LONDON: The investigative group Bellingcat says one of the two suspects in the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy in Britain had been made a Hero of the Russian Federation by President Vladimir Putin four years earlier.
The group identified the suspect in the March nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter as Alexander Mishkin, a doctor who works for Russian military intelligence.
Bellingcat traced him via passport info, residents’ databases, car registration records and phone databases.
Bellingcat said Tuesday that two ex-students of the Military Medical Academy confirmed that Mishkin was the man British authorities identified as Alexander Petrov. So did seven residents of his village visited by the Insider, an organization affiliated with Bellingcat.
Kremlin refuses to comment on Bellingcat report: The Kremlin has refused to comment on the claim by investigative group Bellingcat that one of the two suspects in the poisoning of an ex-spy in England is a doctor who works for Russian military intelligence.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Kremlin wouldn’t discuss investigative reports and media articles on March’s poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England. He said Tuesday that Britain stonewalled Russian request to share details of the probe.
Bellingcat said the man British authorities identified as Alexander Petrov is actually Alexander Mishkin, a doctor working for the Russian GRU military intelligence unit. The group has earlier identified another suspect who also traveled to Salisbury under an alias — Ruslan Boshirov — as GRU Col. Anatoly Chepiga.
