Russia’s Putin found ‘morally responsible’ for nerve agent death in UK

A public inquiry has revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “morally responsible” for the death of a British woman in a Salisbury, England, nerve agent attack, and the UK government has responded by sanctioning the Russian intelligence agency (GRU) that is accused of carrying out the investigation.

Former senior judge Anthony Hughes, the inquiry’s chair, said that Putin had “authorized the mission” to kill former Russian spy Sergei Skripal on Thursday after its findings were released.

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The actions of the Russian leader and the alleged GRU agents responsible for the poison were “astonishingly careless,” Hughes continued.

The Kremlin continues to deny involvement in the incident.

Skripal, a former GRU officer who was imprisoned in Russia for spying on the United Kingdom, arrived in the United Kingdom after being freed in a spy swap in 2010.

Eight years later, he and his daughter Yulia were found dead on a park bench in Salisbury after being poisoned by the Russian nerve agent Novichok, which had been dipped on their homes’ door handles. After receiving intensive hospital care, they made it to where they are now.

However, mother-of-three Dawn Sturgess, 44, passed away four months later after sprinkling herself with what she thought was perfume from a trash can, but it turned out to be deadly.

According to Hughes, the inquiry chair, Sturgess was “the entirely innocent victim of the cruel and cynical acts of others.”

Lawyer Andrew O’Connor claimed that she had been unwittingly involved in an “illegal and outrageous international assassination attempt” and that the public inquiry into her death, which started last year, was being “assayed by”

According to O’Connor, the perfume bottle had enough Novichok to poison “thousands” of people.

The British authorities had failed to assess the threat against the former Russian spy, according to Sturgess’ family, which “put the British public in danger and led to Dawn’s death.” However, the family claimed that her death was the “direct result of Russia’s cruel and cynical attempt to assassinate Sergei Skripal.”

No protective measures were in place, they said in a statement, not including an adequate risk assessment of Skripal. That is a significant issue for both the present and the future, they say.

Skripal’s security had been “failings,” according to the inquiry into her death, but it was not “unreasonable” for British intelligence to not assess his assassination risk as high.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer criticized Hughes’ report as “a grave reminder of the Kremlin’s disregard for innocent lives.”

The UK foreign minister stated on Thursday that the GRU was being “in its entirety” along with 11 “actors behind Russian state-sponsored hostile activity” in its entirety.

London added that in response to Moscow’s “ongoing campaign of hostile activity,” it had also summoned the Russian ambassador.