Skripal, Sergey Viktorovich

Sergei Viktorovich Skripal was born on June 23, 1951 in Kaliningrad ^{[1] [2]} (according to other sources, in Kiev ^[6] ). He spent his childhood in Ozyorsk (8 km north of the border with Poland in the Kaliningrad region ). According to media reports, his father Viktor Skripal led a missile military unit near Ozersk, later he headed the district civil defense department and taught at a technical school ^[7] . His mother Yelena Yakovlevna Skripal was the first secretary of the CPSU district committee ^[7] , in 1978-1979 she was the director of the evening high school for working youth in Ozersk ^[8] . Sergei was the secretary of the Komsomol committee of the school, as a child began to dream of a service in intelligence . In 1968 he graduated from school in Ozersk ^{[7] [9]} . Subsequently, Skripal's parents left Ozersk: first they moved to Kaliningrad, then - to the suburbs ^[9] .

In 1972, Sergey Skripal graduated from the military engineering school in the village of Borisovo (as part of Kaliningrad) with a degree in combat engineer - paratrooper . After college, he entered the Military Engineering Academy named after Kuibyshev in an amphibious specialty. From airborne forces transferred to the GRU .

In 1999, went to the reserve with the rank of colonel .

Until 2001, he worked in the affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia , then in the Ministry of Territorial Entities of the Moscow Region ^[10] . He taught at the Military Diplomatic Academy ^[11] .

In the early 2000s, Skripal was a co-owner (10%) of the Uniekspl company, which was engaged in mine clearance, carried out special blasting operations and disposed of obsolete ammunition and military equipment ^[10] . The company was closed in August 2016.

On December 15, 2004, the Russian FSB arrested Skripal on charges of collaborating with British intelligence. During the investigation of the criminal case instituted under Art. 275 of the Criminal Code ( High Treason ), it turned out that Skripal was recruited by MI-6 in 1995 during military service at the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation . This happened during a business trip to Spain , where Skripal worked as the military attache of the Russian embassy.

The Russian BBC service interviewed Valery Malevanny, who calls himself “the historian of the special services and Major General of the GRU,” according to which, the so-called “ honey trap ” was used to recruit Skripal, which implies an intimate connection with the subject of recruitment in spy jargon ^[10] . Later publications appeared ^{[12] [13]} , in which it is alleged that this “expert” is not a general of the GRU and is not related to special services. According to Life , recruitment was connected with money ^[6] . The organizer of Skripal's recruitment was British intelligence officer Pablo Miller, who worked under the name of Antonio Alvarez de Hidalgo ^[10] .

After returning from Spain, Skripal headed the GRU personnel department and, due to this fact, knew well the identities of Russian military intelligence officers who worked undercover in different countries. British Intelligence MI-6 received information from Skripal about several dozen Russian agents abroad ^[10] . After dismissal at the end of 1999 from military service, Skripal continued to work with British intelligence, went abroad to meet with its representatives - to Spain, Malta and the UK. According to The Times , he often visited Spain for rehabilitation courses and “MI6 bought him a timeshare holiday home near Malaga , and a senior [British intelligence] officer flew there every three days for meetings that lasted three to four hours . After each meeting, Skripal was paid a fee of between $ 5,000 and $ 6,000 in cash, which he deposited in a bank account in Spain ” ^[14] .

The Skripal surveillance system in Russia confirmed that the suspect spoke to British diplomats accredited in Moscow and, in Great Britain, to agents of the MI-6 secret intelligence service. Skripal handed over to the British secret information about Russian military facilities, among them - about the military spaceport Plesetsk in the Arkhangelsk region , a total of about 20 thousand top secret documents. It was Skrypal who transmitted the information constituting a state secret to the British after being dismissed from military service through former colleagues. He explained his interest in classified information by the desire to have insider information for successful business ^[15] .

