a night in London before heading off to Salisbury, which is just over an hour away on the train.
[00:02:42] They wandered around the town a bit, before heading back to London for the night.
[00:02:48] Clearly not content with their trip, they returned the following day, visited the cathedral and Stonehenge before getting a train back to London and catching the 10.30 pm flight back to Moscow that evening.
[00:03:04] Earlier on that day, however, something suspicious was discovered in the sleepy market town of Salisbury.
[00:03:12] In the mid-afternoon, at 4.15 pm to be precise, a man and a woman had been found unconscious on a public bench in Salisbury town centre.
[00:03:26] From a distance, passersby initially thought they were just another pair of locals who’d had too much to drink, but as they got closer, they realised something was deeply wrong.
[00:03:39] They were not tired or drunk; the woman had gone completely white, her eyes were wide open and she was foaming at the mouth.
[00:03:50] Emergency services were called. The pair were rushed to hospital and placed in intensive care where doctors fought to save their lives.
[00:04:01] They weren’t sure exactly what was wrong with them, but when they discovered the man’s identity they got a hint of what they might be up against.
[00:04:12] Unlike Alexander Litvinenko, who initially told doctors his name was Edwin Carter, this man did not operate under a pseudonym.
[00:04:23] His name was Sergey Skripal.
[00:04:26] He was a former Russian intelligence officer who had switched sides and become a double agent, secretly passing classified information to the British.
[00:04:38] He had been arrested, tried and sentenced to 13 years in prison for high treason in Russia back in 2004.
[00:04:48] But he was released in a prisoner swap for a bunch of sleeper agents, including, by the way, Anna Chapman, who you might remember from our episode on the Art of Espionage, episode number 524.
[00:05:03] Anyway, he was practically the definition of an enemy of the Russian state, and there he was, unexpectedly unconscious on a park bench.
[00:05:15] The woman who was found unconscious next to him was his daughter, whose only crime, by the way, was having a double agent for a parent.
[00:05:24] Although the British authorities didn’t know exactly what had gone on, and the police even released a statement saying that they weren’t yet sure whether a crime had been committed, they declared it a “major incident”.
[00:05:39] And the clues as to what might have happened came in an unfortunate fashion.
[00:05:46] The police had sent an officer to go and check out Sergey Skripal’s house, to check if there were any other people in it or if there was any information about what could have happened to the 66-year-old Russian man.
[00:06:01] By this point, they had figured out who he was–he wasn’t using a fake identity, so a simple Google search did the job. And given who he was, and knowing the methods often employed by the Russian state, the police decided to go into the house in protective clothing.
[00:06:21] Remember, the poisoning of Litvinenko was just 12 years before, by this point, the Russian state had quite the reputation for poison being its weapon of choice, so the police decided to take precautions.
[00:06:35] They managed to get a spare key from the neighbour and unlocked the door.
[00:06:41] There was nothing particularly unusual or incriminating about what they found in the house, but within a few hours the police officer who had been the first to enter the property–a man named Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey–started to feel ill.
[00:07:00] Within a few days, he was critically ill and was rushed to hospital.
[00:07:06] He had been wearing protective clothing, but whatever it was, it was clearly powerful enough to have got through it.
[00:07:15] Meanwhile, Sergey and Yulia Skripal were slipping in and out of consciousness, doctors fighting to save their lives.
[00:07:25] On March 12th, just over a week after they had been found unconscious, the then British Prime Minister, Theresa May, released a statement.
[00:07:35] She said that toxic analysis had shown that all three had been poisoned by the deadly nerve agent, Novichok.
[00:07:45] Now, Novichok is not your average poison.
[00:07:49] It's one of the deadliest chemical weapons ever created, and was first developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It's not something you stumble across or buy off the black market. It’s a state-controlled substance, requiring advanced facilities to produce and handle.
[00:08:09] The name means “newcomer” in Russian, and it refers to a series of nerve agents designed to be more potent and harder to detect than anything the West had at the time.
[00:08:22] Now, Novichok works by disrupting the nervous system, causing muscles to seize up, organ failure, and, in many cases, death.
[00:08:33] Even the smallest amount can be fatal, and the fact that it was used in Salisbury, in the middle of a peaceful English town, was both shocking and brazen.
[00:08:45] Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, made it clear that the substance could only have come from Russia.
[00:08:52] And she said there were two possibilities about what could have happened.
[00:08:58] Either it was a state-sponsored attack, an attempted murder orchestrated by the Russian state.
[00:09:05] Or that Russia had lost control of its nerve agent stockpile and had let this deadly chemical get into the hands of rogue agents.
