The Skripal poisonings – have British spies learned the lessons?
When the call came to the officer at MI6 headquarters on the evening of 4 March 2018, it was met with surprise and alarm. One of his agents was lying in a hospital bed, apparently poisoned.
The revelation that Sergei Skripal was targeted in the UK sent shockwaves through the world of British spies and raised important but difficult questions. this is the last report. But have all the lessons been learned?
One question was whether more could have been done to protect Skripal. Skripal was recruited to spy for MI6 in the 1990s but was captured by the Russians before being traded as part of a 2010 spy swap.
The assessment of the ongoing risk to him at the time of his arrival in the UK was relatively low. After all, he was forgiven. Top spies later admitted this was an erroneous assumption. As a “settled refugee” he also had his own say in what kind of security he wanted, and it was clear that he did not want a new identity and a new life. This may be the only thing that will prevent the attack.
The report states that there may be no signs of a dramatic attack using nerve gas, but that there have been no up-to-date and regular assessments of the risks it faces.
By 2014, relations with Russia were deteriorating due to the first crisis over Ukraine. Skripal’s meetings with European intelligence services may have increased his risk profile. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was himself a former spy and often expressed his hatred for traitors, was not a man who would forget betrayal. Neither did the GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency of which Skripal was a member.
The report suggests that the use of Novichok nerve agent was a show of force by the Russian state. But many in the intelligence community believe it is actually intended as a message to others: If they reveal Russian secrets to Western intelligence, they too will be caught, even if it takes years and their families are put at risk.
This lesson was quickly learned by British intelligence and security services, who provided greater protection to those fleeing the UK and others at risk in the immediate aftermath of the poisoning.
The report states that there is no doubt that a GRU unit was responsible for the poisoning. They came to the country on a short-term mission and managed to deliver the poison and leave, leaving behind the Novichok-filled perfume bottle that would kill Dawn Sturgess.
The operators involved were named within months and the wider GRU unit had many of its operations and some of the false identities it used exposed, notably by investigative website Bellingcat. But can they do it again?
Russia’s intelligence operations in the UK and Europe were suppressed. Following Salisbury and the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there was a mass expulsion across Europe to complicate the activities of Russian diplomats. There is also more information sharing to identify operators’ travel.
But Russia also adapted. Knowing that it has become more difficult to get Russian agents into the UK in recent years, the company turned to proxies to carry out its work. For example, a group of Bulgarians in England were hired from Moscow to spy on targets in Moscow in exchange for money. Them He was sentenced earlier this year.
They followed people on planes and talked about kidnappings. They were amateurs, but still dangerous. “Of course, 99% of the time they will fail. But the problem is that if there are 100 groups like this, one of those 100 groups will succeed,” Roman Dobrokhotov, a Russian journalist exiled in the UK and a target of the Bulgarians, told me. “And they don’t care about the 99 groups that get arrested.”
This is a different model for Russian intelligence; use of disposable agents for hire. They also paid low-level British criminals to carry out arson attacks. This requires a different type of policing to detect activities compared to older methods of detecting spies. Counter Terrorism Police said work to combat threats from hostile states had increased five-fold since Salisbury.
Today, Russia, its spies and proxies are engaged in a low-level conflict with Britain and other European countries that involves carrying out acts of surveillance and sabotage. With better awareness and stronger defenses, their ability to otherwise poison the refugee using a nerve agent is almost certainly reduced. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other kinds of dangers.