According to the investigation, Skripal caused significant damage to Russia's defense and security. At each conspiracy meeting, according to the FSB of Russia, British intelligence representatives paid Skripal a monetary reward in foreign currency for the information received. He also had an account with a Spanish bank, where he received monthly money transfers. In total, Skripal received over 100 thousand dollars from British intelligence over 9 years of cooperation ^[10] . The FSB believed that in terms of the extent of damage it can be compared with the "super agent" Oleg Penkovsky ^[16] .

During the investigation, Skripal pleaded guilty. He gave detailed testimonies about his activities, which was taken into account by the court as a mitigating circumstance when sentencing. On August 9, 2006, the Moscow District Military Court convicted. Skripal was deprived of all ranks and awards ^[17] and sentenced to 13 years in prison in a maximum security colony . Skripal was not deprived of Russian citizenship ^[11] .

On July 9, 2010, the President of Russia signed a decree to pardon four citizens of Russia, including Skripal, by satisfying their petitions for pardon ^[18] . At the same time, it was taken into account that all convicts had already been punished (for example, Skripal was in prison for about five and a half years at the time of the pardon) ^[19] . The pardon was made as part of an operation to exchange four Russian citizens convicted of espionage in favor of the United States and Great Britain and serving sentences in Russia for ten agents of the Russian special services (Russian citizens) detained in the United States in June 2010 ^[20] .

According to the site Lenta.ru , a list of Russian prisoners for exchange was proposed by the American authorities ^[21] . According to the BBC , the inclusion of Skripal in the list for an exchange was insisted by the United Kingdom, which considered him a "particularly valuable agent." Great Britain provided Skripal with a pension and guarantees of support in case of life problems ^{[10] [22]} .

After his release, Skripal settled with his family (wife, son and daughter) in the south-west of Great Britain, in the small town of Salisbury , where British intelligence veteran Miller also recruited him. The house in Salisbury , where Skripal settled, was estimated at 350 thousand pounds, he drove in a private car BMW 320D ^{[10] [22] [23]} . In the UK, Skripal lectured on Russian military intelligence at MI-6 and cadets of military academies, and gave advice on military intelligence issues ^[10] . In particular, Skripal for training purposes told foreign intelligence agencies about the methods of operational work of Russian intelligence agents, how to penetrate into Western countries, their recruitment technologies, and how to effectively counteract Russian intelligence ^[24] . Robert Mendrick, a journalist for the British newspaper The Telegraph, reports that Skripal maintained close ties with Christopher Steele, a British intelligence official at the Orbis Business Intellegence private investigating agency , which prepared and handed over to the American authorities the “Russian dossier” of Trump ^{[25] [26]} .

Josef Hufelschulte, a correspondent for the German Focus magazine, citing a senior member of the NATO Joint Counterintelligence Command, claims that up to 2017, Skripal worked for the intelligence of the four countries that make up the alliance. In 2012, he, together with MI6 employees, visited Prague, where he informed the Czech state security authorities about the existence of an extensive Russian intelligence network. And also in the summer of 2016, he notified the Estonian secret services about the existence of Russian intelligence, providing such reliable information that three “Russian spies” were found, including an Estonian army officer and his father Peter Wolin ^{[27] [28] [29] [30]} .

March 4, 2018, Sunday at 16:15 GMT, Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Julia, who came from Moscow to visit her father ^[31] , were found unconscious on a bench near a shopping center in Salisbury ^[32] without visible bodily harm ^[33] . They were urgently hospitalized in a city hospital in a state of severe poisoning with a rare nerve agent ^{[34] [35]} . Both were in intensive care in a coma ^[36] . In total, as a result of the incident, 21 people were injured, including police officer Nick Bailey, who was the first to arrive at the scene of the hospital ^[35] . The head of the counterterrorism department of Scotland Yard stated that the poisoning was carried out with the help of a nerve agent ^[37] , which was subsequently identified as a Novichok class chemical warfare agent. The British authorities qualified Skripal's poisoning as an attempted murder ^[38] .

The Russian side said that it did not have any additional information about the incident, and expressed its agreement to cooperate with the investigation ^[39] .

