A British investigation into the 2018 death of a woman exposed to the nerve toxin Novichok used in an effort to assassinate a Russian double agent, which sent relations between London and the Kremlin to unprecedented lows, will open to the public on Monday.
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, had vowed to exact revenge on former double agent Sergei Skripal, who lived in Salisbury, southwest England, and was the primary target of the poisoning.
In March 2018, Skripal and his daughter Yulia were discovered unconscious on a bench in the city centre. After receiving intensive care in the hospital, they made it out alive and are currently under guard.
Mother-of-three Dawn Sturgess, 44, died in July 2018 after spraying herself with what she thought was perfume from a bottle discarded in a park that contained the deadly chemical weapon.
UK authorities believe that the agents targeting the Skripals had thrown it out.
Britain blames the Novichok attack on two Russian security service officers who allegedly entered the country using false passports. A third has been named as the operation’s mastermind.
It is believed that all three of these men are employed by the Russian spy organisation GRU.
Following Moscow’s deployment of soldiers into Ukraine in 2022, diplomatic ties between the West and Russia are at an all-time low. This includes the investigation into Sturgess’s death in Salisbury.
Public hearings will begin in Salisbury Guildhall during the first week of October and move to the International Dispute Resolution Centre in London on October 28.
Theresa May, the prime minister at the time of the assault, cautioned that justice was unlikely despite the fact that an international arrest warrant had been issued for the culprits.
“I would hope by the end of it (the public inquiry) the family and friends of Dawn Sturgess feel it has got to the truth,” she told the BBC.
But “closure to all the people affected would only finally come with justice, and that justice is highly unlikely to happen,” she added.
Russia, whose constitution does not allow the extradition of its citizens, has always denied culpability and called the inquiry a “circus”.
Following the Salisbury incident, the West imposed a limited set of sanctions and the largest-ever expulsion of diplomats between Western states and Russia.
Since Putin ordered soldiers into Ukraine in February 2022, the West’s response has now much outweighed those penalties.
“It’s important to remember that at the heart of this inquiry are Dawn’s family and loved ones whose lives have been irreversibly changed,” Wiltshire Police Chief Constable Catherine Roper stated.
“The purpose is to provide Dawn’s family, friends and our wider communities in Wiltshire the opportunity to access the fullest possible information surrounding Dawn’s death,” she added.
The inquiry will also “bring back some difficult memories for those who were living and working in Salisbury and Amesbury in 2018,” said the police chief.
