Panorama (1953–…): Season 0, Episode 0 - Salisbury Nerve Agent Attack: The Inside Story - full transcript
And in and nobody just dripping with sweat.
I was petrified…
everything was juddering and my
whole body was dripping with sweat.
5 News this is the inside story of
the Salisbury nerve agent attack,
told for the first time
by those who were there.
This is the inside story of the Salisbury
nerve agent attack. Back and forward, just
dribbling at the most. There was
certainly a very real expectation
early on these people could die from this.
An international murder plot
against a former Russian spy, played
out on the streets of a British
city. The Russians underestimated
the international and domestic
revulsion at the use of chemical weapons.
Now, moving images, never
seen before of the Russian assassin
just after the attack.
We had a kind of "gotcha" moment
of we identified the two attackers.
They're pretty brazen,
they are smiling, appear to be
quite pleased with themselves.
They wanted to get a message
across to Russians everywhere that
you are never beyond our reach and we
will always be able to get at you.
Salisbury on a quiet afternoon in March,
the cathedral city is emerging
from a bitterly cold Siberian storm.
Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey is on duty.
It had been a lot of snow a few days
before, which had been
quite disruptive, and I just started my
duty at three, doing my normal work.
Paramedic lan Parsons gets an urgent call.
We'd just come off of the 'Beast from
the East', so it was quite a busy day.
I responded to a call.
It came through as a CAT 1 emergency.
Meg Edgar, a retired teacher,
is passing through the city centre.
I could see that there was somebody sitting
very still on the bench over there.
And what appeared to be somebody
on the ground, at their feet.
I saw a patient lying on the floor
that was struggling to breathe.
It did look urgent.
A shop assistant is on her break.
The woman, she was fitting quite badly.
She just couldn't control her body.
Her father was more rigid.
Her father was more rigid.
They're treated immediately
at the scene - then rushed
to Salisbury District Hospital.
We were discussing between the guys,
the three of us in the back
of the ambulance, we were coming up
with the same conclusion,
that we thought it might be
an overdose of some sort.
The police were just trying
to figure out what had happened,
and the details were a little bit sketchy.
I just said, "Well, I'll
have a wander down then."
There was nothing around
on the bench that we could see.
In intensive care the patients are in a
coma - their vital organs in shut down.
Staff are struggling to diagnose them.
We were trying to piece together
what could have happened to the two
patients, and it felt unusual
because they weren't
responding in the way we would've
probably expected them to.
That evening, not knowing why two
people are critically ill, the Fire
Brigade take no chances - this might
be a chemical incident.
They were putting on the big green
hazmat suits and getting out
equipment and hoses.
It was just like something we'd
never seen in Salisbury before.
Porton Down, on the outskirts
of Salisbury, is alerted.
It's home to the Government's Defence,
Science and Technology Laboratory.
We can only tell you the first name
of the lead scientist dealing
with chemical threats.
Wiltshire Police were asking
questions really around some of
the symptoms the individuals
were displaying, which were not
entirely consistent with a drugs
overdose, essentially,
which was the theory at the time.
What happens here is usually top secret.
Their job - to protect British troops
from chemical weapons on the battlefield.
We handle the most hazardous types
of "materials", like plague,
anthrax "and" agents that have been
developed as chemical weapons.
They range from things like chlorine
through to nerve agents.
It's only when the patients' clothes
are searched for proof of identity
that the first clue emerges.
A police officer goes online to look
up a name - Skripal.
That officer used their nous,
and did some googling
and there was a Wiki footprint
in relation to Mr Skripal.
I had a call from the
on duty superintendent.
I always remember the words, "Boss, I
hope you're sitting down for this one."
The couple fighting for their lives
in Salisbury Hospital are revealed
as Sergei Skripal - a former Russian
spy - and his daughter, Yulia.
That night Nick Bailey and two
colleagues are sent to the Skripals'
home in a quiet suburb of Salisbury.
We had to make sure that there was
no other casualties in the house.
It was vital for us to find out
what had actually happened to them.
We decided, to protect ourselves
and to protect the scene,
we would wear full forensic suits.
I was the first person into the house.
The house was in darkness.
It just looked normal,
there was nothing untoward.
Came out of the house, secured it
again, took our forensic suits off,
which we then bagged up, and then
we went back to the station.
Once I'd come back from the house,
the Skripals' house,
My eyes were like pin -
my pupils were like pinpricks.
And I was quite sweaty and hot.
At the time I put that down
to being tired and stressed.
Nick goes home - hoping he'll sleep it off.
NEWS FOOTAGE: A former
Russian spy is critical
in hospital after a suspected
poisoning in Salisbury…
British police are working
to identify the substance…
A woman who was found unconscious
with Sergei Skripal is also
in a serious condition…
This is now too big
for Wiltshire Police to handle alone
- time to call in the experts, the
Counter-terrorism Unit at Scotland Yard.
Dean Haydon is the detective
leading the investigation.
We thought we were dealing
with a poisoning, but because of
the background and profile
of the individuals and
the circumstances of the actual
incident we were concerned it may
have been a hostile state act
from another country.
We started off with not
knowing anything at all
so it was like looking for a needle
in a haystack, but actually at that
stage we didn't even have a haystack, so we
had to build the data
from literally the start
So we seize all of the CCTV,
all of the movements of everybody
in the town centre, we start
speaking to witnesses.
We overlay it with communications
data, and we start in Salisbury town
centre and we move out from there.
By now, Nick Bailey is feeling terrible.
Everything was juddering.
I was very, very unsteady on my feet.
The sweating had gone
from my forehead down my back.
My whole body was just dripping with sweat.
Nick's family rush him to hospital.
It must have been pretty
frightening for you?
Yes, it was, it was, it was horrendous.
It was just - I was confused,
I didn't know what was
going on and it was,
it was really, really frightening.
At Porton Down they work
round the clock on blood samples
to find out what poisoned
the Skripals and Nick Bailey.
It was a jaw-dropping moment.
I went through a number of emotions,
from disbelief to anger.
We identified that, that the material
was a nerve agent called Novichok.
It's one of the most
dangerous substances known.
It's quite unique in its ability
to poison individuals
at very low concentrations.
For the first time ever, a nerve agent
has been used in an attack in Europe.
Professor Tim breaks the news
to Wiltshire Police.
Tim came into my office
and gave us that brief,
that that this was nerve agent,
and I say that sort of aghast,
aghast sense of disbelief for us, but
for a moment I guess it rocks you.
They said, "You have this Novichok,
this nerve agent in your blood system."
What was your reaction?
Confusion - I didn't understand how it had
happened, scared because it's
the fear of the unknown,
because it's such a dangerous thing
to have in your system,
knowing how the other two
were or how badly they'd been
affected by it I was - I was petrified.
From a clinical point of view
we were certainly faced
with something that we had not dealt
with before as a team
of intensive care doctors.
There was certainly a very real
expectation early on that these
people could die from this.
Novichok, one of the world's
deadliest nerve agents has
found its way to Salisbury.
But how?
The answer lies in Moscow - in this
anonymous looking building,
once home to a top secret
Soviet laboratory.
The secrets of Russia's Cold War research
only came to light in the 1990s.
So your study is down here, Vil?
That's when this scientist who'd
worked there fled to America.
He published the chemical formulas
of the nerve agent he helped create.
Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
So that's you as a young
scientist in the laboratory?
Yes, I was working there.
The Russians called it
"the newcomer", Novichok.
Thought to be ten times more toxic
than any nerve agent
created before or since.
TRANSLATION: The person starts to
go blind, that's the first sign.
The second is difficulty breathing,
even to the point they stop breathing.
The third sign is constant vomiting.
The fourth - uncontrollable convulsions.
The Russians weaponised Novichok
for the battlefield.
The tiniest dose can be fatal.
To kill a person, you need
about one milligram.
To be sure, two milligrams.
The scientists who developed
Novichok for the motherland received
the highest honours.
But Vil's conscience wouldn't
allow him to stay silent.
I took part in its development, and
that's a big reason why I feel guilty.
Salisbury is now in the grip
of a contamination scare on a scale
never before seen in Britain.
Scientists have to find
the Novichok, but it can't
be detected on site - only back in the lab.
Like oil, it sinks into porous
surfaces and is spread by touch.
The military are alerted -
for security reasons we're not
naming any of those involved.
It's like to trying to find
where you've put invisible ink.
