SPARE a thought for the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service. Last year two of its officers were implicated in a plot to kill Montenegro’s prime minister. This July, 12 more of its officers were indicted by America’s special counsel, for interfering in the presidential election in 2016. Now Britain has named another pair of alleged GRU men as suspects in the attempted murder of a former spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, in Salisbury in March. It has published photos of the would-be assassins, who went by the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. Russia’s secret wars are growing less secret by the month.
British police traced the suspects’ journey from Gatwick airport to a hotel in east London, then twice to Salisbury, where they are said to have sprayed a military-grade nerve agent on Mr Skripal’s front door.
Their weapon of choice, a bottle of perfume modified to carry poison, was recklessly discarded, resulting in the death of a local. British investigators pored through 11,000 hours of CCTV footage, probably cross-referencing individuals on flights from Russia with those in Salisbury.
That the pair arrived on Russia’s flag-carrier, Aeroflot, and had previously travelled on the same passports, including to Britain, suggests sloppy tradecraft or remarkable insouciance.