The Salisbury spy poisonings five years on: Did UK’s response change Putin’s pathway to invading Ukraine?
When Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury city centre – five years ago to this day – few would have known that a huge diplomatic crisis was about to erupt.
Mr Skripal, a former Russian intelligence officer turned British double agent, had been targeted with the deadly nerve agent novichok in an assassination attempt, which Western officials have since claimed leads all the way back to the Kremlin.
Though the pair survived the attack, Dawn Sturgess, a mother-of-three who came into contact with the nerve agent from a discarded perfume bottle, thought to have been used by the assassins to administer to the door handle of the Skripals’ home, later died from her exposure to the chemical.
The incident sparked a huge diplomatic row between the UK and Russia, which denied any involvement in the incident, even after UK intelligence forces shared details of two Russian men alleged to have carried out the attack.
Yulia and Sergei Skripal
Dawn Sturgess
A famously frosty meeting between the UK’s then-prime minister, Theresa May, and Russian president Vladimir Putin followed, while Britain expelled 23 diplomats and imposed some limited financial sanctions on assets that “threatened life or property”.
It was, at the time, the strongest response in relation to Putin’s Russia.
According to Keir Giles, an expert in security issues relating to Russia, it was also a significant step up from the “feeble response” to the poisoning of another former Russian agent, Alexander Litvinenko, in London in 2006.
Mr Giles, and senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, told Sky News: “The response to Salisbury was a success story for the UK. It was about as powerful as it could be.
“The UK managed to rally behind it huge solidarity from the West.”
Theresa May meets Vladimir Putin
He said one key decision which would have particularly troubled Putin was the naming and shaming of the two alleged assassins, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, who both denied involvement.
“Putin would have likely hoped for these actions to have been undetected. Suddenly, everybody knows about it and there is no secrecy to it,” Mr Giles added.
Despite this, novichok was used again, against Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who fell ill during a flight to Moscow in 2020. He later recovered.
The UK’s response to the alleged Russian aggression also did little to dissuade Putin from launching an invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“The UK’s response would have had no effect on Putin’s conclusion and is independent of Russia’s situation with the invasion of Ukraine.
Alexander Litvinenko
“It is a completely different issue in Russia – because Salisbury is really about dealing with a former Russian intelligence officer in the UK.”
The war, he said, was instead about satisfying Putin’s longer-term ambition to restore Russia as an imperial power on the world stage.
However, he said the response to Salisbury would have had an impact, particularly on Putin’s confidence to attempt other similar assassinations in the UK.
“There are risks (to these incidents) and these would have to be weighed against the benefit of carrying out a successful attempt.
“The UK’s response to Salisbury would have raised that risk.”
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Theresa May says the men identified as suspects in the Salisbury poisonings are from Russia’s military intelligence service.
Professor Tomila Lankina, a professor of international relations at London School of Economics (LSE), who has analysed disinformation campaigns in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine, also believes the UK’s strong response to the Salisbury poisonings would have surprised Putin.
“If you look at the Litvinenko poisoning, the responses should have been more robust, but I remember being impressed by the response to Salisbury,” she said.
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“Probably the kind of confidence Russia had to carry out the poisoning was preventable if the UK had more strong and forceful reactions to Russia’s past transgressions.
“But I remember being impressed by the response to Salisbury. I think it would have surprised Putin.”
Read more:
How the Salisbury poisoning unfolded – a timeline
Salisbury still affected by ‘trauma’ of novichok poisonings
Podcast: The poisoning five years on
But Professor Lankina, whose book The Estate Origins Of Democracy In Russia looks into the social structures of Russia, believes more could have been done.
“There was a dependency on Russian money, businesses who were advantaged and benefited from Russian money.”
She said she believed there was an indirect pathway between the events of the Litvinenko and Salisbury poisonings and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
However, she said this pathway would more likely have been broken if the West’s reaction was stronger in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Professor Svetlana Stephenson, a Russian-born academic living in the UK and working for London Metropolitan University, said she also believed the Salisbury poisonings were in part due to Russia believing it could act without serious repercussions.
“I don’t think that Russia would have wanted the incident to be detected. But when they did, the response was a tacit acknowledgement,” said Prof Stephenson, who has written critical articles about Putin in the country’s independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.
“Part of that messaging was that ‘we can do what we like’.
“In Russia, it would have just been seen as a security services situation, simply Russians dealing with someone they regard as a traitor, rather than an attack on UK soil.”
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Putin boosting nuclear forces
Prof Stephenson believes, for this reason, that the Salisbury attack would have had little impact on Putin’s confidence in any confrontation with the West.
“When the war first started, I thought he looked quite depressed, and you sensed something unexpected had happened, but I think the war has emboldened him and he looks like this is now the new normal,” she added.
“There is some discontent in the cities, but in provincial Russia, people seem to support the war – and even mobilisation.
“But we can only go by what we see because there is no real opposition in Russia.”
UK
Specialist teams and online investigators deployed across England and Wales to tackle ‘national emergency’ of violence against women and girls
Specialist investigation teams for rape and sexual offences are to be created across England and Wales as the Home Secretary declares violence against women and girls a “national emergency”.
Shabana Mahmood said the dedicated units will be in place across every force by 2029 as part of Labour’s violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy due to be launched later this week.
The use of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPOs), which had been trialled in several areas, will also be rolled out across England and Wales. They are designed to target abusers by imposing curfews, electronic tags and exclusion zones.
The orders cover all forms of domestic abuse, including economic abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking and ‘honour’-based abuse. Breaching the terms can carry a prison term of up to 5 years.
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Govt ‘thinking again’ on abuse strategy
Nearly £2m will also be spent funding a network of officers to target offenders operating within the online space.