The person who's come in with the ink
has put their hand on the table.
So that's going to be the hottest spot.
And every time they move,
it can move around the room
and around the table,
not to the same extent each time.
And you've got to detect where that's gone.
Retracing the victims' footsteps is vital.
The pub where Sergei
and Yulia Skripal had a drink,
the restaurant where they ate,
the car park they used,
and the bench they collapsed on.
Nine sites are cordoned off.
We couldn't take any risks with this
and there was potentially huge
public anxiety there.
We had people attending our accident
and emergency department,
because they were worried.
There was a sense as to how big this
could get, and a worry
really as to what we were
actually dealing with.
Doctors and scientists desperately
try to find the right combination
of drugs to fight the poison.
I was conscious, throughout the whole time.
It was painful at the beginning.
I had lots of injections, a lot of needles.
The I had five or six infusions,
at any one time in my arms…
Physically, I felt quite
numb after a while.
One of the Skripals was in the room
right next to me, it was all guarded
by the police, I had no idea how
they were, how they were doing.
One moment you'd have a nurse
coming in with a sandwich
for you, dressed like…top
to bottom in protective gear,
closely followed by my wife and kids
who were allowed to just walk in,
so it was very confusing.
To understand how a deadly nerve
agent came to be used on the streets
of Britain I travelled to Russia -
to the home of the intended target
- former spy Sergei Skripal.
I've come to Yaroslavl to meet some
members of the Skripal family
who are closest of all to Sergei and
Yulia - his mother and his niece.
This is Sergei and Yulia -
at our dacha outside Yaroslavl.
TRANSLATION:
This is Sergei and Yulia -
at our dacha outside Yaroslavl.
He treated everyone as his equal.
He's an open-hearted, kind man.
Sergei was born into a military
family, model Soviet citizens.
He became a cadet as a boy.
This is his wedding, with aunt Luda.
That's their wedding -
Sergei and Lyudmilla.
Sergei and his wife Lyudmilla
had two children - son
Alexander and daughter Yulia.
Ours is an ordinary family, built
around our grandmother and grandfather.
We've all stayed in touch.
Sergei became a paratrooper - he served
with distinction in Afghanistan.
The Skripals moved in the 90s
to these apartments in Moscow -
for military families.
There was nothing remarkable the flat.
There are millions like that in Moscow.
Everyone would visit -
he was happy to see us all.
It was now Sergei became
a spy with the GRU…
the secret arm of Russia's
Ministry of Defence.
The GRU is the Russian state's most
powerful and feared intelligence agency.
They carry out espionage,
trying to gain our state secrets.
They carry out assassinations
and assassination attempts.
The GRU are very substantial -
they're well over 10,000 strong.
They pose a real threat
to western countries.
In Britain the Government rips up
the diplomatic rulebook, expelling
23 Russians from their embassy -
and directly accuses Russia.
The Government has concluded
it is highly likely that Russia
was responsible for the act
against Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
Britain launches an international
diplomatic offensive.
The UK's Ambassador to the United
Nations lays out the Government's case.
As we got the evidence
and as we made the analysis
we realised that the Russians
were the only people
with the motive, the operational
experience, if you like,
and the technical means to have
carried out an attack like this.
In Russia, President Putin's
popularity only increases - he's
re-elected with a huge majority.
He accuses Britain of provocation and
denies any involvement in Salisbury.
TRANSLATION:
The British then up the ante,
challenging President Putin
on his home turf, in the gilded
salons of the British embassy -
right across the Moscow
River from the Kremlin.
Foreign diplomats always loved
coming to this historic mansion,
to be wined and dined,
and now they came for a power point
presentation, making the British
case and pointing to Russia's guilt.
The international response
is unprecedented.
27 countries throw out 153 Russian
diplomats, who they accuse of spying.
I think the Russians underestimated
the international and domestic
revulsion at the use of chemical weapons.
I think they thought they would,
if anything, take a small hit
in London, and they ended up
with this united response,
which I think took them by surprise.
But why would Russia want to kill
an old spy now living in Britain?
I'm travelling east across Russia
to meet a former KGB man who's
studied the official files
on Sergei Skripal's career.
TRANSLATION:
After the fall of the Soviet Union,
the ideology disappeared.
It was a spiritual loss,
not just for Skripal.
It was a tough and painful
moment for me too.
In 1993 Sergei, the GRU
spy, was sent to Spain.
His cover story - a diplomat
in the Russian embassy in Madrid.
In Spain, he thought less
about serving his country -
more about using his job to make money.
Sergei became a prime target
for British intelligence - M16.
When he came to Spain, British intelligence
targeted him and recruited him.
I must say I respect them for that.
He got $3,000 a month.
And if it was good information,
they would add a bonus.
He was now a double agent.
MI6 named him Agent Forthwith -
a direct route for them
into the GRU, notoriously hard to crack.
First, he betrayed his friends
who worked undercover.
In all, he gave away more than 100 names.
It was a huge loss.
Sergei was recalled to Moscow
in 1996 - his health was poor.
He was promoted, to head
of personnel for the GRU.
Now Sergei Skripal had access
to the telephone directory
of all Russia's military
spies across the world.
Sergei Skripal opened a window
into the Russian military,
which was of critical importance
at that time.
John Sipher used to run CIA
operations in Russia.
For an intelligence service,
the files of others and where
they are and their foibles
and their problems and their
personal issues would've been
something quite important.
If you're going to understand
the sort of threat that Russia poses
to the West, then you need
to understand the thinking
and the operations and the assets of
the Russian intelligence agencies,
which is why we in MI6
were committed to penetrating
the Russian intelligence agencies,
including the GRU.
Sergei was careful not to meet his
British paymasters in Moscow.
But he took expensive holidays
abroad to brief his handlers.
The net gradually closed around him,
as the spy himself was spied on.
TRANSLATION: He was caught the
way all spies are caught.
First, by overspending and, second,
by not being careful.
Sergei Skripal was arrested in 2004.
He was tried and sentenced to 13
years in a penal colony.
But greater forces conspired
to release him from prison.
Sir John Sawers was Head
of MI6 at the time.
He was convicted of working
for British intelligence.
It was important that we got him back.
Vienna, July, 2010 - scene
of a Cold War-style spy swap.
Ten Russians spies caught in America
exchanged for four men - one
of them, Sergei Skripal.
There was a presidential pardon,
a release from prison,
a formal swap, which in the past has
always been honoured by both sides.
The former KGB spy, Vladimir Putin,
wasn't president when Sergei
was pardoned, but made it clear
what he thought of traitors.
TRANSLATION:
So Sergei and Lyudmilla,
with Yulia, came to Britain.
In 2011 MI6 helped them settle
in a quiet part of Salisbury.
But Sergei must have known the GRU
never forget a traitor.
Like Colonel Popov, who spied for
America in the 50s and was caught.
There were stories that were put out
through the Russian intelligence services.
He was burned in a fire
and videotaped, and that every
new class that came in to the GRU
was shown the video tape of Mr Popov
being burned alive, to make it clear
what were the price of betrayal
to the state.
Shouldn't you have protected him
more - he was an ex-agent?
Well, I think this question of what level
of protection you provide
for people who have been
released and swapped in this way, it
varies from from individual to individual.
Now, clearly, we got that
calculation wrong, that the threat
against Skripal was much
higher than we'd expected,
because we hadn't expected the Russians
to go back on a presidential pardon.
A year after the Skripals arrived in
Salisbury, Sergei's wife died of cancer.
He began travelling to eastern Europe.
NATO countries Russia considers a threat.
Alexei Venediktov is a respected
independent Russian commentator
Alexei Venediktov is a respected
independent Russian commentator.
TRANSLATION: My conversations
with former intelligence
officers reveal that
after Skripal was expelled
from Russia he helped NATO operations.
He talked to them, and worked
against his country.
It's believed Sergei met and briefed
intelligence services,
in the Czech Republic and Estonia -
once part of the Soviet Union.
The Russian intelligence veterans
explained, "If you carry"
on not just consulting,
but actively working
against your country,
then you continue to be a traitor.
"Then your pardon is not valid
and you must be punished."
Did he travel to eastern Europe, did he
talk to those intelligence agencies?
He was he was involved in exchanges,
which are entirely normal,
and they were largely historic.
I don't believe that Skripal was a thorn
in the flesh of the Russians
after he'd been released,
and certainly there's nothing
which would justify the sort
of operation that was conducted
against him and his daughter.
