In 2014, Wiltshire’s second-largest town was to draw an incredulous reaction from corners of Britain’s national press.
“The world’s best cities – Milan, Vienna and … Salisbury?!” gasped The Telegraph, as the Mail suggested “eyebrows will have been raised” by the unassuming city’s inclusion in Lonely Planet’s list of the top 10 cities in the world.
Fast-forward four years and another high-profile case for the city’s tourism credentials was being made on the global stage, albeit in far more tragic and sinister circumstances.
In an instantly infamous appearance on Russian state TV, two men going by the names of Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, claiming to work in sports nutrition, declared they had visited the “wonderful” city twice in one weekend to see Stonehenge and the “famous Salisbury Cathedral … known for its 123-metre spire”.
Put off by mild snow, which they said had left a “muddy slush everywhere”, the men returned to their dingy London hotel and returned again the next day, they claimed.
This time, the headlines were global, and the incredulity off the charts. “The spies who came in because it was cold,” jeered The London Economic, while the UK’s former foreign affairs committee chair Tom Tugendhat responded: “The idea that Russians were turned away by snow is laughable.”
But despite the mocking response, the stakes could not have been higher. At the heart of a mire of geopolitical tensions, the pair stood accused of tearing lives asunder in the sleepy English county, following the first use of a nerve agent in a European city since the Second World War.
The chemical – deployed in an apparent assassination attempt – would eventually cause the death of a British citizen, and the traumatic hospitalisations of several others.
The discovery by members of the public of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, poisoned and unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury on 4 March 2018, would send shockwaves through the international community.
As the pair were taken into hospital, along with Wiltshire Police’s DS Nick Bailey, who was severely poisoned after having gone to their aid, a search for the male victim’s name by police revealed his identity as a former Russian spy.
By that evening, MI6 was reportedly a hive of tensions, and rapid response officers at the UK’s nearby biological and chemical military research facility Porton Down were sent to take samples from the scene.
Their analysis identified A234, a military-grade novichok nerve agent first created by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The government scientist responsible described it as a “jaw-dropping moment”, saying: “I went through a number of emotions from disbelief to anger. It’s one of the most dangerous substances known. It’s quite unique in its ability to poison individuals at very low concentrations.”
A former member of the GRU, Skripal had previously acted as a double agent, selling Russian secrets to the West.
The then-66-year-old had been freed in a spy-swap eight years prior to the attack, and felt safe enough in the UK to live under his own identity – as do many other Western agents who had been swapped at the same time. He is not thought to have remained active in the intelligence field, nor is there any evidence to suggest that Yulia – who was visiting from Moscow – ever followed in his footsteps.
Displaying no public proof of its own, Theresa May’s government – numbering Boris Johnson as foreign secretary – immediately pointed a finger at Russia, demanding the Kremlin demonstrate its innocence within 36 hours. Amid warnings with echoes of the promises of weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq War, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn called on the UK to also provide evidence, and was derided in the Commons and tabloids as a traitor.
Russia refused May’s ultimatum, responding that British threats to punish Moscow would not go unanswered, describing the allegations of Russian involvement as a provocation.
The UK, the US and 22 other Western governments retaliated by expelling more than 100 Russian diplomats – in a move that would likely have caused real damage to Russia’s intelligence capabilities. However, with a shift away from diplomatic espionage towards more technologically capable means, the damage was most likely short-lived.
In the months that followed, British police and intelligence services combed through hours of CCTV footage, eventually identifying two suspects, who had flown from Moscow to London and twice visited Salisbury in a single weekend.
The police began building a case against the men, known as Boshirov and Petrov on their passports and visas, which saw a major development with the discovery of the weapon used to distribute the nerve agent – a fake Nina Ricci perfume bottle.
However, the discovery was made in tragic circumstances. On 27 June, nearly four months after the initial attack, the discarded bottle was accidentally picked up by Charlie Rowley, who three days later gave it as a present to his partner, Dawn Sturgess.
Both fell ill in Amesbury the following day. The mother-of-three, who applied the substance onto her wrists, died days later. Rowley was eventually discharged from hospital, before being readmitted with sight problems and meningitis.
After spraying the substance, Ms Sturgess told Mr Rowley within 15 minutes that she felt “very, very strange” before he found her lying in the bath, “convulsing and foaming at the mouth”.
The poison caused Ms Sturgess to have a cardiac arrest, leading to a hypoxic brain injury, with her condition described as “unsurvivable” by the time paramedics arrived on scene.
The news of her death came hours after the home secretary announced that the government had “no current plans” for additional sanctions on Russia after the spate of diplomatic expulsions. But days later, the government accused Russia of using British streets, parks and towns as “dumping grounds for poison”, with the lead investigator on the Salisbury attack Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon alleging the perfume bottle had possibly contained enough novichok to kill thousands of people.
Indeed, in what was a harrowing time for local residents and particularly emergency responders in the region, a number of paramedics later reported feeling unwell in the wake of the two incidents.
A month later, British police charged the two Russians with murder, with Theresa May continuing to assert it was not a “rogue operation” as the Met laid out partial evidence. This included CCTV footage showing the pair arriving in Salisbury and heading to and from the direction of Skripal’s home.
It was at this point that the pair made their widely maligned appearance on RT, which one former British intelligence official would later remark to this paper indicated slipping standards in Russian intelligence.
Aided no doubt by their globally viewed TV appearance, their true identities – which had reportedly been known to British intelligence – were revealed publicly shortly afterwards.
First, the investigative website Bellingcat unmasked Boshirov as Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, a recipient of Russia’s highest state award. Shortly afterwards, Petrov was revealed to be Alexander Mishkin, also of the GRU, the Russian intelligence service.
The Kremlin strongly denies any culpability to this day and has accused the UK of spreading “Russophobia”. A Levada Centre poll in 2018 of 1,600 Russians indicated that only 3 per cent believed Russian forces were behind the attack, with 56 per cent saying “it could have been anyone”.
However, an onslaught of further Russian intelligence operations would later be revealed – among them an attempted cyberattack on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the Hague, which was about to release the results of its probe into the Skripal case.
While the UK’s immediate hardline response to the attack was likely influenced by the accusations of weakness it faced following its tentative response to the assassination of Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006, critics have argued that leaders did not go far enough.
An international arrest warrant was issued for three Russians thought to be involved in the attack, but as the Russian constitution does not allow the extradition of its citizens, it is unlikely they will ever stand trial.
The then-home secretary, Priti Patel, ordered that the inquest into Ms Sturgess’s death be converted into a public inquiry in 2021.
The inquiry, which was chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Lord Hughes of Ombersley, held public hearings between October and December last year.
It considered whether the UK authorities took appropriate precautions to protect Mr Skripal from being attacked and whether the poisoning of Ms Sturgess could have been prevented if public warnings about not picking up discarded items had been issued.
The Skripals did not give oral evidence at the inquiry over fears for their safety, while Mr Rowley was excused for health reasons.
Dame Sally Davies, the former chief medical officer for England, told the inquiry she had nightmares about someone picking up the discarded nerve agent after the Skripals were poisoned.
“I remember raising this during at least one meeting and becoming reassured, one, that the police were hunting for a discarded vial,” she said.
“This led to me later saying publicly that no one should pick anything up which they had not dropped.”
In closing submissions to the inquiry, Michael Mansfield KC, also representing Ms Sturgess’s family, said the poisonings were a result of an “abject failure” by the UK government to protect the public.
