UK inquiry says Putin authorised 2018 Salisbury attack

Start with the key finding, then build your understanding from there. On 4 December 2025, a UK public inquiry concluded that Vladimir Putin authorised the 2018 Novichok operation against former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury and said those involved, up to the president, bear moral responsibility for the later death of Dawn Sturgess. The government responded by sanctioning Russia’s GRU military intelligence. If you’re studying politics or international relations, note how a legal process, not just intelligence briefings, now anchors this conclusion.

What the inquiry established matters for how we read state activity. Chair Lord (Anthony) Hughes found overwhelming evidence that three GRU officers, travelling under aliases, carried out the assassination attempt; he also ruled that tighter security for Skripal would not realistically have stopped it unless he had accepted a completely hidden new identity. That reflects a risk that was underestimated when Skripal arrived in Britain after a spy swap.

Let’s recap the timeline you’ll want to remember. Skripal, a former GRU officer who spied for MI6 in the 1990s, was jailed in Russia in 2006, then pardoned and freed in a 2010 spy exchange that also involved Anna Chapman. He settled in Salisbury. On Sunday 4 March 2018, he and his daughter Yulia were poisoned; both survived after intensive care, as did a responding police officer. Four months later, a discarded perfume bottle containing Novichok fatally poisoned Dawn Sturgess.

Quick science stop for your notes. Novichok is a family of nerve agents developed under a secret Soviet programme. It overwhelms the body by blocking acetylcholinesterase, and can be lethal from tiny exposures through skin or inhalation. The international watchdog OPCW confirmed a highly pure Novichok was used in Salisbury. When you see the word Novichok in news coverage, think ‘state-designed nerve agent’, not a household chemical.

How did the operation unfold? The inquiry set out that the team flew in days before the attack and applied Novichok to Skripal’s front door handle on 4 March 2018, transporting the agent in a box disguised as a Nina Ricci perfume bottle. That container was later abandoned in Salisbury and is linked directly to Sturgess’s death. The finding that the bottle was left in public space explains both the moral responsibility conclusion and the scale of the emergency response.

Could this have been prevented by more protection for a defector? The inquiry criticised the lack of regular, written risk reviews for Skripal as an exchanged prisoner but concluded that only a completely new identity and hidden life might have avoided an attack of this type. That’s a difficult lesson for agencies and for individuals deciding how much protection they will accept.

You’ll often see open‑source investigators in this story, and here’s why that matters for media literacy. Bellingcat and partners used travel data, leaked records and phone metadata to unmask the suspects behind the aliases “Petrov”, “Boshirov” and “Fedotov” as GRU officers Anatoliy Chepiga, Alexander Mishkin and Denis Sergeev. When you compare their findings to official conclusions, you can see how public evidence can support (or challenge) state statements.

What changed after Salisbury? In 2018, the UK expelled 23 Russian diplomats; allies across Europe and North America ejected more than 150 suspected Russian intelligence officers in a coordinated response. After Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, European states carried out further mass expulsions running into the hundreds, and tightened visas and monitoring. Diplomacy still happens, but the room for covert officers shrank dramatically.

Russia adjusted. UK police and MI5 say hostile‑state operations have surged, with a sharp rise in life‑threatening plots on UK soil and a greater use of criminal and freelance proxies. Counter Terrorism Policing describes a fivefold growth in state‑threat work since Salisbury, and MI5’s director‑general has flagged a 35% rise in people under investigation for state activity in the past year. For your notes: classic espionage now blends with intimidation, arson and sabotage.

Two recent UK cases show how proxies are used. In March 2025, three UK‑based Bulgarians were convicted at the Old Bailey for spying on targets across Europe; by May, six members of that ring had been jailed, with the Crown Prosecution Service saying they worked for Russian interests via a handler linked to Jan Marsalek. The evidence included tens of thousands of Telegram messages and a trove of surveillance kit.

In a separate case, British men recruited online carried out a £1m arson attack on a Ukraine‑linked warehouse in east London in March 2024; ringleaders were later jailed under the 2023 National Security Act. Prosecutors and police said the plot was run on behalf of Russia’s Wagner network, illustrating how paid local criminals can be nudged into acts that look like ordinary crime but serve a foreign state.

So, could the GRU repeat a nerve‑agent attack here? The inquiry’s publication and years of joint work have reduced that specific risk: the suspects are charged, tradecraft is exposed, border checks and intelligence sharing are tighter, and the UK has sanctioned the GRU as an organisation. But the overall threat has shifted rather than disappeared, moving towards surveillance, sabotage and proxy crime. That’s the practical takeaway for classrooms and staffrooms: learn the pattern, question the sources, and watch for the lower‑profile methods that sit below the headline events.

A short glossary to help you teach or revise. GRU is Russia’s military intelligence service, accused by the UK inquiry of directing the Salisbury operation. Novichok is a class of Soviet‑designed nerve agents confirmed by the OPCW in the Skripal case. A public inquiry is a judge‑led process with powers to hear secret evidence and produce a report. A proxy is a person or group hired, pressured or persuaded to act for a state without official badges.

If you want a study frame, try these prompts. How do public inquiries shift what governments can say and do compared with intelligence briefings alone? What should a democracy balance when a defector refuses intrusive protection? And what new policing skills are needed when state threats look like ordinary crime until you follow the money and the messages? Use Salisbury as your case study, then compare it with other incidents since 2018.