According to AFP, public hearings for a British inquiry into the 2018 death of a woman who was exposed to the nerve agent Novichok used in an attempt to kill a Russian double agent will begin on Monday. This incident shattered relations between London and the Kremlin to new lows.
Sergei Skripal, a former double agent who lived in Salisbury, southwest England, and against whom Russian President Vladimir Putin had pledged vengeance, was the intended victim of the poison attack.
Skripal and his little girl Yulia were both found oblivious on a seat in the downtown area in Walk 2018. They made it through intensive hospital treatment and are now living under protection.
Dawn Sturgess, 44, a mother of three, died in July 2018 after spraying herself with what she thought was perfume from a bottle of the deadly chemical weapon that had been discarded in a park. The agents pursuing the Skripals, according to the authorities in the UK, may have rejected it.
The Novichok attack is attributed by Britain to two officers of the Russian security service who are said to have entered the country using fake passports. The operation’s mastermind has been assigned to a third person.
It is believed that the GRU, a Russian intelligence agency, employs all three men.
After Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in 2022, diplomatic relations between the West and Russia have been severely strained, which coincides with the Salisbury investigation into Sturgess’s death.
The public hearings will begin on October 28 at the International Dispute Resolution Centre in London and last for the first week at Salisbury Guildhall.
The suspects have been the subject of an international arrest warrant, but Theresa May, who was prime minister at the time of the attack, warned that justice was unlikely.
She stated to the BBC, “I would hope by the end of it (the public inquiry) that the family and friends of Dawn Sturgess feel it has reached the truth.”
However, “conclusion to every one individuals impacted would just at last accompany equity, and that equity is profoundly improbable to occur,” she added.
Russia, whose constitution forbids the extradition of its citizens, has consistently denied guilt and referred to the investigation as a “circus.”
The Western powers’ largest-ever expulsion of diplomats from Russia and a limited round of sanctions from the West followed the Salisbury incident.
Since Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022, the West’s response has far outstripped those sanctions, according to AFP.
Wiltshire Police Boss Constable Catherine Roper said it was “essential to recollect that at the core of this request are Day break’s family and friends and family whose lives have been irreversibly changed”.
She went on to say, “The objective is to give Dawn’s family, friends, and our wider communities in Wiltshire the opportunity to access the most complete information possible regarding Dawn’s death.”
