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Putin ordered the novichok attack, Skripal told investigators

Skripal and his daughter Julija were poisoned in Salisbury, England in March 2018, both survived the attack. At the end of June 2018, in Amesbury, about ten kilometers from Salisbury, 45-year-old Charlie Rowley and Sturgess, who is a year younger, collapsed and were subsequently taken to the hospital. According to the media, they were drug users. They accidentally poisoned themselves while handling a perfume bottle contaminated with Novichok. Sturgess, a forty-four-year-old mother of three, died on July 8, 2018.

“(Putin) should not hide behind the walls of the Kremlin. He should look the Dawn family in the eye and answer the evidence against him,” said the family’s lawyer, Adam Straw. In connection with the death of Dawn Sturgess, no one has yet been charged, Reuters reported.

British police believe that Russian secret agents used the perfume bottle to smuggle the newcomer into Britain. Russia has repeatedly rejected British accusations that it participated in the poisoning.

Skripal told British investigators on Monday that he, like the British government, blames Putin, even though he admitted that he had no concrete evidence for his accusations.

“I believe that Putin makes all important decisions himself. Therefore, I think he had to at least authorize the attack on Julia and me,” Skripal said in a statement read by lawyer Andrew O’Connor.

“I read that Putin is personally very interested in poisons and likes to read books about them,” added Skripal, who is said to know the head of the Kremlin personally.

According to O’Connor, who refers to the findings of the investigation, the discarded vial contained enough poison to kill thousands of people. “We can conclude that those who threw the bottle (with novichok) in this way acted with a grotesque disregard for human life,” Judge O’Connor said.

The British police accused three Russians, alleged agents of the Russian military intelligence GRU, of the attempted murder of Skripal and his daughter in their absence. In the case of Sturgess’s death, no formal charges have yet been brought against them.

Two Russians accused of carrying out the attack on Skripal appeared on Russian television and denied any involvement in the crime, saying that they had only visited the local cathedral in Salisbury as tourists. The same pair, who were identified as GRU agents Alexander Miškin and Anatolije Čepiga, are also suspected of the explosions of ammunition warehouses in Vrbětice in the Zlín region in 2014.