A UK inquiry finds President Putin bears moral responsibility for a woman’s death in the 2018 Novichok attack, leading to new sanctions against Russia.
LONDON: The United Kingdom has sanctioned Russia’s intelligence service and summoned Moscow’s ambassador after a public inquiry found President Vladimir Putin bore “moral responsibility” for a death linked to a 2018 nerve agent attack.
The inquiry concluded the attempted assassination of former double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury “must have been authorised at the highest level, by President Putin”.
It stated the Russian leader therefore bears “moral responsibility” for the death of Dawn Sturgess four months later.
Sturgess, a 44-year-old mother of three, died after spraying herself with a discarded perfume bottle containing the military-grade nerve agent Novichok.
The bottle had been dumped by two suspected Russian spies after their failed attempt to poison Skripal and his daughter.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the report’s findings were clear.
“This report is clear: moral responsibility lies with Putin,” Starmer told reporters.
“It’s further evidence of the shocking and reckless hostile activity on UK soil,” he added.
Following the report’s publication, London summoned the Russian ambassador and imposed sanctions on the GRU intelligence agency “in its entirety”.
Kremlin spokesperson Maria Zakharova told Russian state media that Moscow “does not recognise illegitimate sanctions which are imposed under trumped-up pretexts… and reserves the right to retaliate.”
The inquiry chair, former senior judge Anthony Hughes, condemned the operation’s recklessness.
“The conduct of Petrov and Boshirov, their GRU superiors, and those who authorised the mission up to and including, as I have found, President Putin, was astonishingly reckless,” Hughes stated.
“They, and only they, bear moral responsibility for Dawn’s death,” he said, calling Sturgess “the entirely innocent victim of the cruel and cynical acts of others”.
The inquiry heard the perfume bottle contained enough Novichok to poison “thousands” of people.
It found the risk to others beyond the intended target was “entirely foreseeable”.
The lawyer for Sturgess’s family said they felt the report was “not satisfactory” as it left questions about the attack’s preventability unanswered.
In a witness statement, Skripal said he believed Putin ordered the attack based on his analysis of Russia’s “continuous degradation”.
The 2018 attack led to the largest-ever expulsion of diplomats between Western powers and Russia at the time.
A previous British inquiry found Putin “probably approved” the 2006 London killing of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko. – AFP
