On a chilly evening in March 2018, the quiet city of Salisbury, England, was thrust into the international spotlight when former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench. The cause: Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent, had been smeared on the front door handle of Skripal’s home. What followed was a tale of espionage, tragedy, and political fallout that continues to reverberate through Britain and beyond.
This week, a UK public inquiry delivered its final, damning verdict: Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally authorized the attack, a move described as “astonishingly reckless” and intended as a chilling display of Russian power. The inquiry, led by former UK Supreme Court judge Anthony Hughes, concluded that the operation was not just an act of revenge against Skripal, who had sold Russian secrets to MI6 before settling in Britain after a 2010 spy swap, but a public statement to the world. According to BBC, Hughes wrote, “The attack on Sergei Skripal by Russia was not, it seems clear, designed simply as revenge against him, but amounted to a public statement, for both international and domestic consumption, that Russia will act decisively in what it regards as its own interests.”
The human cost of this power play was devastating. Four months after the initial poisoning, Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year-old mother of three, died after unwittingly spraying herself with Novichok from a counterfeit perfume bottle discarded by the Russian operatives. The inquiry found that the bottle had contained enough poison to kill thousands, and that the agents’ disregard for public safety was “astonishingly reckless.” Hughes was unequivocal in his assignment of responsibility: “I have concluded that the operation to assassinate Sergei Skripal must have been authorised at the highest level, by President Putin.”
Sturgess’s death, according to the inquiry, was the tragic consequence of Russia’s violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, as Novichok was developed and held by Russia in contravention of international law. The report stated, “The GRU is responsible for the death of a British national on UK soil after President Putin himself authorised the operation to poison the Skripals with deadly nerve agent Novichok. This subsequently resulted in the tragic death of Ms Sturgess.”
For British intelligence and law enforcement, the attack was a wake-up call. When the call came in to MI6 headquarters on March 4, 2018, it was met with shock and alarm. Skripal had been considered a low-risk defector, partly because he had been pardoned by Russian authorities and had declined offers of a new identity or life in the UK. In hindsight, this was a grave miscalculation. The inquiry revealed there were no updated, regular assessments of the risks Skripal faced, even as relations with Russia soured following the annexation of Crimea and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in 2014.
Some in the intelligence community now admit that the only thing that might have prevented the attack was if Skripal had accepted a completely new identity and life. As a “settled defector,” however, he had the final say—and he chose to stay visible. The report also noted that Skripal’s ongoing contacts with European intelligence services may have further raised his risk profile. Putin, himself a former spy with a well-documented disdain for traitors, was not one to forget a perceived betrayal, and neither was the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.
The attack’s execution was both sophisticated and careless. The GRU team entered the UK on a short-term mission, delivered the poison, and then abandoned the Novichok-filled perfume bottle in a public area. Within months, the operatives were named, and investigative work by outlets like Bellingcat exposed many of the GRU unit’s operations and fake identities. According to BBC, the wider GRU unit has since had “many of its operations and some of the fake identities it uses exposed.”
The political repercussions were immediate and far-reaching. British police charged three suspected members of the Russian hit team in absentia. The UK government, on December 4, 2025, announced new sanctions against the GRU intelligence agency and summoned the Russian ambassador over what it called Moscow’s “ongoing campaign of hostile activity.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer issued a strong condemnation: “The Salisbury poisonings shocked the nation and today’s findings are a grave reminder of the Kremlin’s disregard for innocent lives. Dawn’s needless death was a tragedy and will forever be a reminder of Russia’s reckless aggression. My thoughts are with her family and loved ones.”
Starmer continued, “The UK will always stand up to Putin’s brutal regime and call out his murderous machine for what it is. Today’s sanctions are the latest step in our unwavering defence of European security, as we continue to squeeze Russia’s finances and strengthen Ukraine’s position at the negotiating table.”
Russia, for its part, has consistently denied any involvement. The Russian embassy in London responded to the inquiry’s findings by “categorically reject[ing] baseless and senseless accusations, including those directed” against Putin, and accused the UK of seeking to “disrupt the accelerating negotiation process for a peaceful settlement of the conflict around Ukraine.”
Since the Salisbury attack, Britain and its European allies have expelled large numbers of Russian diplomats in an effort to disrupt Moscow’s intelligence networks. Counter Terrorism Police report that their work to tackle threats from hostile states has grown five-fold since the incident. But Russia has adapted its tactics. According to the BBC, Moscow has increasingly turned to proxies and hired agents—such as a group of Bulgarians convicted earlier this year for surveillance and planned kidnappings in the UK. These “amateurs but still dangerous” operatives represent a new, more dispersed threat. Roman Dobrokhotov, a Russian journalist in exile and a target of these proxies, observed, “Of course, they will fail 99% of the time. But the problem is that if they have 100 groups like this, one of this 100 will succeed. And they don’t care about the 99 groups that will be arrested.”
This new model of disposable agents for hire, sometimes even low-level British criminals, has forced UK authorities to rethink their approach to counterintelligence. Surveillance, sabotage, and other low-level acts of aggression have become more common, as Russia and its proxies remain engaged in a simmering conflict with the UK and Europe. The ability to carry out another nerve agent poisoning may be diminished, thanks to greater awareness and stronger defenses, but the threat of unconventional attacks persists.
The Skripal case is not the first time a UK inquiry has pointed the finger at Putin for attacks on British soil. In 2016, an investigation concluded that the Russian president had likely ordered the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB agent, using radioactive polonium-210. The pattern is clear: Moscow’s reach is long, and its willingness to use lethal force against perceived enemies is undiminished.
As the dust settles from the latest inquiry, Britain faces a sobering reality: the shadow war with Russia is far from over, and the lessons of Salisbury must not be forgotten.