Putin found ‘morally responsible’ for nerve agent death in UK

The UK Thursday sanctioned Russia’s intelligence service and summoned Moscow’s ambassador after an inquiry found President Vladimir Putin bore “moral responsibility” for the death of a British woman in a 2018 nerve agent attack, reports BSS.

Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year-old mother of three, sprayed herself with what she believed to be perfume from an abandoned bottle of stylish Nina Ricci fragrance, but it was actually the lethal agent Novichok.

The bottle had been discarded in Salisbury in southwest England after two suspects thought to be Russian operatives carried it there in a botched attempt to kill former double agent Sergei Skripal in March 2018.

The investigation’s findings determined that President Putin holds “moral responsibility” for Sturgess’s death four months later and that the murder attempt “must have been authorised at the highest level, by President Putin”.

“It is clear that this attack showed considerable determination and was expected to stand as a public demonstration of Russian power,” the report concluded.

“This report is clear: moral responsibility lies with Putin,” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer told reporters on Thursday.

“It’s further evidence of the shocking and reckless hostile activity on UK soil,” he added.

Following its publication, London said it had summoned the Russian ambassador.

The UK also sanctioned the Russian intelligence agency blamed for the attack, the GRU, “in its entirety”, the foreign ministry said.

Kremlin’s foreign spokesperson Maria Zakharova told the state-run RIA news agency that Russia “does not recognise illegitimate sanctions which are imposed under trumped-up pretexts… and reserves the right to retaliate.”

The attack against Skripal led to what was then the largest-ever expulsion of diplomats between Western powers and Russia, and a limited round of sanctions by the West.

The attempt on Skripal’s life was the latest in a line of espionage thriller-worthy episodes to damage UK-Russian relations.

A previous British inquiry found in 2016 that Putin “probably approved” the 2006 killing in London of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, a prominent Kremlin critic, with radioactive polonium.