A group of British investigative journalists have identified a highly decorated member of the Russian military intelligence agency (GRU) as one of two men accused of trying to assassinate an ex-Russian spy and his daughter in Britain earlier this year.

British prosecutors have charged two Russians, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, of trying to kill Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, with the Soviet nerve agent Novichok in the English city of Salisbury on March 4. 

On Wednesday, the investigative website Bellingcat reported that Boshirov was actually Col.  Anatoliy Chepiga, who was awarded Russia’s highest honor — Hero of the Russian Federation — in 2014.

The New York Times reported that the Russian news outlet Insider has confirmed Bellingcat’s findings. 

British authorities say the suspects arrived at London’s Gatwick airport two days before the poisoning took place.  

Their journey from a London hotel to the crime scene in Salisbury was tracked by security cameras. The two men then flew out of Heathrow Airport back to Russia the same evening.

Boshirov and Petrov were charged in absentia with carrying out the attack. In an interview on the Kremlin-funded RT channel, they denied they were GRU agents and claimed to work instead in the nutrient supplements business. The suspects said they visited Salisbury to see its famous cathedral and did not know Skripal or where he lived.

Britain quickly rejected the claims. 

“The government is clear,” Britain said, that the men “used a devastating toxic, illegal chemical weapon on the streets of our country.” 

Skripal and his daughter recovered from the attack, but a British woman who touched a discarded perfume bottle that contained the nerve agent died. 

Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report.
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Israel should think carefully before attacking Syria again once it obtains the sophisticated S-300 defense system from Russia, a Damascus official said.

 

The warning followed pledges from Moscow to deliver the missile system after last week’s downing of a Russian plane by Syrian forces responding to an Israeli airstrike.

 

Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said late Tuesday that the S-300 should have been given to Syria long ago.

 

Israel, “which is accustomed to launching many aggressions under different pretexts, will have to make accurate calculations if it thinks to attack Syria again,” he said.

 

The Russian Il-20 military reconnaissance aircraft was downed by Syrian air defenses that mistook it for an Israeli aircraft, killing all 15 people on board.

 

Russia laid the blame on Israel, saying Israeli fighter jets were hiding behind the Russian plane, an account denied by the Israeli military.

 

On Monday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the S-300s will be delivered to Damascus within two weeks. Earlier in the war, Russia suspended a supply of S-300s, which Israel feared Syria could use against it.

 

U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said the delivery would be a “significant escalation” in already high tensions in the region and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he would raise the matter this week with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov at the U.N. General Assembly.

 

Mekdad said the missiles are for defensive purposes, adding that “Syria will defend itself, as it always did” — a reference to missiles Syrian forces fired at Israeli warplanes carrying out airstrikes inside Syria over the past months.

 

Meanwhile, in northwestern Syria, preparations were underway to set up a demilitarized zone around the rebel-held province of Idlib, the last major area controlled by a mix of Turkey-backed opposition fighters and other insurgent groups, including al-Qaida-linked militants.

 

Two jihadi groups have so far rejected the plan to set up a demilitarized zone by Oct. 15. The al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Arabic for Levant Liberation Committee, the largest militant group in Idlib province, has not said yet whether it approves setting up the zone.

 

A Turkish security official said Wednesday that there were “indications” that some insurgents were leaving the demilitarized zone in and around Idlib but that it was unclear whether a “concrete” withdrawal of radical groups has started. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government rules.

 

Russia and Turkey agreed last week to set up a demilitarized zone around Idlib to separate government forces from rebels, averting a government offensive on the last major opposition stronghold in Syria.

 

Also Wednesday, Russian Maj. Gen. Yevgeny Ilyin said more than 3,150 Syrians returned to their homes in the past week, including 494 refugees. The rest were internally displaced people.

 

Moscow has called for international assistance for Syrian refugee returns, rejecting Western arguments that the Mideast country remains unsafe.

 

Ilyin, who spoke during a conference call on coordination of efforts to encourage the return of refugees, said the total of more than 1.2 million internally displaced people and more than 244,000 refugees have regained their homes.

 

In seven years of civil war, some 5.5 million Syrians have fled their homeland and millions more were internally displaced.
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Danish submarine inventor Peter Madsen, convicted of torturing and murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard one of his own vessels last year, lost his appeal Wednesday against his life sentence.

The Danish version of a life sentence typically is about 16 years long, but it may be continuously extended if the court rules that circumstances call for it. Madsen had sought a time-limited term. Now the 47-year-old could potentially spend the rest of his life in prison.

His defense had argued that Wall’s death was an accident, although Madsen himself admitted to throwing her body parts into the Baltic Sea.

The prosecution had argued that Madsen’s motive was sexual and that the murder was planned.

“I’m terribly sorry to Kim’s relatives for what happened,” Madsen told the court. Wall’s parents were not present.

A Copenhagen court ruled in April that Madsen had lured Kim onto his home-made submarine UC3 Nautilus with the promise of an interview, where she then died. The exact cause of her death has never been established.

 
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