In Salisbury, it takes two
weeks of painstaking
investigation for scientists
and police to work out exactly
how the Skripals came
into contact with the Novichok.
To find the source of the Novichok
actually was our first breakthrough.
We identified that there
was Novichok on the front door,
the front door handle,
of their home address.
It shocked me that it had been
used in such a reckless
manner on the front door
of an address in Salisbury.
Russia has form when it comes
to killing enemies in Britain -
a poisoned umbrella on Waterloo
bridge, radioactive polonium
in a tea cup in Mayfair.
What we know is that the Russians
have a long history
of developing highly toxic poisons
in order to kill people.
We believe that they have
trained on this technique
of putting nerve agents, including
putting them on door handles.
Did it help you when you knew
that it had been on the door handle,
and you didn't know that
when you entered the house?
It helped in some ways.
I, at that point knew, "Well,
it's not something that I've done"
wrong", because that was
a big thing for me.
It's such an outrageous,
dangerous way of doing something
that it angered me as well,
because any number of people
could have been affected by that.
Have you any idea how you got it on you
- I mean, if you were wearing gloves?
No, I don't, I don't know I,
I don't know whether -
if it's gone through the gloves,
I don't know whether, I mean,
I could have adjusted my face mask
and my goggles whilst
I was in the house with
it being on my hand.
Did you have any regrets that
you hadn't sent him in better
protected against this?
I guess hindsight's a wonderful thing.
The emergency services
respond to what's in front
of them, unless there's something
obvious which we'd indicate that
actually they should be wearing
personal protective equipment,
which gives them that higher
level of protection,
then we take things as we find them.
In Salisbury hospital the patients
are showing signs of recovery.
Their vital organs beginning
to function again.
We recognised that with nerve
agent poisoning there
was potentially a long road ahead.
No one really had any useful clinical
experience of this particular agent.
As it happened, things did start
to turn around more quickly probably
than we anticipated.
I said all along I want to walk out
of hospital, with my wife,
which we did in the end,
and being able to do that,
be able to walk out of hospital
after two and a half weeks
of going through what I went
through, was incredible.
I'm thankful to the scientists and I'm
thankful to the staff at the hospital.
Shortly after Nick Bailey's
recovery, Yulia wakes from a coma.
Hopes are raised that Sergei
will pull through, too.
It was something we hadn't dared
to hope for in the early days.
But actually, as you can imagine,
we were all delighted to see those
patients respond to the treatment
we were able to give.
So what of President Putin's taunt
that no one could survive
a military-grade nerve agent?
TRANSLATION:
Maybe the dose was not high enough.
Salisbury was rainy and muggy.
Novichok breaks down in damp
conditions, weakening its toxicity.
It's the Achilles heel of Novichok.
In the weeks after the Salisbury
attack, Russia ramps up
its denial of responsibility
with a blizzard of propaganda.
The Russian concept of information
is really that it's a weapon.
Ben Nimmo monitors how Russia uses
disinformation as a weapon
in the age of the internet.
A good way to understand
the techniques of Russian
information warfare is you can think
of the four Ds - dismiss, distort,
distract, and dismay.
So dismiss - you'll insult the other side.
You'll try and make them seem valueless.
Are some things in your
life (EXPLETIVE)?
Well, we have the answer in case
you missed it, you can get
yourself a Russian to blame!
Distort - you'll actually twist
the facts to suit your story.
Britain's own chemical lab Porton Down
admitted it had micro stockpiles.
Distract - you will accuse your
accuser of doing the same thing.
And dismay - you will say the terrible
things happen if this continues.
You throw out as many competing
theories as you can to confuse
people as much as you can.
The most audacious attempt to sow
confusion starts here in Moscow,
in a building called the Centre for
the Control of Everyday Activities.
In reality it's home to the GRU's
sophisticated hacking unit.
The GRU target the Hague
at a critical time.
The chemical weapons watchdog
the OPCW is based here.
It's testing samples from Salisbury.
The OPCW have very, very high
technical standards,
and they were able to verify our
findings independently,
that this was a Novichok,
a highly toxic substance.
This is the Russian hacking team
arriving in the Hague.
They're caught red-handed with their kit
in a car, parked outside the watchdog.
But Russia had already stolen data from
a lab working on the Salisbury samples.
The Russian Foreign Minister
uses it to falsely claim
a Western nerve agent,
not Novichok, is to blame.
For the Russian foreign minister
first of all to identify
a laboratory, and then to make
a completely false accusation based
on what they allege this laboratory
to have said, was extraordinary.
So the foreign minister was lying?
Yes.
They weren't just running
one counter narrative.
It's almost "Pick your
own conspiracy theory -"
here are more than 30 that
we've prepared earlier."
In April, Viktoria Skripal
gets an unexpected call.
It's her cousin Yulia calling
from Salisbury hospital.
This will become an opportunity for
Russia to make more false claims.
TRANSLATION:
I was overjoyed and realised that
if I could hear her voice,
it meant that at least she was alive.
Viktoria records the phone call.
Within hours it's being played
on Russian state TV.
Russia uses the call to claim Sergei
and Yulia are being held
in Britain against their will.
People feel
you were being used by the Russian
state, and this phone call very
convenient for Russia at this point?
TRANSLATION:
Yes.
I don't know.
I cannot say whether it is a setup or not.
I have nothing to do with the Russian
government or Russian special services.
We are simply little people who have
been dragged into a big political
game, and it is certainly very tough.
Caught between the crisis
engulfing the Skripal family
and the Russian state, Viktoria wants
me to meet Sergei's mother, Yelena.
She's in her nineties, and has
already lost one of her two sons.
Yelena only knows that Sergei
and Yulia haven't been well.
She hasn't been told they're at the
centre of an international storm.
You miss him obviously, you miss him?
Five weeks after the attack, Yulia is
finally able to leave Salisbury hospital.
Her father is discharged six weeks later.
Their whereabouts remains
a closely-guarded secret.
How is Sergei Skripal?
I think he's recovering.
I think he'll be badly shaken,
as his daughter is badly shaken
as well, but they're robust
individuals, and I'm sure
that they will recover and lead
a life with much greater anonymity
than the one they had before.
So will the UK be looking after them?
We will, certainly.
For the foreseeable future?
We will certainly look
after people in that position.
Yulia briefly appears in public
to deny continuing Russian claims
the Skripals have been abducted
by the British.
The scar on Yulia's neck
from emergency treatment
following the attempt on her life
is clear to see.
The details of the assassination
plot against the Skripals
are now becoming clear.
Yulia's car parked outside her
Moscow home, just as she left it
before setting off on the trip that
nearly cost her life.
The Russians were particularly
brutal and callous in the way
in which they carried out this operation.
They would have known that
Yulia Skripal was in the UK at that
time, because they would have
monitored her movements.
Yulia was planning to visit her
father on what would
have been her brother Alexander's birthday.
He died last year and
is buried in Salisbury.
The GRU probably chose
a time when she was coming
here and would be in the house
because that would give them
certainty that Sergei Skripal
would be in the house as well.
Now, they weren't targeting Yulia Skripal,
but she was entirely dispensable.
Yulia leaves Moscow on Saturday 3rd March
- here she is on CCTV at the airport.
In Salisbury her father has no idea
how much danger he's in.
It's CCTV that unlocks the mystery
of who tries to kill him.
We had seized over 11,000 hours of CCTV,
you know, that was a massive task.
We were sifting through the CCTV
and we had a kind of gotcha moment
of we identified the two attackers.
We were now onto them.
The police discover two Russians
slip into Britain through Gatwick
Airport, the day before Yulia arrives.
These two individuals were around
where the Skripals actually lived.
We tracked them all the way back
to London and there to a hotel,
in the east of London in Bow.
We secretly examined the hotel
room where they stayed,
and we found traces of Novichok,
which is the same kind
of Novichok that linked it
to the Salisbury poisoning.
The would-be assassins travel
on fake passports in the names
of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.
I don't think they were expecting to be
captured on CCTV in the way they have.
We've pieced together what happened on
Sunday 4th March, the day of the attack.
At 11.48, the two Russians arrive at
Salisbury train station from London.
So we see the two of them,
actually stood by the turnstiles.
They appear to be looking
around which way to go.
From the CCTV, you can clearly see that one
of the suspects is carrying
a rucksack on his back.
