The poisoning of retired military spy Col. Sergei Skripal was an operation by Western secret services to harm Vladimir Putin as he seeks reelection this month, claims the Russian secret service’s former expert on Britain.
Master spy Mikhail ‘Smiling Mike’ Lyubimov headed the UK desk at the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB, formerly KGB) after being thrown out of London in the 1960s for seeking to recruit a female Foreign Office cipher clerk.
He rounded on claims that Moscow was behind the Salisbury poisoning of Skripal and his daughter Yulia, and claims Boris Johnson’s reaction to the incident shows it is a plot against Russia.
Retired spymaster Mikhail Lyubimov claims the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury was carried out by Western secret services in order to harm Vladimir Putin’s election campaign
This was later echoed by the Russian Foreign Ministry, which said that attempts to link Russia to Skripal looked designed to worsen relations between London and Moscow.
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the ministry, told reporters at a briefing that the allegations were being used to whip up an anti-Russian campaign in Britain.
Lyubimov said: ‘It is an absurd to kill a person who had been swapped.
‘If he was to carry any secrets on him, he could have been killed here (in Moscow) – calmly, quietly – to inject him with a dose and no-one would have ever heard of it.
‘Secondly, and this is the main moment: who benefits from it?
‘You’ve got to be an idiot to suddenly do this right before our presidential elections and in the middle of an horrendous anti-Russian campaign.’
He claimed Johnson’s reaction vowing sanctions and a World Cup boycott was telling.
‘Boris Johnson’s statement confirms my thought – at a time when is it all still very unclear, already we receive a threat to boycott our football championship, and threats that ‘We’ll be taking measures…’
‘We’ve been through this thousand times.’
Sergei Skripal, 66, pictured in 2006, and his daughter Yulia, 33, are critically ill in hospital after being exposed to an unknown substance in Salisbury, on Sunday
Lyubimov – who wrote the KGB’s still-classified guide to the British character for Soviet spies – said: ‘My conclusion is this: it has been done by Western secret service to splash oil on fire, to get this fire – which started for no single reason – going properly, and to help an attack on our country.’
Asked by a TV interviewer about Vladimir Putin’s threat to punish traitor spies, he said: ‘I don’t know what Putin was saying.
‘He is saying a lot of things.
‘But do think logically – to carry out such an operation, what for, why?
‘And immediately Boris Johnson intervenes…
‘I think if this wasn’t done by Western secret services themselves, then it must have been some kind of Russian gang linked to some Western secret services, I don’t know which ones exactly.
‘There are a lot of Russians living in the UK.’
He implied that the deaths of dissidents Alexander Litvinenko and Boris Berezovsky were equally suspicious, being blamed unfairly on Moscow.
‘All these murders, that wouldn’t happen anywhere else in the world,’ he said.
Second victim: Yulia Skripal, 33, is also believed to have been poisoned alongside her father
Ms Skripal is understood to be a 33-year-old businesswoman who has worked for Nike and Pepsico in the UK
‘There is a huge prejudiced Russophobic campaign going against us which – with all my love to England and respect for its traditions – I don’t understand.
‘Why did it have to be England that became the source of disinformation and lies?’
His own protege Oleg Gordievsky has been living safely in Britain for three decades after defecting from Russia, he said.
Other defectors had not been harmed while living in the UK.
‘It’s obvious. Cheap games like this are certainly being played out in the run-up to the election.
‘It even looks indecent,’ said the retired 83 year old, acknowledged as one of the most admired spies of the Soviet era.
Lyubimov, known as ‘Smiling Mike’ was the Russian secret service’s expert on Britain
In London he tried to recruit a number of then rising Tories such as Nicholas Scott.
‘They started this bogus story because getting us dirty is great,’ he said.
‘It is another comedy, and quite a ridiculous one, because Skripol had been already traded and is of no interest today.’
He was backed by an unnamed GRU agent who told Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper that Skripal – who retired from the GRU in the 1990s – was of no interest to the modern secret services.
Even so, ‘if our men were afraid that he would disclose some information, they would find a way to eliminate him in a [Russian] prison.’
Russian senator Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee oil Russia’s upper house, said:
‘I think Johnson’s remarks are unacceptable in the current situation where even British police have not yet qualified the incident as a terrorist attack.’
He claimed: ‘The official sounding of an unverified but ‘politically-tasty’ theory looks like an extremely dishonest policy….
‘Secondly, (it is a) violation of the fundamental principle of the presumption of innocence.
‘Thirdly, (it is) pressure on the investigative bodies.
‘Even in Anglo-Saxon law, there must be limits to what is permitted for politicians.’
The first round of the Russian election is on 18 March.
Putin is expected to win by a landslide.