The Salisbury spy poisonings five years later: Did the UK’s response change Putin’s path to invading Ukraine? | UK News

When Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury town center – five years ago to this day – few would have known a huge diplomatic crisis was about to erupt.

Mr Skripalan old Russian intelligence officer turned British double agent, had been targeted by the deadly nerve agent novichok in an assassination attempt, which Western officials say has since led to the Kremlin.

Although the couple survived the attack, Dawn Sturgess, a mother of three who came into contact with the nerve agent from a discarded perfume bottle, was allegedly used by the assassins to administer the doorknob of home of the Skripals, later died from exposure to the chemical.

The incident sparked a huge diplomatic row between the UNITED KINGDOM and Russia, which has denied any involvement in the incident, even after British intelligence forces shared details of two Russian men suspected of carrying out the attack.

A famous icy meeting between the British Prime Minister at the time, Therese Mayand Russian President Vladimir Poutine followed, while Britain expelled 23 diplomats and imposed limited financial sanctions on assets that “threaten life or property”.

It was, at the time, the strongest response to Putin’s Russia.

According to Keir Giles, an expert on Russia-related security issues, it was also a significant step up from the “weak response” to the poisoning of another former Russian agent, Alexander Litvinenkoin London in 2006.

Mr Giles, and senior consultant at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, told Sky News: “The response in Salisbury was a success story for the UK. It was about as powerful as it gets.

“The UK has succeeded in rallying behind it enormous solidarity from the West.”

He said a key decision that would have particularly troubled Putin was the naming and shaming of the two suspected killers, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, who both denied involvement.

“Putin would probably have hoped these actions had gone undetected. Suddenly everyone knows and there is no more secrecy,” Mr Giles added.

Despite this, novichok was again used against Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who fell ill on a flight to Moscow in 2020. He later recovered.

Nor did the UK’s response to the alleged Russian aggression deter Putin from launching an invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“The UK’s response would have had no effect on Putin’s conclusion and is independent of Russia’s situation with the invasion of Ukraine.

“It’s a completely different issue in Russia – because Salisbury is really about dealing with a former Russian intelligence officer in the UK.”

The war, he said, was instead aimed at satisfying Putin’s longer-term ambition to restore Russia as an imperial power on the world stage.

However, he said the response in Salisbury would have had an impact, particularly on Putin’s confidence to attempt other similar assassinations in the UK.

“There are risks (for these incidents) and these should be weighed against the benefit of carrying out a successful attempt.

“The UK’s response to Salisbury would have increased that risk.”

Professor Tomila Lankina, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics (LSE), who has analyzed disinformation campaigns following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine, also believes that the UK’s strong response to the Salisbury poisonings would have surprised Putin. .

“If you look at the Litvinenko poisoning, the responses should have been more robust, but I remember being impressed with the response in Salisbury,” she said.

Click to subscribe to Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts

“The kind of confidence Russia had to carry out the poisoning was probably avoidable if the UK had stronger and forceful reactions to Russia’s past transgressions.

“But I remember being impressed with the response in Salisbury. I think that would have surprised Putin.”

Learn more:
How the Salisbury poisoning happened – a timeline
Salisbury still affected by ‘trauma’ from novichok poisonings
Podcast: The poisoning five years later

But Professor Lankina, whose book The Estate Origins Of Democracy In Russia examines Russia’s social structures, thinks more could have been done.

“There was a reliance on Russian money, businesses that were advantaged and benefited from Russian money.”

She said she believed there was an indirect path between the events of the Litvinenko and Salisbury poisonings and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

However, she said that path would have been more likely to have been cut off if the West’s reaction had been stronger following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Professor Svetlana Stephenson, a Russian-born academic living in the UK and working for London Metropolitan University, said she also believed the Salisbury poisonings were partly because Russia thought it could act without serious repercussions.

“I don’t think Russia would have wanted the incident to be detected. But when they did, the response was tacit recognition,” said Professor Stephenson, who has written articles critical of Putin in the the country’s independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.

“Part of that message was that ‘we can do what we love’.

“In Russia it would have just been seen as a situation of security services, just Russians dealing with someone they consider a traitor, rather than an attack on British soil.”

Professor Stephenson believes, for this reason, that the Salisbury attack would have had little impact on Putin’s confidence in any confrontation with the West.

“When the war started, I thought he looked quite depressed, and you sensed something unexpected had happened, but I think the war emboldened him and it seems to be now the new normal,” she added.

“There is some discontent in the cities, but in provincial Russia people seem to support the war – and even the mobilization.

“But we can only trust what we see because there is no real opposition in Russia.”