The MI6 officer who recruited poisoned spy Sergei Skripal also had close links to two other exiled Russians who died suspiciously in Britain after criticising Vladimir Putin.
It was a senior figure in the Secret Intelligence Services, posing as a businessman, who convinced the Russian colonel to become a double agent and start selling military secrets to the UK.
Today, it can be revealed that the same MI6 handler was also involved in operations with Boris Berezovsky and Alexander Litvinenko. It will add weight to claims Skripal ended up on a Kremlin hitlist.
Former KGB officer Litvinenko was given political asylum in Britain after criticising Putin, but in 2006 he was murdered with radioactive poison in a London hotel in what police believe was an assassination carried out by the Russian state. His friend, the tycoon Berezovsky, survived two apparent attempts on his life before being found hanged at his Surrey mansion in 2013, with the coroner recording an open verdict.
Elite: Skripal in the late 1970s, was an officer in an airborne army unit
The link between the pair and Skripal emerged in a confession made by yet another Russian double agent who was recruited by the same MI6 officer.
When he confessed in 2007 that he had spent several years spying for Britain, former tax police officer Vyacheslav Zharko identified Skripal’s MI6 handler as the man who recruited him.
Having made the observation too, in typically sarcastic fashion, the Russian embassy tweeted yesterday: ‘What a coincidence! Both Litvenko and Skripal worked for MI6. Berezovsky and Perepilichny were linked to UK special services. Investigation details classified on ground of national security.’
But although Zharko named him, The Mail on Sunday has chosen to protect his identity.
Zharko said in an interview: ‘This is a long story [of recruitment] and Berezovsky along with the late Litvinenko played the lead roles in it. They introduced me to British Secret Intelligence Service agents.’
The Mail on Sunday has pieced together the most detailed account yet of how Skripal was recruited to be a spy – with the codename Forthwith. It even included him being taken to a seedy strip club in Spain.
According to secret intelligence files seen by this newspaper, it started when he became jealous of former colleagues who were richer than he was. The picture painted of Skripal by his enemies is of a greedy and corrupt military officer who betrayed his country for money – a type known in Russia as a ‘werewolf in epaulettes’.
Born in 1951, he had joined an elite Soviet Union airborne unit and fought in Afghanistan before becoming a colonel in the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. Skripal also went on spying missions in Europe, however, and it was during one such trip in around 1994 that he encountered a young military pilot known as Luis.
In the murky world of international espionage, it is not clear who was trying to recruit whom. But somehow the pair ended up starting a small business shipping barrels of wine to Russia.
The Mail on Sunday tracked down Luis to his home in Spain last week and he admitted meeting hundreds of Russians but said: ‘These are very sensitive issues so I can’t talk about it.’
Boris Berezovsky’s mysterious death: Exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky – seen here with girlfriend Yelena Gorbunova in 2011 – claimed political asylum in Britain as a leading opponent of Putin. His death by hanging in 2013 raised suspicion among Kremlin watchers, with the coroner returning an open verdict at his inquest
The pair turned a small profit, prompting Luis to suggest his new business partner meet a Spanish entrepreneur who could help them expand. But he was, in fact, the same senior MI6 officer, working undercover at a British embassy, who was connected to Berezovsky and Litvinenko.
A major operation began to ‘turn’ Skripal, including the trip to the strip club in Spain where he was handed an untraceable mobile phone and several thousand dollars in cash.
The MI6 handler had got a woman ‘ready to have fun with him’ – and were allegedly taking photographs to gain blackmail material over his agent – but married Skripal was horrified.
The SIS officer, still pretending to be a Spanish businessman, soon gave him another $10,000 as a ‘Christmas present’ and told him he had opened a bank account to ‘guarantee his anonymity’.
By 1996, according to the Russian intelligence file, Skripal was a fully-fledged MI6 double agent. In return for $3,000 paid into his bank account each month, Skripal gave the British everything he could – including the GRU telephone directory.
Skripal retired from his post in 1999 after developing diabetes, but even though he got another job in the foreign ministry, he found himself short of money and began spying again.
However, he was then exposed by a Spanish mole who was spying for the Russians. In 2006, the FSB announced Colonel Skripal had admitted high treason in the form of espionage at the Moscow District Military Court.
He was sentenced to 13 years in prison, but was freed in 2010 as part of the Cold War spy swap in Vienna that saw glamorous Russian secret agent Anna Chapman pass the other way.
Alexander Litvinenko’s radioactive poisoning: This was the haunting deathbed picture of defector and former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko after he had been fatally poisoned with radioactive polonium in London in 2006. The subsquent investigation implicated Vladimir Putin
PS: Police ‘station’ at epicentre of the inquiry is… CLOSED!
The police response to the drama has been hampered by there being no dedicated police station in Salisbury. Officers and the crime tsar share a building with the council – and, as the sign above shows, it is only open during office hours and Saturday mornings.
PPS: The rabbits are safe!
Two pet rabbits stranded inside the police cordon were saved yesterday after Wiltshire Police let in a delivery of food and water. The force tweeted: ‘They’re OK. Thanks for everyone’s concern
We need more than just 180 troops to fight toxic terror
By Hamish De Bretton Gordon
The assassination attempt on former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal has completely blindsided us here in the UK and is a game-changer in terms of assessing the direct threat to Britain from chemical weapons.
We could not and did not anticipate such an attack.
Be in no doubt, from now on it must be included in our military planning.
Rather alarmingly, the specialist military personnel now deployed in Salisbury represent almost the totality of our Armed Forces’ capability in this key area – the 180 troops and their vehicles are basically it when it comes to the UK military responding to a chemical weapons attack.
They have descended on Wiltshire following an attack carried out using, by my estimation, at most an egg cup full of a nerve agent. If a chemical attack on the much larger scale seen in Syria and Iraq was carried out here, we would struggle to respond to it and the death toll could be very significant indeed.
While in the British Army, I commanded the Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment. This unit was disbanded as a cost-cutting measure in 2012 because the threat to UK security from this sort of attack was considered to be so low.
I trust that following the incident in Salisbury, the MoD is now reviewing its capability in this area because it plainly needs to be improved.
Whoever carried out this attack used a very persistent nerve agent. While a substance such as sarin only lasts minutes, this substance remains highly toxic almost a week after Skripal and his daughter fell ill.
It may prove to have been a novichok, a nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union in the 1980s. In accordance with international agreements, the Russians later destroyed all their ‘declared stocks’ of nerve agents.