We believe contained within that
rucksack was the Novichok
which was sealed within a bag.
They pass the petrol station.
So what the CCTV shows is the two suspects,
on the way to Christie Miller Road,
on the way to the Skripals' home.
The Skripals are at home, oblivious
to what is happening right outside.
We believe the suspects
actually took the device out
containing the Novichok,
moved to the front door and used
a pump to actually place the Novichok
on the door handle of the home address.
And pretty audacious,
that they did this in broad
daylight, knowing that they had
to get on with it?
They would have been there
for literally a matter of seconds
They would have been there
for literally a matter of seconds.
At 1.30 father and daughter
head out for lunch.
Sergei came out first of all,
he got Novichok on his hands
and then Yulia came out second and
she also got Novichok on her hands.
The two suspects, they're pretty brazen,
they appear to be taking pictures.
They are smiling, appears to be
quite pleased with themselves,
they then head back
towards the train station,
get on a train and return to London.
Within five hours the two men are at
Heathrow airport to fly back to Moscow.
While the investigation is making
progress, Salisbury is in the throes
of a massive clean-up.
The decontamination involves
1,000 troops and costs
millions of pounds -
all from one door handle.
The thing with the Skripals
house, it's ground zero.
So the highest concentration of
nerve agent we presume to be there.
Which leads us, you know, to be
a bit more cautious in our approach.
Here we have one of the guys
changing his gloves because
it's got an element
of potential contamination.
This is the first time body camera
pictures from inside a contaminated
site have been broadcast.
Whilst you can't see
the presence of a nerve agent,
in the back of your mind you're
aware that it could be anywhere
within the building.
Chairs, tables, ambulances, cars.
Thousands of tonnes of material
are tested, removed and destroyed.
So at the end of the day we're
talking about thousands of samples?
Thousands that have taken
painstaking time to collect
and then even more time
to process, to understand.
Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey
unwittingly contaminates his police
station, and then his home.
His family can't live there any more.
Physically I think I bounced back
pretty well thanks to the hospital.
And mentally?
Erm, that's a different
kettle of fish, that's…
That's taken longer - it's the emotional…
I describe it as emotional battering
and psychological impact.
It's taken longer to deal with just
because of everything
that's happened to us.
Not only did we lose the house,
we lost all of our possessions,
including the kids',
everything the kids owned.
We lost all that, the cars,
we lost everything.
And so, yeah, it's been -
it's been very difficult to kind
of come to terms with that.
As the World Cup kicks off,
international condemnation fades.
President Putin is riding high.
TRANSLATION:
I wish all the teams success
and an unforgettable experience to fans.
In Salisbury, Dawn Sturgess,
is buying drinks for a match.
She's spending time with friends -
among them Sam Hobson.
We thought we'd get a couple
of drinks in and we were gonna
have a laugh and chit-chat
and supporting England.
Dawn stays with her partner,
Charlie Rowley, in Amesbury seven
miles from Salisbury.
Sam visits his friends
again the next morning.
I seen a couple of ambulances
outside the house.
And then I seen Dawn
come out on a stretcher.
I was terrified.
I thought, "What's going on here?"
And Charlie came out and he was in bits.
He heard her fall down
and she was having a fit
apparently in the bathroom,
like foaming at the mouth
apparently in the bathroom,
like foaming at the mouth.
Within hours, Charlie was in trouble too.
He was just up against the wall,
like just rocking backwards
and forwards and like dribbling at the
mouth, eyes glazed pinpricked and red.
I didn't know what was going on and
so I panicked and rang the ambulance.
My first thought was "not again",
and "how can this happen again?"
and so it throws up all the emotions we
went through with the first incident.
For our staff, who live and work
here, the fact we had a second
contamination event was a real blow
to them and concern to them
and their families.
There was a sense of disbelief.
The preliminary information
was telling us that again there may
be Novichok present.
There was certainly a sinking feeling.
I remember quite distinctly
it was the night that
England finally won on,
on penalties in the World Cup.
But I found myself actually having
the conversation with Tim.
Had we missed something?
Had we had a second attack
take place in the city?
So the public thought well how
come this has happened?
You know, how did the police miss this?
Why wasn't the town swept
thoroughly and properly?
If you think about just
Salisbury itself in terms
of how big Salisbury is, you can only
be led by intelligence around it.
There's was a real question
of where do you start?
Charlie Rowley survives.
His partner Dawn Sturgess dies -
nine days after succumbing
to Novichok poisoning.
Dawn was a lovely person,
like a mother for everyone.
She cared about everyone,
she'd look out for you and she'd
give her last pound away just
to help you out if she could.
It's a tragedy that she's gone really,
she's missed by a lot of people.
I was in absolute shock when I heard
about what had happened to these two
people, and my heart
goes out to Dawn and her
family because I was able to walk out
of hospital and, and sadly she wasn't.
Tragically it's Dawn's death that
helps detectives solve a vital
piece of the puzzle.
Charlie had stumbled
on the container used to smuggle
the novichok into Britain.
He said he'd found a perfume bottle
and he gave it to Dawn, and Dawn
recognised the brand and said
it was a good one.
She sprayed it onto her wrists
and, like, smelled it,
and, like, obviously Charlie got
a bit on his hands and it was, like,
oily substance, he said,
and so he washed that off.
Charlie thinks he found the bottle
in a bin but it's not clear
if that's where the Russians had dumped it.
This is a, an exact replica
of the Novichok, the perfume bottle.
It was specially designed to get
through airport security
and protect the assassins
from its' deadly contents.
As you can see the size
of it, it's very small,
it has a sealed lid,
which contained the Novichok.
The attackers would have unscrewed
the lid, inserted the pump and then
placed the applicator on the top.
So when we found it,
there was a significant amount
of Novichok contained within the bottle.
How many people could have
been killed by that?
It's difficult to say, you know,
probably into the thousands.
Thousands of people?
Very possibly.
The amount that was in the bottle
and the way it was applied
to the Skripals' home address
was completely reckless.
Hoping to catch the Russian killers,
detectives keep the names they used
a secret for months.
But fearing they're about to leak, the
police release a cache of evidence.
While the Government points the finger
at Sergei's old paymasters, the GRU.
Based on a body of intelligence
the Government has concluded
that the two individuals named
by the police and CPS are officers
of the Russian military intelligence
service, also known as the GRU.
But President Putin still
tries to brazen it out.
On cue, the two men, appear on Russian
television - claiming to be tourists.
I listened to their account,
lies, disinformation
I listened to their account,
lies, disinformation.
To be honest probably one of the most
ridiculous cover stories I've ever heard.
Within a few weeks the investigative
website, Bellingcat, reveals
their true identities.
Alexander Mishkin, a medical doctor,
and Colonel Anatoliy Chipega,
both officers in the GRU.
I think we've got them bang to rights.
We have a pretty good sense
of who is in the GRU.
Our penetration of the Russian
services has given us
a pretty thorough sense of,
of who is there and what they do.
Heroes of the Russian Federation,
both men were decorated
for their bravery undercover -
by President Putin himself.
We invited the Russian government
to take part on this programme.
They didn't respond.
After the Russian assassins are unmasked,
President Putin finally reveals what
he really thinks of Sergei Skripal.
There was a degree
of contempt that the Russians
were showing, for Britain,
by using a nerve agent like Novichok
and I think the method was part
of the message, they want to get
a message across to Russians
everywhere that you are never
beyond our reach, and we will always
be able to get at you.
The investigation into what happened
in Salisbury continues, it's likely
the two men did not act alone,
and had back up in Britain.
Do you think there's anybody else
involved, a third man?
Well, that's, er who else is involved
is still very much subject to a,
a live line of enquiry.
My ambition remains to bring these
two individuals and anybody else
involved in this attack plot
to justice, you know,
through the British
criminal justice system.
I will not give up.
Salisbury is still scarred
by Russia's nerve agent attack.
Dawn Sturgess died.
Four people are lucky to be alive.
But they face the possibility
of long-term health problems.
I have passing moments where I think
about how, how it could affect me.
But I can't control that,
it's happened now, and we just have
to take each day as it comes.
The public reaction,
has been overwhelming actually,
and I wish I could thank everybody.
And your family?
And my family who have,
and my wife who's been, er yeah,
who's been the rock,
who's held it all together.
International arrest warrants
are out for the Russians who used
one of the world's deadliest nerve
agents in Salisbury.
