The Poisoning of Sergei Skripal

On March 4, in the city of Salisbury in southern Britain, 66-year-old former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal was poisoned. His 30-year-old daughter Yulia was poisoned together with him. They were both taken to intensive care in critical condition.

The Kremlin has already denied involvement in this poisoning, but investigative journalists do not rule out that there is a "Russian trace" in this high-profile case.

In the UK, the police counter-terrorism unit has taken up the investigation of this case.

The Guardian, citing its own sources, reports that according to the investigation, Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent.

Sergei Skripal served in the Russian GRU and retired in 1999 with the rank of colonel. Until 2003 he worked in the administrative department of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

In December 2004, the Russian FSB arrested him and accused him of high treason and cooperation with British intelligence. The Russian special services claim he was recruited back in 1995. Skripal himself pleaded guilty and in 2006 received 13 years in prison.

According to the media, he was an agent of an intelligence service operating undercover in Europe, in particular he "worked" for the British MI-6. For the information he had been supplying since the 1990s, Skripal received 100,000 dollars. In 2010, then-President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev pardoned Skripal, who by that time had already served 5.5 years in prison.

Later, he and three other Russian citizens convicted of spying for the US and the UK were exchanged for ten agents of the Russian special services who had been detained in the US in June 2010.