Six years on from the Salisbury poisonings, Putin’s Russia is only becoming more reckless

15 October 2024, 12:51 | Updated: 15 October 2024, 13:33

After the Salisbury poisonings, Britain will face even more devastating consequences if it fails to confront Putin decisively now.

Consider a counterfactual: a deadly chemical is released in a British city. Two people fall desperately ill—vomiting, convulsing, collapsing. Then another. Soon, the entire community is quarantined. Authorities have no idea what they’re dealing with or how far it’s spread.

The mysterious substance reaches the water supply. Local hospitals overflow with patients suffering the same symptoms. Hundreds die or are left with permanent injuries. A public health emergency is declared. Tests reveal it’s a weapon of mass destruction dropped by a hostile state.

The British military responds with a limited strike on the regime’s weapons facilities—triggering a response in kind. NATO’s collective defence clause is invoked, dragging Britain and its allies into a war with a nuclear power.

Sound far-fetched? This scenario could have played out in March 2018, when suspected Russian agents travelled to Salisbury to assassinate Russian dissident Sergei Skripal using the powerful nerve agent Novichok. They smeared it on the door handle of his home before casting away a perfume bottle filled with enough of poison to kill thousands.

It’s chilling to consider what might have happened if that bottle had broken near a waterway or been picked up by children. Tragically, four months later, Charlie Rowley found it and unknowingly gifted it to his partner, Dawn Sturgess, who rubbed it into her own skin.

I’m in Salisbury covering the public inquiry into her death, which seeks to uncover how this tragedy happened, who was responsible, and whether British authorities were prepared to protect the public from such an attack.

The scars in Salisbury are clear to see six years later. With police patrols and lingering anxiety, the community bears the painful memory of those days. Dawn’s mother, Caroline, testified emotionally, expressing solace that her daughter’s was the only life lost.

Skripal believes Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered the attack directly as punishment for his ‘betrayal of the motherland.’ Salisbury was not the first time Putin’s adversaries fell mysteriously ill on British soil. These poisonings fit a larger pattern of Kremlin-sanctioned attacks abroad. In 2002, Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko died of radiation poisoning in London.

The UK and its allies responded to the Salisbury attack with condemnations and economic sanctions, yet sales of Russian gas to Europe continued—helping to build our adversary’s war machine. The world moved on. Dawn’s family could not.

Fast-forward to 2024, and Putin’s forces are locked in a brutal war of attrition in Ukraine. Desperation has made him more reckless—and our hesitance more daring. Just last week, MI5 warned that he has ordered his agents to wreak “havoc” on Britain’s streets. At Dawn’s inquiry, we’ve heard how the Russian threat is “real and immediate.”

In September 2022, a Russian fighter pilot shot at an RAF plane over the North Sea; only by a quirk of fate did an equipment malfunction prevent a direct hit. Yet Britain and our allies continue to act with caution, drip-feeding Ukraine with just enough weapons to survive but not enough to win. This is a dangerously destabilizing dynamic.

Like the poisonings in 2018, there are no good outcomes here, but failing to confront Putin’s aggression today could lead to catastrophic consequences tomorrow. We must stand firm, providing Ukraine with everything it needs to win and investing in our own defence capabilities.

The Dawn Sturgess inquiry is a key part of that process, looking at our ability—or inability—to protect ourselves. This isn’t just about Ukraine—it’s about stopping the next Salisbury.