But it's unlikely they will ever
face justice in a British court.
I was petrified…
everything was juddering and my
whole body was dripping with sweat.
5 News this is the inside story of
the Salisbury nerve agent attack,
told for the first time
by those who were there.
This is the inside story of the Salisbury
nerve agent attack. Back and forward, just
dribbling at the most. There was
certainly a very real expectation
early on these people could die from this.
An international murder plot
against a former Russian spy, played
out on the streets of a British
city. The Russians underestimated
the international and domestic
revulsion at the use of chemical weapons.
Now, moving images, never
seen before of the Russian assassin
just after the attack.
We had a kind of "gotcha" moment
of we identified the two attackers.
They're pretty brazen,
they are smiling, appear to be
quite pleased with themselves.
They wanted to get a message
across to Russians everywhere that
you are never beyond our reach and we
will always be able to get at you.
Salisbury on a quiet afternoon in March,
the cathedral city is emerging
from a bitterly cold Siberian storm.
Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey is on duty.
It had been a lot of snow a few days
before, which had been
quite disruptive, and I just started my
duty at three, doing my normal work.
Paramedic lan Parsons gets an urgent call.
We'd just come off of the 'Beast from
the East', so it was quite a busy day.
I responded to a call.
It came through as a CAT 1 emergency.
Meg Edgar, a retired teacher,
is passing through the city centre.
I could see that there was somebody sitting
very still on the bench over there.
And what appeared to be somebody
on the ground, at their feet.
I saw a patient lying on the floor
that was struggling to breathe.
It did look urgent.
A shop assistant is on her break.
The woman, she was fitting quite badly.
She just couldn't control her body.
Her father was more rigid.
Her father was more rigid.
They're treated immediately
at the scene - then rushed
to Salisbury District Hospital.
We were discussing between the guys,
the three of us in the back
of the ambulance, we were coming up
with the same conclusion,
that we thought it might be
an overdose of some sort.
The police were just trying
to figure out what had happened,
and the details were a little bit sketchy.
I just said, "Well, I'll
have a wander down then."
There was nothing around
on the bench that we could see.
In intensive care the patients are in a
coma - their vital organs in shut down.
Staff are struggling to diagnose them.
We were trying to piece together
what could have happened to the two
patients, and it felt unusual
because they weren't
responding in the way we would've
probably expected them to.
That evening, not knowing why two
people are critically ill, the Fire
Brigade take no chances - this might
be a chemical incident.
They were putting on the big green
hazmat suits and getting out
equipment and hoses.
It was just like something we'd
never seen in Salisbury before.
Porton Down, on the outskirts
of Salisbury, is alerted.
It's home to the Government's Defence,
Science and Technology Laboratory.
We can only tell you the first name
of the lead scientist dealing
with chemical threats.
Wiltshire Police were asking
questions really around some of
the symptoms the individuals
were displaying, which were not
entirely consistent with a drugs
overdose, essentially,
which was the theory at the time.
What happens here is usually top secret.
Their job - to protect British troops
from chemical weapons on the battlefield.
We handle the most hazardous types
of "materials", like plague,
anthrax "and" agents that have been
developed as chemical weapons.
They range from things like chlorine
through to nerve agents.
It's only when the patients' clothes
are searched for proof of identity
that the first clue emerges.
A police officer goes online to look
up a name - Skripal.
That officer used their nous,
and did some googling
and there was a Wiki footprint
in relation to Mr Skripal.
I had a call from the
on duty superintendent.
I always remember the words, "Boss, I
hope you're sitting down for this one."
The couple fighting for their lives
in Salisbury Hospital are revealed
as Sergei Skripal - a former Russian
spy - and his daughter, Yulia.
That night Nick Bailey and two
colleagues are sent to the Skripals'
home in a quiet suburb of Salisbury.
We had to make sure that there was
no other casualties in the house.
It was vital for us to find out
what had actually happened to them.
We decided, to protect ourselves
and to protect the scene,
we would wear full forensic suits.
I was the first person into the house.
The house was in darkness.
It just looked normal,
there was nothing untoward.
Came out of the house, secured it
again, took our forensic suits off,
which we then bagged up, and then
we went back to the station.
Once I'd come back from the house,
the Skripals' house,
My eyes were like pin -
my pupils were like pinpricks.
And I was quite sweaty and hot.
At the time I put that down
to being tired and stressed.
Nick goes home - hoping he'll sleep it off.
NEWS FOOTAGE: A former
Russian spy is critical
in hospital after a suspected
poisoning in Salisbury…
British police are working
to identify the substance…
A woman who was found unconscious
with Sergei Skripal is also
in a serious condition…
This is now too big
for Wiltshire Police to handle alone
- time to call in the experts, the
Counter-terrorism Unit at Scotland Yard.
Dean Haydon is the detective
leading the investigation.
We thought we were dealing
with a poisoning, but because of
the background and profile
of the individuals and
the circumstances of the actual
incident we were concerned it may
have been a hostile state act
from another country.
We started off with not
knowing anything at all
so it was like looking for a needle
in a haystack, but actually at that
stage we didn't even have a haystack, so we
had to build the data
from literally the start
So we seize all of the CCTV,
all of the movements of everybody
in the town centre, we start
speaking to witnesses.
We overlay it with communications
data, and we start in Salisbury town
centre and we move out from there.
By now, Nick Bailey is feeling terrible.
Everything was juddering.
I was very, very unsteady on my feet.
The sweating had gone
from my forehead down my back.
My whole body was just dripping with sweat.
Nick's family rush him to hospital.
It must have been pretty
frightening for you?
Yes, it was, it was, it was horrendous.
It was just - I was confused,
I didn't know what was
going on and it was,
it was really, really frightening.
At Porton Down they work
round the clock on blood samples
to find out what poisoned
the Skripals and Nick Bailey.
It was a jaw-dropping moment.
I went through a number of emotions,
from disbelief to anger.
We identified that, that the material
was a nerve agent called Novichok.
It's one of the most
dangerous substances known.
It's quite unique in its ability
to poison individuals
at very low concentrations.
For the first time ever, a nerve agent
has been used in an attack in Europe.
Professor Tim breaks the news
to Wiltshire Police.
Tim came into my office
and gave us that brief,
that that this was nerve agent,
and I say that sort of aghast,
aghast sense of disbelief for us, but
for a moment I guess it rocks you.
They said, "You have this Novichok,
this nerve agent in your blood system."
What was your reaction?
Confusion - I didn't understand how it had
happened, scared because it's
the fear of the unknown,
because it's such a dangerous thing
to have in your system,
knowing how the other two
were or how badly they'd been
affected by it I was - I was petrified.
From a clinical point of view
we were certainly faced
with something that we had not dealt
with before as a team
of intensive care doctors.
There was certainly a very real
expectation early on that these
people could die from this.
Novichok, one of the world's
deadliest nerve agents has
found its way to Salisbury.
But how?
The answer lies in Moscow - in this
anonymous looking building,
once home to a top secret
Soviet laboratory.
The secrets of Russia's Cold War research
only came to light in the 1990s.
So your study is down here, Vil?
That's when this scientist who'd
worked there fled to America.
He published the chemical formulas
of the nerve agent he helped create.
Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
So that's you as a young
scientist in the laboratory?
Yes, I was working there.
The Russians called it
"the newcomer", Novichok.
Thought to be ten times more toxic
than any nerve agent
created before or since.
TRANSLATION: The person starts to
go blind, that's the first sign.
The second is difficulty breathing,
even to the point they stop breathing.
The third sign is constant vomiting.
The fourth - uncontrollable convulsions.
The Russians weaponised Novichok
for the battlefield.
The tiniest dose can be fatal.
To kill a person, you need
about one milligram.
To be sure, two milligrams.
The scientists who developed
Novichok for the motherland received
the highest honours.
But Vil's conscience wouldn't
allow him to stay silent.
I took part in its development, and
that's a big reason why I feel guilty.
Salisbury is now in the grip
of a contamination scare on a scale
never before seen in Britain.
Scientists have to find
the Novichok, but it can't
be detected on site - only back in the lab.
Like oil, it sinks into porous
surfaces and is spread by touch.
The military are alerted -
for security reasons we're not
naming any of those involved.
It's like to trying to find
where you've put invisible ink.
The person who's come in with the ink
has put their hand on the table.
So that's going to be the hottest spot.