Teams will use covert and intelligence techniques to tackle violence against women and girls via apps and websites.
A similar undercover network funded by the Home Office to examine child sexual abuse has arrested over 1,700 perpetrators.
Abuse is ‘national emergency’
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said in a statement: “This government has declared violence against women and girls a national emergency.
“For too long, these crimes have been considered a fact of life. That’s not good enough. We will halve it in a decade.
“Today we announce a range of measures to bear down on abusers, stopping them in their tracks. Rapists, sex offenders and abusers will have nowhere to hide.”
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Angiolini Inquiry: Recommendations are ‘not difficult’
The target to halve violence against women and girls in a decade is a Labour manifesto pledge.
The government said the measures build on existing policy, including facial recognition technology to identify offenders, improving protections for stalking victims, making strangulation a criminal offence and establishing domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms.
Read more from Sky News:
Demands for violence and abuse reforms
Women still feel unsafe on streets
Minister ‘clarifies’ violence strategy
Labour has ‘failed women’
But the Conservatives said Labour had “failed women” and “broken its promises” by delaying the publication of the violence against women and girls strategy.
Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, said that Labour “shrinks from uncomfortable truths, voting against tougher sentences and presiding over falling sex-offender convictions. At every turn, Labour has failed women.”
There have been no migrant arrivals in small boats crossing the Channel for 28 days, according to Home Office figures.
The last recorded arrivals were on 14 November, making it the longest uninterrupted run since autumn 2018 after no reported arrivals on Friday.
However, a number of Border Force vessels were active in the English Channel on Saturday morning, indicating that there may be arrivals today.
So far, 39,292 people have crossed to the UK aboard small boats this year – already more than any other year except 2022.
The record that year was set at 45,774 arrivals.
It comes as the government has stepped up efforts in recent months to deter people from risking their lives crossing the Channel – but measures are not expected to have an impact until next year.
Debris of a small boat used by people thought to be migrants to cross the Channel lays amongst the sand dunes in Gravelines, France. Pic: PA
December is normally one of the quietest for Channel crossings, with a combination of poor visibility, low temperatures, less daylight and stormy weather making the perilous journey more difficult.
The most arrivals recorded in the month of December is 3,254, in 2024.
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy met with ministers from other European countries this week as discussions over possible reform to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) continue.
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France agrees to start intercepting small boats
The issue of small boat arrivals – a very small percentage of overall UK immigration – has become a salient issue in British politics in recent years.
Last month, French maritime police announced they would soon be able to intercept boats in the English Channel.
The King has shared in a television address that, thanks to early diagnosis, his cancer treatment can be reduced in the new year.
In a televised address, Charles said his “good news” was “thanks to early diagnosis, effective intervention and adherence to doctors’ orders”.
“This milestone is both a personal blessing and a testimony to the remarkable advances that have been made in cancer care in recent years,” he added.
“Testimony that I hope may give encouragement to the 50% of us who will be diagnosed with the illness at some point in our lives.”
The King announced in February 2024 that he had been diagnosed with cancer and was beginning treatment.
The monarch postponed all public-facing engagements, but continued with his duties as head of state behind palace walls, conducting audiences and Privy Council meetings.
He returned to public duties in April last year and visited University College Hospital Macmillan Cancer Centre in central London with the Queen and discussed his “shock” at being diagnosed when he spoke to a fellow cancer patient.
Sources suggested last December his treatment would continue in 2025 and was “moving in a positive direction”.
The King began returning to public duties in April last year. File pic: PA
The King has chosen not to reveal what kind of cancer he has been treated for. Palace sources have partly put that down to the fact that he doesn’t want one type of cancer to appear more significant or attract more attention than others.
In a statement after the speech aired, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: “His Majesty has responded exceptionally well to treatment and his doctors advise that ongoing measures will now move into a precautionary phase.”
Sir Keir Starmer praised the video message as “a powerful message,” and said: “I know I speak for the entire country when I say how glad I am that his cancer treatment will be reduced in the new year.
“Early cancer screening saves lives.”
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Watch: King Charles gives update on treatment
Early detection can give ‘the precious gift of hope’
His message on Friday was broadcast at 8pm in support of Stand Up To Cancer, a joint campaign by Cancer Research UK and Channel 4.
In an appeal to people to get screened for the disease early, the King said: “I know from my own experience that a cancer diagnosis can feel overwhelming.
“Yet I also know that early detection is the key that can transform treatment journeys, giving invaluable time to medical teams – and, to their patients, the precious gift of hope. These are gifts we can all help deliver.”
Charles noted that “at least nine million people in our country are not up to date with the cancer screenings available to them,” adding: “That is at least nine million opportunities for early diagnosis being missed.
“The statistics speak with stark clarity. To take just one example: When bowel cancer is caught at the earliest stage, around nine in ten people survive for at least five years.
“When diagnosed late, that falls to just one in ten. Early diagnosis quite simply saves lives.”
Minor inconvenience of screening ‘a small price to pay’
The King acknowledged that people often avoid screening “because they imagine it may be frightening, embarrassing or uncomfortable”. But, he added: “If and when they do finally take up their invitation, they are glad they took part.
“A few moments of minor inconvenience are a small price to pay for the reassurance that comes for most people when they are either told either they don’t need further tests, or, for some, are given the chance to enable early detection, with the life-saving intervention that can follow.”
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Giving his “most heartfelt thanks” to doctors, nurses, researchers and charity workers, the King added: “As I have observed before, the darkest moments of illness can be illuminated by the greatest compassion. But compassion must be paired with action.
“This December, as we gather to reflect on the year past, I pray that we can each pledge, as part of our resolutions for the year ahead, to play our part in helping to catch cancer early.
“Your life – or the life of someone you love – may depend upon it.”
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