Inquiry Holds Putin Responsible for Novichok Death

An independent inquiry has concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin bears moral responsibility for the death of Dawn Sturgess, a British woman who died in 2018 after exposure to the Novichok nerve agent discarded by Russian operatives during an assassination attempt on former spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England. The report, published on Thursday, found the operation was authorized at the highest levels of the Russian government and represented a reckless demonstration of state power.

The inquiry, chaired by Lord Hughes of Ombersley, detailed how three GRU military intelligence operatives—using the aliases Alexander Petrov, Ruslan Boshirov, and Sergey Fedotov—traveled from Moscow to London on March 2, 2018. Two days later, Petrov and Boshirov applied the nerve agent to the door handle of Skripal's home in Salisbury, a city in Wiltshire. Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer convicted of spying for Britain in 2004, had been released in a 2010 prisoner swap and resettled in the UK. He and his daughter, Yulia, who was visiting from Russia, fell seriously ill that afternoon after touching the contaminated handle and collapsed on a park bench in the city...