And every time they move,
it can move around the room
and around the table,
not to the same extent each time.
And you've got to detect where that's gone.
Retracing the victims' footsteps is vital.
The pub where Sergei
and Yulia Skripal had a drink,
the restaurant where they ate,
the car park they used,
and the bench they collapsed on.
Nine sites are cordoned off.
We couldn't take any risks with this
and there was potentially huge
public anxiety there.
We had people attending our accident
and emergency department,
because they were worried.
There was a sense as to how big this
could get, and a worry
really as to what we were
actually dealing with.
Doctors and scientists desperately
try to find the right combination
of drugs to fight the poison.
I was conscious, throughout the whole time.
It was painful at the beginning.
I had lots of injections, a lot of needles.
The I had five or six infusions,
at any one time in my arms…
Physically, I felt quite
numb after a while.
One of the Skripals was in the room
right next to me, it was all guarded
by the police, I had no idea how
they were, how they were doing.
One moment you'd have a nurse
coming in with a sandwich
for you, dressed like…top
to bottom in protective gear,
closely followed by my wife and kids
who were allowed to just walk in,
so it was very confusing.
To understand how a deadly nerve
agent came to be used on the streets
of Britain I travelled to Russia -
to the home of the intended target
- former spy Sergei Skripal.
I've come to Yaroslavl to meet some
members of the Skripal family
who are closest of all to Sergei and
Yulia - his mother and his niece.
This is Sergei and Yulia -
at our dacha outside Yaroslavl.
TRANSLATION:
This is Sergei and Yulia -
at our dacha outside Yaroslavl.
He treated everyone as his equal.
He's an open-hearted, kind man.
Sergei was born into a military
family, model Soviet citizens.
He became a cadet as a boy.
This is his wedding, with aunt Luda.
That's their wedding -
Sergei and Lyudmilla.
Sergei and his wife Lyudmilla
had two children - son
Alexander and daughter Yulia.
Ours is an ordinary family, built
around our grandmother and grandfather.
We've all stayed in touch.
Sergei became a paratrooper - he served
with distinction in Afghanistan.
The Skripals moved in the 90s
to these apartments in Moscow -
for military families.
There was nothing remarkable the flat.
There are millions like that in Moscow.
Everyone would visit -
he was happy to see us all.
It was now Sergei became
a spy with the GRU…
the secret arm of Russia's
Ministry of Defence.
The GRU is the Russian state's most
powerful and feared intelligence agency.
They carry out espionage,
trying to gain our state secrets.
They carry out assassinations
and assassination attempts.
The GRU are very substantial -
they're well over 10,000 strong.
They pose a real threat
to western countries.
In Britain the Government rips up
the diplomatic rulebook, expelling
23 Russians from their embassy -
and directly accuses Russia.
The Government has concluded
it is highly likely that Russia
was responsible for the act
against Sergei and Yulia Skripal.
Britain launches an international
diplomatic offensive.
The UK's Ambassador to the United
Nations lays out the Government's case.
As we got the evidence
and as we made the analysis
we realised that the Russians
were the only people
with the motive, the operational
experience, if you like,
and the technical means to have
carried out an attack like this.
In Russia, President Putin's
popularity only increases - he's
re-elected with a huge majority.
He accuses Britain of provocation and
denies any involvement in Salisbury.
TRANSLATION:
The British then up the ante,
challenging President Putin
on his home turf, in the gilded
salons of the British embassy -
right across the Moscow
River from the Kremlin.
Foreign diplomats always loved
coming to this historic mansion,
to be wined and dined,
and now they came for a power point
presentation, making the British
case and pointing to Russia's guilt.
The international response
is unprecedented.
27 countries throw out 153 Russian
diplomats, who they accuse of spying.
I think the Russians underestimated
the international and domestic
revulsion at the use of chemical weapons.
I think they thought they would,
if anything, take a small hit
in London, and they ended up
with this united response,
which I think took them by surprise.
But why would Russia want to kill
an old spy now living in Britain?
I'm travelling east across Russia
to meet a former KGB man who's
studied the official files
on Sergei Skripal's career.
TRANSLATION:
After the fall of the Soviet Union,
the ideology disappeared.
It was a spiritual loss,
not just for Skripal.
It was a tough and painful
moment for me too.
In 1993 Sergei, the GRU
spy, was sent to Spain.
His cover story - a diplomat
in the Russian embassy in Madrid.
In Spain, he thought less
about serving his country -
more about using his job to make money.
Sergei became a prime target
for British intelligence - M16.
When he came to Spain, British intelligence
targeted him and recruited him.
I must say I respect them for that.
He got $3,000 a month.
And if it was good information,
they would add a bonus.
He was now a double agent.
MI6 named him Agent Forthwith -
a direct route for them
into the GRU, notoriously hard to crack.
First, he betrayed his friends
who worked undercover.
In all, he gave away more than 100 names.
It was a huge loss.
Sergei was recalled to Moscow
in 1996 - his health was poor.
He was promoted, to head
of personnel for the GRU.
Now Sergei Skripal had access
to the telephone directory
of all Russia's military
spies across the world.
Sergei Skripal opened a window
into the Russian military,
which was of critical importance
at that time.
John Sipher used to run CIA
operations in Russia.
For an intelligence service,
the files of others and where
they are and their foibles
and their problems and their
personal issues would've been
something quite important.
If you're going to understand
the sort of threat that Russia poses
to the West, then you need
to understand the thinking
and the operations and the assets of
the Russian intelligence agencies,
which is why we in MI6
were committed to penetrating
the Russian intelligence agencies,
including the GRU.
Sergei was careful not to meet his
British paymasters in Moscow.
But he took expensive holidays
abroad to brief his handlers.
The net gradually closed around him,
as the spy himself was spied on.
TRANSLATION: He was caught the
way all spies are caught.
First, by overspending and, second,
by not being careful.
Sergei Skripal was arrested in 2004.
He was tried and sentenced to 13
years in a penal colony.
But greater forces conspired
to release him from prison.
Sir John Sawers was Head
of MI6 at the time.
He was convicted of working
for British intelligence.
It was important that we got him back.
Vienna, July, 2010 - scene
of a Cold War-style spy swap.
Ten Russians spies caught in America
exchanged for four men - one
of them, Sergei Skripal.
There was a presidential pardon,
a release from prison,
a formal swap, which in the past has
always been honoured by both sides.
The former KGB spy, Vladimir Putin,
wasn't president when Sergei
was pardoned, but made it clear
what he thought of traitors.
TRANSLATION:
So Sergei and Lyudmilla,
with Yulia, came to Britain.
In 2011 MI6 helped them settle
in a quiet part of Salisbury.
But Sergei must have known the GRU
never forget a traitor.
Like Colonel Popov, who spied for
America in the 50s and was caught.
There were stories that were put out
through the Russian intelligence services.
He was burned in a fire
and videotaped, and that every
new class that came in to the GRU
was shown the video tape of Mr Popov
being burned alive, to make it clear
what were the price of betrayal
to the state.
Shouldn't you have protected him
more - he was an ex-agent?
Well, I think this question of what level
of protection you provide
for people who have been
released and swapped in this way, it
varies from from individual to individual.
Now, clearly, we got that
calculation wrong, that the threat
against Skripal was much
higher than we'd expected,
because we hadn't expected the Russians
to go back on a presidential pardon.
A year after the Skripals arrived in
Salisbury, Sergei's wife died of cancer.
He began travelling to eastern Europe.
NATO countries Russia considers a threat.
Alexei Venediktov is a respected
independent Russian commentator
Alexei Venediktov is a respected
independent Russian commentator.
TRANSLATION: My conversations
with former intelligence
officers reveal that
after Skripal was expelled
from Russia he helped NATO operations.
He talked to them, and worked
against his country.
It's believed Sergei met and briefed
intelligence services,
in the Czech Republic and Estonia -
once part of the Soviet Union.
The Russian intelligence veterans
explained, "If you carry"
on not just consulting,
but actively working
against your country,
then you continue to be a traitor.
"Then your pardon is not valid
and you must be punished."
Did he travel to eastern Europe, did he
talk to those intelligence agencies?
He was he was involved in exchanges,
which are entirely normal,
and they were largely historic.
I don't believe that Skripal was a thorn
in the flesh of the Russians
after he'd been released,
and certainly there's nothing
which would justify the sort
of operation that was conducted
against him and his daughter.