[00:09:16] Either way, it had come from Russian labs, so what was it, a state-sponsored murder or bureaucratic incompetence?
[00:09:25] Most commentators in the UK saw this as May not directly attacking Putin, but at least offering the possibility of incompetence.
[00:09:36] However, to the British authorities, it became increasingly probable it was the former, not the latter.
[00:09:44] And this was deeply problematic.
[00:09:48] Sergey Skripal might have been charged as a traitor in Russia but he was not in Russia, and he had been officially pardoned in 2010, eight years before.
[00:10:00] And not only that.
[00:10:02] He had been given British citizenship and was living quietly in the UK.
[00:10:08] Now I should add that it has since been claimed that Skripal was not living quite as quiet a life as it was originally made out and he was still doing some intelligence work on the side, thereby making him a slightly more legitimate target.
[00:10:24] This has not been publicly confirmed.
[00:10:27] And in any case, he was a middle-aged British civilian who seemed to have put his previous life behind him.
[00:10:35] And the assassination of a British citizen in Britain, regardless of what he might have done in a previous life, would have required authorisation from Putin himself, so the British intelligence authorities believed.
[00:10:51] In other words, like the poisoning of Litvinenko, Putin either ordered it or approved it.
[00:10:58] It was done on his wishes and/or with his blessing.
[00:11:03] Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin denied everything.
[00:11:07] They claimed it was an anti-Russian conspiracy and flatly denied any involvement.
[00:11:13] However, as the investigation progressed, more and more evidence started to emerge that was hard to explain.
[00:11:22] CCTV footage from both London and Salisbury showed the two Russian men you heard about at the start of the episode.
[00:11:31] It didn’t show exactly where they had gone, but the surveillance cameras picked them up at various locations throughout Salisbury, locations–I should add–that no normal tourist would go to.
[00:11:45] They were seen in surveillance footage in a residential area close to the nondescript suburban house that Sergey Skripal called home, and there is really no reason for any tourist to go here, especially if they have flown over from Moscow for a 48-hour trip.
[00:12:05] The British authorities identified these men as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.
[00:12:12] They even managed to get their mobile phone location data, which helped British authorities plot their movements when they were in the UK.
[00:12:21] If you've ever flown into London, you might have done a similar thing as these two men did: going through passport control at Gatwick airport, catching the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station, getting the tube to their hotel, then getting the tube to Waterloo station before catching a train to Salisbury.
[00:12:41] Suspiciously, however, the two men turned off their mobile phones before getting to Salisbury, only turning them back on after they had left.
[00:12:52] This was all made public information, which of course, put Moscow in a bit of a bind, a slightly tricky situation.
[00:13:02] There were two men who had been identified as Russian citizens, who were strongly suspected of having tried to kill Sergey Skripal.
[00:13:11] Now, how did this poisoning actually take place?
[00:13:15] Well, in all probability, the Novichok was placed on the door handle of Skripal’s house, and the idea was for Skripal to touch it when entering his home, die an unpleasant but quick death at home, and probably not be found for days or weeks.
[00:13:33] There would be an autopsy, but unless the authorities were specifically looking for a nerve agent like Novichok, they might well have missed it.
[00:13:42] Instead, they would have concluded that the 66-year-old Russian had died of a heart attack or a stroke, like so many other enemies of the Russian state over the past 30 years.
[00:13:54] Fortunately, his life and that of his daughter were saved, and it was clear that he hadn’t had a heart attack but had been the victim of the first state-sponsored use of a nerve agent on European soil since the Second World War.
[00:14:11] The Russian agents had failed in this mission, but there was an unfortunate casualty.
[00:14:18] Four months later, after an extensive attempt by health authorities to clean up the city, a local man found a perfume bottle in a charity bin.
[00:14:30] He had thought it was a gift, and gave it to his partner, a lady called Dawn Sturgess.
[00:14:36] Presumably thinking, “oh, how nice, what a lovely bottle”, she sprayed it on her wrists.
[00:14:43] Unbeknownst to her, this was the bottle in which the Novichok had been stored.
[00:14:50] Within hours, she became critically ill.
[00:14:54] Unlike the Skripals, who eventually recovered, Dawn Sturgess died, becoming an unintended and wholly innocent victim of this reckless operation.
[00:15:06] This was in July of 2018, and so whoever had done this, whoever had brought Novichok to Salisbury, had real blood on their hands.
[00:15:17] It was the start of a major diplomatic incident, with Theresa May again directly accusing the Kremlin, and the Kremlin denying all involvement and accusing Britain of needlessly damaging diplomatic relations.
[00:15:32] However, in September of that year, a few months after the incident, Vladimir Putin said that Russian authorities had found the potential suspects, the two men who by this time had been charged by British authorities in connection with the crime.
