Since the targeted attack on former British spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the evidence of Russian involvement has continued to mount. Since the initial incident in March, when Skripal and his daughter were found on a Salisbury park bench in a semi-paralyzed state, international investigations have uncovered a proverbial web of conspiracies and plots to both execute and cover up the hit job.
Investigations began earlier this year after Skripal —a former Russian intelligence officer— was found to have been poisoned along with his daughter who was visiting him from Russia. The attack had two unintended victims as well—Dawn Sturgess and her partner Charlie Rowley. Both died from exposure to a deadly nerve agent.
The most obvious suspect for the attack was the Kremlin. Skripal had acted as a double agent in Britain’s favor during the 1990s and early 2000s. The first step was confirming these suspicions. The British National Counter Terrorism Policing Network that took over the investigation into the attack in early March was able to identify the substance used against Skripal. Soon after, Prime Minister Theresa May announced that a nerve agent of the Novichok variety, the notorious series of poisons developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 80s, was used against Skripal. The case began to escalate pretty quickly. May quickly expelled 23 Russian diplomats from Britain, the greatest expulsion of diplomats from the UK in over 30 years. To put that into perspective, nearly 40 percent of all Russian diplomats were forced to leave England. May also delineated reprisals and sanctions aimed at Russia, including increased screening of Russians entering the UK, and more customs checks on freight and other imported goods.
Two revelations about the attack have come to light —almost simultaneously— that provide even more damning evidence of Russia’s involvement.
First came reports about the so-called Novichok suspects: two Russian nationals by the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov who British detectives have accused of being behind the attacks. Scotland Yard believes these names are merely aliases and that the Kremlin is covering up their real identities. Both men were traveling together in the UK at the time of the attack, and have since returned to Russia. The official claim of British authorities is that Petrov and Boshirov poisoned Skripal by spraying Novichok-laced liquid on his front door.
Evidence that the pair are behind the attack includes some very suspicious travel document markings. Petrov’s passport contains a “top secret” stamp originating from Russia. Additionally, files related to Petrov’s internal passport —a mandatory ID for Russian adults— are marked with a stamp reading “do not provide any information” and a phone number. Reportedly, British investigators called the phone number after identifying Petrov as a suspect. The voice that answered identified himself as an employee of the Russian defense ministry and quickly hung up when questioned about Petrov. The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that the number has the area code for the Khoroshkovsky district of Moscow which is home of the headquarters of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency.
Of course, Russian authorities are adamant that Boshirov and Petrov have no connection to the government or any military or intelligence body. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the press that “neither Petrov nor Boshirov have nothing to do with Putin, and the Kremlin of course.”
President Vladimir Putin himself stated earlier this week that the two men were civilians and that there was “nothing special and criminal” about them. Not surprisingly, the denials of officials did not address any of the evidence pointing to their pairs’ involvement.
The second news pieces is perhaps even more scandalous.
On 15 September, European media reported that the Swiss government confirmed reports that Dutch authorities had arrested and expelled two suspected Russian spies after the two allegedly tried to hack a Swiss laboratory. The facility in question, the Swiss government laboratory in Spiez, is the defense ministry’s testing site to examine weaponized chemicals. The Spiez Laboratory was charged with examining samples of the chemical agents found in the area near Skripal’s poisoning. The confirmation by Switzerland’s Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) of the attempted hack came after reports by the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad and the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger that two Russians suspected of working for the Russian GRU were kicked out of the Netherlands earlier this year as part of a Europe-wide investigation into the Skripal incident. “The Swiss authorities are aware of the case of Russian spies discovered in The Hague and expelled,” FIS spokeswoman Isabelle Graber said. Graber added that the agency helped prevent “illegal actions against critical Swiss infrastructure.” A similar statement came from Spiez Lab officials. A spokesperson for the facility, Andreas Bucher, confirmed there was an attempt to breach the lab’s network. “We can confirm that the Spiez laboratory was targeted for hacker attacks,” Bucher told the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper. “We are prepared for that. Data did not leak.”
The Swiss government’s response to all of these revelations was swift but in the end rather soft. “The Swiss Dept. Of Foreign Affairs has called on Russia to immediately end illegal activities on Swiss soil or against Swiss targets,” the government office said in a statement earlier in the week.
What will this rather disturbing series of reports on Russia’s latest schemes do for the international stage?
Well, for one, Switzerland might be forced to act as Britain did and take some diplomatic action against Russia. Keep in mind this is the third time the Swiss foreign ministry has summoned Russia’s ambassador in Bern this year. All of those instances were to raise concerns about suspected operations targeting organizations based in Switzerland.
But on a bigger scale, the seemingly endless allegations against Russian meddling in foreign affairs via the digital sphere may produce an organized effort to further clamp down on the country already isolated from much of the West. From the hacking of the DNC during the 2016 election, to the breach of the Olympics anti-drug agency earlier this year, it is very likely that these compounded incidents will trigger a substantial response. Despite the Kremlin pretending otherwise, methods to exclude Russia from the rest of the world and hurt its economy through sanctions actually work. How much more can Europe and the West take of Russian aggression before things escalate?