In Salisbury, it takes two
weeks of painstaking
investigation for scientists
and police to work out exactly
how the Skripals came
into contact with the Novichok.
To find the source of the Novichok
actually was our first breakthrough.
We identified that there
was Novichok on the front door,
the front door handle,
of their home address.
It shocked me that it had been
used in such a reckless
manner on the front door
of an address in Salisbury.
Russia has form when it comes
to killing enemies in Britain -
a poisoned umbrella on Waterloo
bridge, radioactive polonium
in a tea cup in Mayfair.
What we know is that the Russians
have a long history
of developing highly toxic poisons
in order to kill people.
We believe that they have
trained on this technique
of putting nerve agents, including
putting them on door handles.
Did it help you when you knew
that it had been on the door handle,
and you didn't know that
when you entered the house?
It helped in some ways.
I, at that point knew, "Well,
it's not something that I've done"
wrong", because that was
a big thing for me.
It's such an outrageous,
dangerous way of doing something
that it angered me as well,
because any number of people
could have been affected by that.
Have you any idea how you got it on you
- I mean, if you were wearing gloves?
No, I don't, I don't know I,
I don't know whether -
if it's gone through the gloves,
I don't know whether, I mean,
I could have adjusted my face mask
and my goggles whilst
I was in the house with
it being on my hand.
Did you have any regrets that
you hadn't sent him in better
protected against this?
I guess hindsight's a wonderful thing.
The emergency services
respond to what's in front
of them, unless there's something
obvious which we'd indicate that
actually they should be wearing
personal protective equipment,
which gives them that higher
level of protection,
then we take things as we find them.
In Salisbury hospital the patients
are showing signs of recovery.
Their vital organs beginning
to function again.
We recognised that with nerve
agent poisoning there
was potentially a long road ahead.
No one really had any useful clinical
experience of this particular agent.
As it happened, things did start
to turn around more quickly probably
than we anticipated.
I said all along I want to walk out
of hospital, with my wife,
which we did in the end,
and being able to do that,
be able to walk out of hospital
after two and a half weeks
of going through what I went
through, was incredible.
I'm thankful to the scientists and I'm
thankful to the staff at the hospital.
Shortly after Nick Bailey's
recovery, Yulia wakes from a coma.
Hopes are raised that Sergei
will pull through, too.
It was something we hadn't dared
to hope for in the early days.
But actually, as you can imagine,
we were all delighted to see those
patients respond to the treatment
we were able to give.
So what of President Putin's taunt
that no one could survive
a military-grade nerve agent?
TRANSLATION:
Maybe the dose was not high enough.
Salisbury was rainy and muggy.
Novichok breaks down in damp
conditions, weakening its toxicity.
It's the Achilles heel of Novichok.
In the weeks after the Salisbury
attack, Russia ramps up
its denial of responsibility
with a blizzard of propaganda.
The Russian concept of information
is really that it's a weapon.
Ben Nimmo monitors how Russia uses
disinformation as a weapon
in the age of the internet.
A good way to understand
the techniques of Russian
information warfare is you can think
of the four Ds - dismiss, distort,
distract, and dismay.
So dismiss - you'll insult the other side.
You'll try and make them seem valueless.
Are some things in your
life (EXPLETIVE)?
Well, we have the answer in case
you missed it, you can get
yourself a Russian to blame!
Distort - you'll actually twist
the facts to suit your story.
Britain's own chemical lab Porton Down
admitted it had micro stockpiles.
Distract - you will accuse your
accuser of doing the same thing.
And dismay - you will say the terrible
things happen if this continues.
You throw out as many competing
theories as you can to confuse
people as much as you can.
The most audacious attempt to sow
confusion starts here in Moscow,
in a building called the Centre for
the Control of Everyday Activities.
In reality it's home to the GRU's
sophisticated hacking unit.
The GRU target the Hague
at a critical time.
The chemical weapons watchdog
the OPCW is based here.
It's testing samples from Salisbury.
The OPCW have very, very high
technical standards,
and they were able to verify our
findings independently,
that this was a Novichok,
a highly toxic substance.
This is the Russian hacking team
arriving in the Hague.
They're caught red-handed with their kit
in a car, parked outside the watchdog.
But Russia had already stolen data from
a lab working on the Salisbury samples.
The Russian Foreign Minister
uses it to falsely claim
a Western nerve agent,
not Novichok, is to blame.
For the Russian foreign minister
first of all to identify
a laboratory, and then to make
a completely false accusation based
on what they allege this laboratory
to have said, was extraordinary.
So the foreign minister was lying?
Yes.
They weren't just running
one counter narrative.
It's almost "Pick your
own conspiracy theory -"
here are more than 30 that
we've prepared earlier."
In April, Viktoria Skripal
gets an unexpected call.
It's her cousin Yulia calling
from Salisbury hospital.
This will become an opportunity for
Russia to make more false claims.
TRANSLATION:
I was overjoyed and realised that
if I could hear her voice,
it meant that at least she was alive.
Viktoria records the phone call.
Within hours it's being played
on Russian state TV.
Russia uses the call to claim Sergei
and Yulia are being held
in Britain against their will.
People feel
you were being used by the Russian
state, and this phone call very
convenient for Russia at this point?
TRANSLATION:
Yes.
I don't know.
I cannot say whether it is a setup or not.
I have nothing to do with the Russian
government or Russian special services.
We are simply little people who have
been dragged into a big political
game, and it is certainly very tough.
Caught between the crisis
engulfing the Skripal family
and the Russian state, Viktoria wants
me to meet Sergei's mother, Yelena.
She's in her nineties, and has
already lost one of her two sons.
Yelena only knows that Sergei
and Yulia haven't been well.
She hasn't been told they're at the
centre of an international storm.
You miss him obviously, you miss him?
Five weeks after the attack, Yulia is
finally able to leave Salisbury hospital.
Her father is discharged six weeks later.
Their whereabouts remains
a closely-guarded secret.
How is Sergei Skripal?
I think he's recovering.
I think he'll be badly shaken,
as his daughter is badly shaken
as well, but they're robust
individuals, and I'm sure
that they will recover and lead
a life with much greater anonymity
than the one they had before.
So will the UK be looking after them?
We will, certainly.
For the foreseeable future?
We will certainly look
after people in that position.
Yulia briefly appears in public
to deny continuing Russian claims
the Skripals have been abducted
by the British.
The scar on Yulia's neck
from emergency treatment
following the attempt on her life
is clear to see.
The details of the assassination
plot against the Skripals
are now becoming clear.
Yulia's car parked outside her
Moscow home, just as she left it
before setting off on the trip that
nearly cost her life.
The Russians were particularly
brutal and callous in the way
in which they carried out this operation.
They would have known that
Yulia Skripal was in the UK at that
time, because they would have
monitored her movements.
Yulia was planning to visit her
father on what would
have been her brother Alexander's birthday.
He died last year and
is buried in Salisbury.
The GRU probably chose
a time when she was coming
here and would be in the house
because that would give them
certainty that Sergei Skripal
would be in the house as well.
Now, they weren't targeting Yulia Skripal,
but she was entirely dispensable.
Yulia leaves Moscow on Saturday 3rd March
- here she is on CCTV at the airport.
In Salisbury her father has no idea
how much danger he's in.
It's CCTV that unlocks the mystery
of who tries to kill him.
We had seized over 11,000 hours of CCTV,
you know, that was a massive task.
We were sifting through the CCTV
and we had a kind of gotcha moment
of we identified the two attackers.
We were now onto them.
The police discover two Russians
slip into Britain through Gatwick
Airport, the day before Yulia arrives.
These two individuals were around
where the Skripals actually lived.
We tracked them all the way back
to London and there to a hotel,
in the east of London in Bow.
We secretly examined the hotel
room where they stayed,
and we found traces of Novichok,
which is the same kind
of Novichok that linked it
to the Salisbury poisoning.
The would-be assassins travel
on fake passports in the names
of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.
I don't think they were expecting to be
captured on CCTV in the way they have.
We've pieced together what happened on
Sunday 4th March, the day of the attack.
At 11.48, the two Russians arrive at
Salisbury train station from London.
So we see the two of them,
actually stood by the turnstiles.
They appear to be looking
around which way to go.
From the CCTV, you can clearly see that one
of the suspects is carrying
a rucksack on his back.
We believe contained within that
rucksack was the Novichok
which was sealed within a bag.
