U.K. Charges Two Russians With Attempted Murder of Spy, Daughter U.K. authorities believe the suspects in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal are Russian military intelligence officers By Stephen Fidler and Jason Douglas
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-charges-two-russians-with-attempted-murder-of-spy-daughter-1536143138?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=3&cx_tag=contextual&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s
LONDON—British authorities charged two men that they believe are Russian military intelligence officers with the attempted murder of a former spy and his daughter in March, an incident that prompted the largest-ever collective expulsion of Russian diplomats from the West.
Prosecutors charged the men—named as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov but those names are believed to be aliases—with four offenses related to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, who has lived in Britain since a 2010 spy exchange with Moscow. The charges also included conspiracy to murder and the use and possession of nerve agent Novichok.
“This was not a rogue operation,” she said. “It was almost certainly also approved outside the GRU at a senior level of the Russian state.”
The charges reinforce how the attack—which Moscow denies—continues to provoke profound tensions between Russia and the U.K. and its allies. The U.K. said it wouldn’t seek extradition of the two men, since the Russian constitution forbids it, but that a European Arrest Warrant had been obtained, providing for their arrest if they set foot in the European Union.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that in addition to failing to provide proof that the Russian state was involved in the poisoning, the British government had refused Russia’s offer to send its own investigators to the U.K. to help investigate the case.
In a statement to lawmakers Wednesday, Prime Minister Theresa May said the attack was almost certainly authorized at “a senior level” of the Russian state. She added that the U.K. government concluded that the suspects are officers from the Russian military intelligence service, also known as the GRU.CONTINUE AT SITE
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