[00:15:49] They were civilians, Putin said, and that they would appear soon and tell their own side of the story.
[00:15:58] This sounded strange, but what followed was even stranger.
[00:16:04] There was an interview broadcast on RT, Russian state TV, with the two men who were clearly visible in the CCTV footage acting suspiciously in Salisbury.
[00:16:16] They both seemed nervous, and after admitting that, yes, they were the men in the CCTV footage, they attempted to explain their actions that weekend.
[00:16:28] They said that a friend had recommended them to go to Salisbury, but the more they talked, shifting nervously in their seats, the more surreal the “interview” became.
[00:16:40] The men were clearly very uncomfortable, and their answers were peppered with bizarre details like the exact height of Salisbury Cathedral’s spire as if they’d crammed for a geography quiz rather than rehearsed a believable alibi.
[00:16:58] The interviewer then asked them if they worked for GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency. The men denied it.
[00:17:07] When asked what they did for a job, if not the GRU, one responded, “if we tell you about our business, people we work with will be affected”. And when pressed, he responded, “to cut a long story short, we’re in the fitness industry”.
[00:17:26] Now, it’s not completely clear who the intended audience of this interview was.
[00:17:33] If it was for an international audience, it certainly didn’t work.
[00:17:38] Not only was it very hard to believe their story, but it also gave internet sleuths, armchair detectives, another very useful piece of evidence.
[00:17:50] The men had identified themselves as Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, but the authorities were fairly sure these were fake identities.
[00:18:02] Using a mixture of data from birth records, passport data, and early photographs, the investigative journalism outlet Bellingcat revealed the true identities of the pair.
[00:18:14] Their names were Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga, and they were, surprise, surprise, GRU agents, agents of the Russian military intelligence agency.
[00:18:28] They were clearly much better military operatives than they were actors, because they were highly decorated members of the Russian military, and there was even a photograph of Mishkin shaking Putin’s hand after being awarded a “hero of the Russian Federation” medal in 2014.
[00:18:48] Given all of this, now it was practically impossible to deny state involvement.
[00:18:55] The men who almost certainly administered the novichok were agents of the Russian state, and Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, told Parliament that “the conspiracy must have been approved at a senior level outside the GRU.”
[00:19:13] This could only mean one thing: the go-ahead came from Vladimir Putin himself.
[00:19:20] But what was actually going to happen?
[00:19:23] Well, on one level, the international fallout from the Salisbury poisoning was significant.
[00:19:29] The UK expelled 23 Russian diplomats, whom it identified as undeclared intelligence officers.
[00:19:36] In response, Russia expelled the same number of British diplomats.
[00:19:41] Western allies, including the United States and various countries in Europe, imposed further sanctions on Russia, deepening its isolation from the international community.
[00:19:52] But, this was really not much more than a slap on the wrist.
[00:19:57] Domestically, it appears that this incident did not harm Putin in the slightest.
[00:20:04] He had just won re-election with 76% of the public vote, and there were all sorts of conspiracy theories being touted in Russia suggesting that British authorities had killed Skripal in an attempt to damage Russia.
[00:20:19] Even the Russian ambassador to the UK hinted at his disbelief in the official verdict, saying that he hadn’t seen any proof that Skripal was even in hospital.
[00:20:31] And domestically, no, Putin hadn’t managed to kill Skripal, but he had sent yet another powerful message, just in case people hadn’t been paying attention to the dozens of opponents who had had mysterious plane crashes, heart attacks or had “tripped” near a fifth-floor window.
[00:20:50] There are no lengths he will not go to to silence an enemy, no matter where they are in the world and even if they are living a quiet and non-confrontational life, as Sergey Skripal is believed to have been.
[00:21:04] Now, to wrap things up, the Salisbury poisoning remains one of the most brazen and shocking acts of state-sponsored aggression in modern history, and certainly in modern British history.
[00:21:17] It was a calculated move, one designed not just to eliminate a perceived traitor, but to send a message to anyone considering betraying the Russian state.
[00:21:28] For Vladimir Putin, the message was simple: no one is beyond his reach.
[00:21:36] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the attempted murder of Sergey Skripal, and with that comes an end to this poison-themed mini-series on Vladimir Putin.
[00:21:48] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:21:52] Again, to state the absolutely blindingly obvious, there is so much more to this story and to the rise and rule of Vladimir Putin.
[00:22:00] I decided to go heavily with the poison angle because these stories are a reminder of the absolute power Putin wields, how vengeful he clearly is, and how bold and shameless he has become in his attempt to silence anyone who goes against him.
[00:22:16] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:22:21] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
