Salisbury poisoning suspect identified as Russian colonel
‘Ruslan Boshirov’ is actually decorated GRU officer Anatoliy Chepiga, investigators say
One of the two suspects in the Salisbury novichok poisoning has been identified as a highly decorated officer in Russia’s military intelligence service (GRU).
The online investigative sites Bellingcat and the Insider uncovered information identifying one of the two suspects – previously named as Ruslan Boshirov – as Col Anatoliy Chepiga, a special forces veteran.
British investigators also believe one of the pair is Chepiga, the Guardian understands.
Chepiga, a veteran of the war in Chechnya, was awarded the country’s highest state award, hero of the Russian Federation, in December 2014 when Russian officers were active in the Ukraine conflict.
The Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal was poisoned along with his daughter, Yulia, in the nerve agent attack in Salisbury in the UK in March. Both later recovered but have remained out of public view.
A discarded perfume bottle used to carry the poison caused the death of one woman who came into contact with it, Dawn Sturgess, and injured her boyfriend, Charlie Rowley.
The two suspects – Boshirov and another man named as Alexander Petrov – have been charged in the UK with attempted murder and conspiracy.
The naming of Chepiga eviscerates claims by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, that the two men are civilians and have no links to Russian state intelligence.
Russian television had presented the two suspects, naming them as Boshirov and Petrov, as tourists who travelled twice to Salisbury because they were determined to see the city’s cathedral.
The use of a nerve agent in the UK by Russian agents has led to the worst diplomatic fallout between London and Moscow since the cold war. The UK and its allies expelled more than 100 diplomats in March and the US is set to enact more stringent sanctions tied to the use of a nerve agent by Russia.