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Grayzone has information from the hospital care of Yulia.
https://thegrayzone.com/2025/01/13/british-inquiry-skripal-poisoning/
LAPSED AGNOSTIC’S SALISBURY & AMESBURY POISONINGS REPORT
(Later’s better than never – Lana Del Rey, Summertime Sadness)
Dedicated to the Sturgess family, in particular Dawn’s daughter – who was only 11 or 12 when she lost her mother.
Preamble
The Dawn Sturgess Inquiry has forced me to revise my ideas about what occurred in Salisbury & Amesbury in 2018. Based on a police statement (since retracted) as well as articles in the tabloid press (I suppose you can’t libel the dead), I initially believed that Dawn had had issues with heroin in the past, and had likely died as a result of a drug overdose, which was taken advantage of by certain elements wishing to further a particular narrative. (Note: John Helmer, who’s now written *two* books on the Skripal saga, also seems to believe this.) However, as a direct result of the Inquiry, I have since changed my mind (which is my prerogative) – and, as I find is often the case, things appear to be much worse than I first thought.
—
Part 1: What caused Dawn Sturgess’s tragic death?
According to her boyfriend, Charlie Rowley, Dawn Sturgess collapsed in the bathroom of his flat at 9 Muggleton Road, Amesbury shortly after 10am on Saturday, 30 June 2018, minutes after she’d applied a substance contained in a small sampler bottle marked as ‘Nina Ricci Premier Jour’ perfume to her skin. In contrast to a similar situation two years prior where his previous girlfriend overdosed on heroin and later died, Charlie promptly dialled 999 and several paramedics arrived on the scene a few minutes later. The paramedics found her to be unconscious, not breathing and that her heart had stopped. After several rounds of CPR, manual ventilation, and several shots of adrenaline, they managed to get her heart restarted before, still unconscious, she was taken by ambulance to Salisbury District Hospital. Shortly after arrival at the hospital, Dawn was placed on a mechanical ventilator in the intensive care unit.
In their witness statements, the paramedics reported several of Dawn’s symptoms that were consistent with poisoning by an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor nerve agent: pinpoint pupils, profuse salivation, clammy skin which resulted in the medical dressing used to secure the IV line failing to stick properly, and uncontrolled defecation. Apart from the constricted pupils, such symptoms are not typically observed in an opiate/iod overdoses, and indeed she showed no response when they administered the opioid receptor antagonist agent Naloxone.
In view of the symptoms she was presenting with, the hospital doctors decided to treat her with medications used for nerve agent poisoning: pralidoxime, atropine, glycopyronium & hyoscine. Unfortunately however, a brain scan taken the following day revealed considerable damage to certain areas of her brain, almost certainly caused by lack of oxygen in the period between her collapse and the paramedics managing to restart her heart. A further brain scan taken a few days later established that a large brain haemorrhage had subsequently occurred, which often happens in cases of substantial brain damage. The doctors concluded that nothing more could be done for her and, after consulting with her family, her life support was switched off and she was declared dead on 8 July.
Before she died, samples of her blood analysed by the National Poisons Centre in Birmingham revealed it to have a level of active acetylcholinesterase less than 5% of what would typically be expected, confirming poisoning by an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor. Samples of her blood were also sent to the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory at nearby Porton Down for analysis, which reported that it contained a type of Novichok, a nerve agent first developed by the Soviet Union. This result was confirmed by an Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) lab some months later.
cont…
In helping Dawn to attach the applicator nozzle to the perfume bottle, Charlie stated that he got some of its contents on his hands, though he immediately washed them in his kitchen sink using soap. Provided he did this thoroughly, it would likely have removed most (though probably not all) of the agent from his skin, which may be the reason why he didn’t end up in a similar state to Dawn around that time. After Dawn had left in the ambulance, he got a lift in a friend’s van to the Boots chemist in Amesbury to pick up his methadone script, and then attended an outdoor hog roast organised by the local Baptist church with another friend, Sam Hobson.
Charlie and Sam then walked back to the flat, arriving there mid-afternoon. In his witness statement, Sam reports that Charlie said that he was feeling sweaty and so went to have a shower. Afterwards, Charlie became increasingly agitated and began accusing Sam of trying to poison him. His condition became progressively worse: his pupils became highly constricted and he began dribbling and visibly sweating, as well as becoming increasingly delirious. In the early evening, Sam decided to dial 999.
Paramedics arrived at the flat around 20 minutes later and, suspecting possible poisoning, they donned PPE. They found Charlie to be propped up against a wall in the lounge with his arms rigid above his head, rocking back and forth and making strange noises. The paramedics decided to attempt to reduce his fitting by injecting Valium via an intra-osseous inlet they drilled into his femur since they had trouble finding a suitable vein. They also gave him two shots of atropine and, as he was beginning to have trouble breathing, they put him on oxygen via a nasal tube. He was taken to Salisbury District Hospital by ambulance shortly afterwards, where he was later admitted to the intensive care unit and put on a mechanical ventilator. Blood tests established that Charlie had also been poisoned with Novichok. Unlike his girlfriend, Charlie made good progress in intensive care and by 11 July he was no longer regarded as being in a critical condition.
After it had been confirmed that both Dawn & Charlie had been poisoned with Novichok, Counter Terrorism Police began searching the flat for a possible source. On 11 July, they reportedly found the perfume bottle towards the back of the kitchen counter. The bottle tested positive for the same type of Novichok – referred to as A-234 – that had been allegedly found on the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal’s front door handle in Christy Miller Road, Salisbury over three months earlier (see Part 2), albeit with some impurities. Assuming that the molecular structure given by its developer Vil Mirzayanov is the correct one, A-234 could be synthesized by any reasonably competent synthetic chemist in a typical lab in a couple days at most, using readily available, non-restricted precursor chemicals.
