The poisoning of a British couple comes just four months after a former spy from Russia was exposed to the same toxin in Britain.
A couple in the United Kingdom is in critical condition after being poisoned by a military grade nerve agent — and Russia may be to blame.
Dawn Sturgess and Charles Rowley, both British citizens in their mid-40s, fell ill in their home in Wiltshire, England, on Saturday. Sturgess collapsed first and was taken to the hospital; later that day, an ambulance was sent back to bring Rowley to the emergency room as well. The couple remains in critical condition in the Salisbury District Hospital.
Though police initially thought a contaminated batch of illegal drugs was to blame, UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid said on Thursday that authorities now believe the couple was exposed to Novichok, the same lethal poison that was used in the attempted assassination of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter last March.
That attack took place just eight miles from where Sturgess and Rowley live, in the town of Amesbury in the southern region of England. It prompted a massive decontamination effort that took several months to complete and cost about £7.5 million, which is about $9.9 million in USD.
But Javid, the home secretary, claims that the couple likely came into contact with Novichok at another site that wasn’t part of the clean-up operation. Experts say that the toxin degrades so slowly that it’s possible the couple came into contact with it well after the original attack.
British citizens are now on high alert, uncertain whether the deadly poison is still lurking in other places. Although England’s Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies told the public there’s a low risk of contamination, she advised people to wash their clothes and wipe down their personal belongings.
British authorities blamed Russia for the Skripal poisoning back in March and expelled 23 Russian diplomats in retaliation — the UK’s largest removal of foreign officials in more than 30 years. In a joint statement on March 15, the leaders of the US, UK, France, and Germany said it was “highly likely that Russia was responsible for the attack.”
Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to deny allegations that the Kremlin was involved.
But Moscow makes sense as a potential culprit. After all, the Soviet Union created Novichok throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and the Russian government has continued to produce it.
The Kremlin also had a motive: Sergei Skripal was a member of a Russian intelligence service, known as the GRU, who was convicted in 2006 of handing over the names of 300 Russian agents to the British. Skripal admitted to helping UK spies for at least a decade.
The couple that was poisoned on Saturday, on the other hand, so far don’t seem to have connections to Russia .
It seems they were just accidental victims. Britain is now reportedly consulting with its allies to determine a response to Russia.
“The Russian state could put this wrong right. They could tell us what happened, what they did and fill in some of the significant gaps that we are trying to pursue,” Britain’s security minister, Ben Wallace, told BBC radio on Thursday.
The good news is the Skripals survived, and continue to recover from the attack — but it’s unclear if the British couple will be as lucky.
Meanwhile, London clearly wants to keep the pressure on the Kremlin. “The eyes of the world are currently on Russia, not least because of the World Cup,” Javid told Parliament on Thursday. “It is now time that the Russian state comes forward and explains what has gone on.”
“It is completely unacceptable for our people to be either deliberate or accidental targets, or for our streets, our parks, our towns, to be dumping grounds for poison,” Javid added.
