Bellingcat: The GRU globetrotters - mission London - Jul. 01, 2019

Bellingcat: The GRU globetrotters – mission London

Published July 1, 2019 at 11:50 am

A police officer guards a police cordon in front of the bench covered in a protective tent in The Maltings shopping centre in Salibury, southern England, on March 9, 2018 where a man and woman were found critically ill after being apparently poisoned with what was later identified as a nerve agent sparking a major incident on March 4. - Britain vowed on March 8 to act "without hesitation" if a state is found responsible for a nerve agent attack on a former Russian double agent, as police said 21 people in total had received medical treatment following the incident. Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain unconscious in a critical but stable condition following the attack on Sunday in the sleepy south-western English city of Salisbury.

Photo by AFP

In a series of previous investigations, Bellingcat and the Insider identified the two key suspects in the Novichok poisoning of Sergey and Yulia Skripal and the subsequent poisoning death of Dawn Sturgess. We identified the two suspects, who traveled under the fake identities of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, as Russian military intelligence (GU/GRU) officers Anatoliy Chepiga and Dr. Alexander Mishkin, both having rank of colonel and both recipients of Russia’s highest military award.

Bellingcat subsequently identified a third GRU officer who traveled to London during the Salisbury poisoning operation under the cover identity of Sergey Fedotov.