Western powers must make a “collective” effort to crackdown on Russian military intelligence operations, British Prime Minister Theresa May said Wednesday.
May announced the indictment of two officers of Russia’s GRU in connection to the use of a chemical weapon to poison a Russian double agent in Salisbury, England, which resulted in the death of one woman who was subsequently exposed to the poison by accident. The incident punctuated May’s call for a broader Western effort to diminish the spy agency.
“The actions of the GRU are a threat to all our allies and to all our citizens,” May told the House of Commons. “We are increasing our understanding of what the GRU is doing in our countries, shining a light on their activities, exposing their methods and sharing them with our allies, just as we have done with Salisbury.”
British officials identified a pair of Russian nationals who visited Salisbury multiple times the weekend of the attack on Sergey Skripal, a former spy who worked as a double agent on behalf of the United Kingdom. She said law enforcement found “traces” of the nerve agent in their East London hotel.
“This hard evidence has enabled the independent Crown Prosecution Service to conclude they have a sufficient basis on which to bring charges against these two men for the attack in Salisbury,” she said.
Russia mocked May’s case.
“We heard or saw two names, but these names mean nothing to me personally, just like you, I believe,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov. “I do not understand why that was done and what signal the British side is sending. That is difficult to comprehend.”
May, sidestepping “a deluge of disinformation” from Russia, identified the Skripal case as part of a pattern of Russian military intelligence operations.
“We know that the GRU has played a key part in malign Russian activity in recent years,” she said. “And on the basis of what we have learnt in the Salisbury investigation — and what we know about this organization more broadly — we must now step up our collective efforts, specifically against the GRU.”