They pass the petrol station.
So what the CCTV shows is the two suspects,
on the way to Christie Miller Road,
on the way to the Skripals' home.
The Skripals are at home, oblivious
to what is happening right outside.
We believe the suspects
actually took the device out
containing the Novichok,
moved to the front door and used
a pump to actually place the Novichok
on the door handle of the home address.
And pretty audacious,
that they did this in broad
daylight, knowing that they had
to get on with it?
They would have been there
for literally a matter of seconds
They would have been there
for literally a matter of seconds.
At 1.30 father and daughter
head out for lunch.
Sergei came out first of all,
he got Novichok on his hands
and then Yulia came out second and
she also got Novichok on her hands.
The two suspects, they're pretty brazen,
they appear to be taking pictures.
They are smiling, appears to be
quite pleased with themselves,
they then head back
towards the train station,
get on a train and return to London.
Within five hours the two men are at
Heathrow airport to fly back to Moscow.
While the investigation is making
progress, Salisbury is in the throes
of a massive clean-up.
The decontamination involves
1,000 troops and costs
millions of pounds -
all from one door handle.
The thing with the Skripals
house, it's ground zero.
So the highest concentration of
nerve agent we presume to be there.
Which leads us, you know, to be
a bit more cautious in our approach.
Here we have one of the guys
changing his gloves because
it's got an element
of potential contamination.
This is the first time body camera
pictures from inside a contaminated
site have been broadcast.
Whilst you can't see
the presence of a nerve agent,
in the back of your mind you're
aware that it could be anywhere
within the building.
Chairs, tables, ambulances, cars.
Thousands of tonnes of material
are tested, removed and destroyed.
So at the end of the day we're
talking about thousands of samples?
Thousands that have taken
painstaking time to collect
and then even more time
to process, to understand.
Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey
unwittingly contaminates his police
station, and then his home.
His family can't live there any more.
Physically I think I bounced back
pretty well thanks to the hospital.
And mentally?
Erm, that's a different
kettle of fish, that's…
That's taken longer - it's the emotional…
I describe it as emotional battering
and psychological impact.
It's taken longer to deal with just
because of everything
that's happened to us.
Not only did we lose the house,
we lost all of our possessions,
including the kids',
everything the kids owned.
We lost all that, the cars,
we lost everything.
And so, yeah, it's been -
it's been very difficult to kind
of come to terms with that.
As the World Cup kicks off,
international condemnation fades.
President Putin is riding high.
TRANSLATION:
I wish all the teams success
and an unforgettable experience to fans.
In Salisbury, Dawn Sturgess,
is buying drinks for a match.
She's spending time with friends -
among them Sam Hobson.
We thought we'd get a couple
of drinks in and we were gonna
have a laugh and chit-chat
and supporting England.
Dawn stays with her partner,
Charlie Rowley, in Amesbury seven
miles from Salisbury.
Sam visits his friends
again the next morning.
I seen a couple of ambulances
outside the house.
And then I seen Dawn
come out on a stretcher.
I was terrified.
I thought, "What's going on here?"
And Charlie came out and he was in bits.
He heard her fall down
and she was having a fit
apparently in the bathroom,
like foaming at the mouth
apparently in the bathroom,
like foaming at the mouth.
Within hours, Charlie was in trouble too.
He was just up against the wall,
like just rocking backwards
and forwards and like dribbling at the
mouth, eyes glazed pinpricked and red.
I didn't know what was going on and
so I panicked and rang the ambulance.
My first thought was "not again",
and "how can this happen again?"
and so it throws up all the emotions we
went through with the first incident.
For our staff, who live and work
here, the fact we had a second
contamination event was a real blow
to them and concern to them
and their families.
There was a sense of disbelief.
The preliminary information
was telling us that again there may
be Novichok present.
There was certainly a sinking feeling.
I remember quite distinctly
it was the night that
England finally won on,
on penalties in the World Cup.
But I found myself actually having
the conversation with Tim.
Had we missed something?
Had we had a second attack
take place in the city?
So the public thought well how
come this has happened?
You know, how did the police miss this?
Why wasn't the town swept
thoroughly and properly?
If you think about just
Salisbury itself in terms
of how big Salisbury is, you can only
be led by intelligence around it.
There's was a real question
of where do you start?
Charlie Rowley survives.
His partner Dawn Sturgess dies -
nine days after succumbing
to Novichok poisoning.
Dawn was a lovely person,
like a mother for everyone.
She cared about everyone,
she'd look out for you and she'd
give her last pound away just
to help you out if she could.
It's a tragedy that she's gone really,
she's missed by a lot of people.
I was in absolute shock when I heard
about what had happened to these two
people, and my heart
goes out to Dawn and her
family because I was able to walk out
of hospital and, and sadly she wasn't.
Tragically it's Dawn's death that
helps detectives solve a vital
piece of the puzzle.
Charlie had stumbled
on the container used to smuggle
the novichok into Britain.
He said he'd found a perfume bottle
and he gave it to Dawn, and Dawn
recognised the brand and said
it was a good one.
She sprayed it onto her wrists
and, like, smelled it,
and, like, obviously Charlie got
a bit on his hands and it was, like,
oily substance, he said,
and so he washed that off.
Charlie thinks he found the bottle
in a bin but it's not clear
if that's where the Russians had dumped it.
This is a, an exact replica
of the Novichok, the perfume bottle.
It was specially designed to get
through airport security
and protect the assassins
from its' deadly contents.
As you can see the size
of it, it's very small,
it has a sealed lid,
which contained the Novichok.
The attackers would have unscrewed
the lid, inserted the pump and then
placed the applicator on the top.
So when we found it,
there was a significant amount
of Novichok contained within the bottle.
How many people could have
been killed by that?
It's difficult to say, you know,
probably into the thousands.
Thousands of people?
Very possibly.
The amount that was in the bottle
and the way it was applied
to the Skripals' home address
was completely reckless.
Hoping to catch the Russian killers,
detectives keep the names they used
a secret for months.
But fearing they're about to leak, the
police release a cache of evidence.
While the Government points the finger
at Sergei's old paymasters, the GRU.
Based on a body of intelligence
the Government has concluded
that the two individuals named
by the police and CPS are officers
of the Russian military intelligence
service, also known as the GRU.
But President Putin still
tries to brazen it out.
On cue, the two men, appear on Russian
television - claiming to be tourists.
I listened to their account,
lies, disinformation
I listened to their account,
lies, disinformation.
To be honest probably one of the most
ridiculous cover stories I've ever heard.
Within a few weeks the investigative
website, Bellingcat, reveals
their true identities.
Alexander Mishkin, a medical doctor,
and Colonel Anatoliy Chipega,
both officers in the GRU.
I think we've got them bang to rights.
We have a pretty good sense
of who is in the GRU.
Our penetration of the Russian
services has given us
a pretty thorough sense of,
of who is there and what they do.
Heroes of the Russian Federation,
both men were decorated
for their bravery undercover -
by President Putin himself.
We invited the Russian government
to take part on this programme.
They didn't respond.
After the Russian assassins are unmasked,
President Putin finally reveals what
he really thinks of Sergei Skripal.
There was a degree
of contempt that the Russians
were showing, for Britain,
by using a nerve agent like Novichok
and I think the method was part
of the message, they want to get
a message across to Russians
everywhere that you are never
beyond our reach, and we will always
be able to get at you.
The investigation into what happened
in Salisbury continues, it's likely
the two men did not act alone,
and had back up in Britain.
Do you think there's anybody else
involved, a third man?
Well, that's, er who else is involved
is still very much subject to a,
a live line of enquiry.
My ambition remains to bring these
two individuals and anybody else
involved in this attack plot
to justice, you know,
through the British
criminal justice system.
I will not give up.
Salisbury is still scarred
by Russia's nerve agent attack.
Dawn Sturgess died.
Four people are lucky to be alive.
But they face the possibility
of long-term health problems.
I have passing moments where I think
about how, how it could affect me.
But I can't control that,
it's happened now, and we just have
to take each day as it comes.
The public reaction,
has been overwhelming actually,
and I wish I could thank everybody.
And your family?
And my family who have,
and my wife who's been, er yeah,
who's been the rock,
who's held it all together.
International arrest warrants
are out for the Russians who used
one of the world's deadliest nerve
agents in Salisbury.
But it's unlikely they will ever
face justice in a British court.