It is highly likely that on March 4 Russia used a military-grade nerve agent in an attempt to kill one of its former spies in the United Kingdom. On March 14, British prime minister Theresa May retaliated by banishing 23 Russian diplomats “who have been identified as undeclared intelligence officers” from her nation’s shores.
Sergei Skripal worked as a double agent for Britain in the 1990s, and the Russians hold him responsible for exposing clandestine agents around the globe. Imprisoned in Russia in 2006, he was part of a spy-swap deal in 2010. He is today a British citizen, as is his 33-year-old daughter Yulia, who was also targeted in the Sunday afternoon attack in the city center of Salisbury.
May called this “an indiscriminate and reckless act against the United Kingdom.” This is an accurate description of the use of a nerve agent in a highly populated area. Trace amounts of the chemical weapon have been detected around Salisbury, and a British police sergeant, Nick Bailey, is among those injured by it. Sergei and Yulia Skripal remain in critical condition.
The nerve agent, part of a group called Novichok, was developed in the Soviet Union. May asked the Russians to explain how their nerve agent might have ended up in the United Kingdom and if it could have come into someone else’s possession. As she reported to the House of Commons, the Russians have provided “no credible explanation that could suggest they lost control of their nerve agent.” Russia denies any culpability for the act, calling accusations of Kremlin involvement “nonsense.” Clearly that is a lie.
The flouting of international norms; the use of lethal force to instill fear in dissidents; the readiness to renege on international agreements—these are the telltale signs of Kremlin involvement. The dissident Alexander Litvinenko fled Russia in 2000 and became a strident critic of Vladimir Putin. In 2006, he mysteriously ingested polonium-210 with his tea in London and died three weeks later. When the Russian opposition politician and democracy campaigner Vladimir Kara-Murza stepped up his criticisms of the Putin regime, he was poisoned twice, once in 2015 and again in 2017. (Kara-Murza survived both attacks.)
At the United Nations on March 14, Nikki Haley pledged that the United States “stands in absolute solidarity with Great Britain.” “If we don’t take immediate concrete measures to address this now, Salisbury will not be the last place we see chemical weapons used,” she said. “They could be used here in New York or in cities of any country.” Assassination has become one of the Kremlin’s chief foreign policy tools. The Putin regime kills its enemies without compunction within its own borders and on foreign soil. Whether Putin is trying to frighten those who have opposed him or is simply testing Western nations’ resolve, one thing is clear: He shows no signs of relenting.