British officials reacted harshly to the Skripal poisoning incident, which led to a significant escalation of tension in Russian-British relations ^[40] , the expulsion of a significant number of diplomats by both sides and other mutual sanctions ^[41] .

On May 18, 2018, the National Health Service of England announced the discharge of Sergey Skripal from Salisbury City Hospital ^[42] .

Wife Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Skripal, born in 1952, died of cancer of the uterus on October 23, 2012 in the UK at the age of 59 ^{[43] [44]} .

Son Alexander, born in 1974. He died on July 18, 2017 during a trip to Russia at the age of 43 from acute liver failure in St. Petersburg after arriving there on July 13 by the Sapsan train from Moscow. Sergei Skripal was able to arrange transportation of the body from Russia and buried his son in a cemetery in Salisbury next to his mother ^{[10] [43] [45]} . He left his wife - Natalia ^[46] .

The mother of Sergey Skripal Elena Skripal, the widow of a veteran of World War II , lives in Yaroslavl , she is more than 90 years old. Also, his niece Viktoria Skripal lives in Yaroslavl ^[47] , was born unemployed in 1972, and on September 9, 2018 she ran for the Yaroslavl Regional Duma according to the Just Russia party list, but was not elected ^[48] . She has a schoolgirl daughter ^[49] . Another niece, Elena Skripal, lives in the Primorsky Territory . ^[46]

In 2016, Sergei's elder brother, Valery Skripal, a veteran of the Airborne Forces , died. Thus, in five years Skripal lost three members of his family ^[50] .

Daughter Julia, born in 1985, lived in the UK since 2010 with her father, returned to Moscow in 2014, and until 2016 worked at PepsiCo Russia ^{[51] [52]} . According to other sources, at the time of her father’s arrest and during his exchange, Julia worked in the Moscow office of Nike , in 2016 she returned to Russia and got a job first in the Moscow branch of Cambridge International School and then - a consumer interaction specialist at the Moscow branch of the international company Avanta Solutions, which provides recruitment services. ^[53] March 3, 2018 flew to the UK to visit his father.

Since 2013, Julia has been living with her boyfriend - 30-year-old Stepan Vladimirovich Vikeev. He is an economist, graduated from State University of Management . His mother is Tatyana Vikeeva (she is 61 years old in 2018), in 2008 - the head of the federal state institution Combine Signal of the Federal Agency for State Reserves in the Central Federal District , and since 2014 - the head of the Institute of Contemporary Security Problems NGO, established Mining and Metallurgical Company Norilsk Nickel . Stepan's father is Vladimir, a former restorer who worked and restored many churches in Podolsk . After the poisoning, Stepan Vikeev “went to the bottom”: no one saw him and he stopped communicating, did not answer calls and SMS . ^[54]

According to the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, there was a conflict within the family over the sale of a two-room apartment of 58 square meters on the 16th floor of the GRU departmental house ^[55] on Osenny Boulevard , 10, building 2, in the Krylatsky district of Moscow, which Sergei Skripal received the rank of colonel in the service of the GRU. In 2016, Julia Skripal, at the insistence of her young man, decided to exchange a family apartment for another with worse conditions, against which Julia's elder brother Alexander, his wife Natalya and Julia's cousin Victoria protested. Based on the difference from the purchase of a two-room apartment on the ground floor with an area of ​​47 square meters in the area of Fili-Davydkovo, a friend of Julia planned to buy a Range Rover car. After returning from Britain, Julia was going to get married. In February 2018, repairs before the sale were completed in this apartment of Julia; the spouses wanted to add the proceeds from the sale with savings and buy a larger apartment for themselves. ^[46]

• Exchange of prisoner spies between Russia and the USA (2010)
• Litvinenko case
• Kivelidi, Ivan Kharlampievich

• “Sergey has always been on the alert”: how Skripal lived in Russia and Britain , BBC Russian Service (March 8, 2018). Date of treatment March 8, 2018.
• What is known about Sergey Skripal. TASS dossier (neopr.) . TASS (March 6, 2018). Date of treatment March 6, 2018.