LONDON: Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent whose mysterious collapse in England sparked fears of a possible poisoning by Moscow, has been living in Britain since a high-profile spy swap in 2010.
Police were probing his exposure to an unknown substance, which left him unconscious on a bench in the city of Salisbury and saw media draw parallels to the case of Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-spy who died of radioactive polonium poisoning in 2006.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson warned Tuesday that London would respond “robustly” if it emerged that a government was behind the suspected poisoning.
But there are important differences between Litvinenko, who fled prosecution in Russia, and Skripal, who confessed to spying for London and was jailed before being pardoned and exchanged.
Skripal, 66, was an ex-military intelligence officer when he was detained in December 2004 near his home in Moscow.
He had been recruited by British intelligence while still an active officer with the Russian military’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) in the 1990s.
His job for the British was to pass on information about the identities of undercover Russian intelligence agents in various European countries.
He had continued this task even after he stopped working for the Russian military in 1999, receiving information from his former colleagues, the FSB security service said at the time.
“The spy inflicted considerable damage to the defence capability and security of the state with his actions,” it said.