The Skripals' absence from Dawn Sturgess inquiry shows west must return to Cold War security tactics

15 October 2024, 10:12

In the wake of the Salisbury poisoning and Russia's ongoing pursuit of defectors, fear continues to shape the lives of those who betray the Kremlin.

In March 2018, two Russian military intelligence (GRU) officers, Anatoliy Chepiga and Aleksander Mishkin, traveled to Salisbury, England to smear a chemical weapon, Novichok (literally, “newbie”), on the doorknob of Sergey Skripal’s house. Their operation had two simultaneous objectives.

One was to eliminate a traitor—Skripal was a GRU officer who chose to work for British intelligence in the 1990s. Such a choice is unforgivable in the GRU. Soon after Skripal’s poisoning, Russian President Vladimir Putin bluntly called traitors “scumbags” worthy of death.

Nevertheless, Chepiga and Mishkin failed to achieve that objective.

The second objective was to instill fear in the minds of anyone else who chose a similar path of betrayal in the future. The outrageous nature of the Skripal assassination attempt warned Russians: we know where you are and will show no mercy.

That message was repeated in February 2024, when Russia-connected assassins killed Russian officer Maksim Kuzminov, who defected to Ukraine in August 2023.

While pursuing those objectives, Chepiga and Mishkin likely did not plan to kill an innocent bystander. However, their incompetent tradecraft led not only to their own exposure but also to the tragic death of Dawn Sturgess, a person unrelated to the operation.

Their careless disposal of the Novichok bottle allowed Ms. Sturgess to expose herself to the poison, leading to her death.

But despite their ineptitude, the warning message was heard loudly and clearly. Skripal and his daughter Yuliya chose not to attend Dawn Sturgess’s murder trial, which opened on 14 October.

Their decision is reasonable—their presence would thrust them into the public eye, which they have avoided since their near-death experience in 2018.

The success of the second objective pushes the Western intelligence services who receive and resettle Russian defectors to return to Cold War-like security measures. During the Soviet era, Western services provided defectors new names and money to resettle and sent them to out-of-the-way places to evade public scrutiny.

Fear of Russian retribution likely increased even further when six Bulgarians were arrested in the UK in 2023. The UK prosecutor involved in that case accused the group of collecting information about Russians abroad.

The Skripals’ decision to avoid the Sturgess trial is based on fear, but fear is exactly how the Putin regime rules its people, both inside Russia and abroad. Western services need to return to the Cold War to assuage that fear.

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Dr Kevin Riehle is a Lecturer in Intelligence and International Security at Brunel University London.

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