As well as a heroin addict, Charlie is/was crack cocaine user and a heavy drinker. Probably as a result, he claims that he can’t be certain exactly where he found the perfume bottle, but believes there’s a good chance he found it a few days previously in a large, dumpster-type bin outside the rear of the Cancer Research charity shop on Catherine Street, Salisbury, which backs onto the Brown Street Car Park, foraging through bins being a regular activity of his at the time. This is backed up by footage from the car park’s CCTV shown at the Inquiry, which showed Charlie walking across the car park, making a bee-line for the bin late one night towards the end of June 2018, and then retracing his steps a couple hours later carrying several items.
cont…
Additional CCTV stills showed Charlie to have been present in the same car park nearly four months previously on the afternoon of 4 March 2018, the day the Skripals were poisoned, carrying a bag and walking roughly eastwards near the line of trees located in the middle of it, presumably back to the nearby hostel where he lived at the time. Giving evidence at the Inquiry, the Met Police’s Commander Dominic Murphy claimed it showed that Charlie could have visited the bin at the rear of the Cancer Research shop and retrieved the bottle, but more likely he was just taking a short-cut home through the car park after emerging from the short alleyway that links it to Catherine Street.
He also claimed that two Russian nationals known on their passports as Alexander Petrov & Ruslan Boshirov were likely to have visited the same bin around mid-day on the same day, and deposited the perfume bottle that they’d supposedly used to apply Novichok to Sergei’s front door handle a short time before (see Part 2). However, no footage or stills were presented of them near the bin or even in the car park. On 4 March, the car park’s CCTV wasn’t orientated in the right direction to show the bins; the pair could have avoided appearing on it by walking up Catherine St, through the above-mentioned alleyway, down the west side of the car park to the Cancer Research bin, and then retracing their steps, but in doing that they would have walked past three or four perfectly suitable bins in which to deposit the bottle so, to my mind, it seems unlikely.
Charlie reported that the bottle and its applicator nozzle were contained in separate sealed bags of thick, transparent plastic. He couldn’t open them with his teeth, so had to use a sharp knife. If the bottle found by Charlie had been used by Petrov & Boshirov in the attack on the Skripals, both it and the nozzle would have had to have been sealed in the plastic bags using some sort of heat-sealing device. The police told the Inquiry that they believe the pair may have done this in the public toilets next to the car park of Queen Elizabeth Gardens, near to Salisbury City Centre. To support this claim, they stated that traces of Novichok had been detected in the toilets. In total, 85 swabs were taken from the toilet cubicles in July 2018, of which 5 came back as positive though at levels to low to be quantified. Given that the toilets should have been cleaned at regular intervals in the intervening five months, it seems reasonable to assume that these could have been false positives.
It would also appear odd to say the least for Petrov & Boshirov to expend any time and effort in sealing the bottle and nozzle in plastic. At the Inquiry, several members of one of the legal teams were seen smirking in the background when this hypothesis was proposed by a police witness. However, a more plausible scenario might be for some nefarious actors, who were aware that the bin was regularly visited by people known to remove some of its contents, to have deliberately sealed the ersatz perfume bottle in plastic before placing it in the bin, because they wanted both to protect themselves from a dangerous nerve agent, and to give the impression that the bottle was brand new and unused, and therefore might seem like a suitable romantic gift for someone special.
—
LA’s VERDICT: Dawn Sturgess was killed by a nerve agent (probably A-234 Novichok) disguised as Nina Ricci perfume (99%+ probability), deposited in a bin adjacent to Salisbury’s Brown Street Car Park by someone other than the Russian nationals travelling under the names Alexander Petrov & Ruslan Boshirov (95%+ probability) – most likely a member of the British security services, who were prepared to commit murder* in order to further an anti-Russian narrative.
Thanks for reading this far. I hope at least some of the above has been informative.
Part 2 to follow.
* Under UK law, if you only intend to subject someone to GBH but end up killing them, it’s regarded as murder.
LAPSED AGNOSTIC’S SALISBURY & AMESBURY POISONINGS REPORT
Dedicated to all the NHS staff (both on and off-duty) who did superb work ensuring that no one in Salisbury died of nerve agent poisoning in March 2018 – as if they didn’t have enough to do.
Part 2: What happened to Sergei & Yulia Skripal, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey and PC Oliver Bell in March 2018?
Around lunchtime on Sunday, 4 March 2018, Sergei Skripal – a Russian former double agent exchanged in a spy swap some years previously – and his daughter Yulia, who’d arrived from Russia the previous day, drove from his home in Christie Miller Road, Salisbury to the Sainsbury’s car park in Salisbury City Centre. They then walked through the Maltings shopping precinct to The Mill public house, pausing to feed bread to some ducks on the River Avon on the way. They spent half an hour in The Mill drinking beer and chatting, and then proceeded through the covered Market Walk to the nearby Zizzi Italian restaurant on Castle Street for a late lunch. The service was poor in Zizzi due to problems with the ordering system in its kitchen. The Skripals finished their starters but decided to pay the bill and leave before their main courses turned up, as Sergei was in a hurry.
They then walked back through Market Walk, and both sat down on a bench facing Superdrug in the Maltings just after 3:30pm. At some point between then and 4pm, Yulia became unconscious, and Sergei became incapacitated and delirious. Passers-by began to notice them and, shortly after 4pm, one dialled 999. Before the paramedics arrived, two passers-by – one of whom happened to be an off-duty paediatrician, Dr Helen Ord, and the other, the Army’s Chief Nurse, Colonel Alison McCourt – started to render first aid, initially checking the Skripals’ airways, breathing and circulation. They observed that Yulia was having seizures, foaming at the mouth, and had vomited and defecated, so they placed her on the ground in the recovery position with help of Dr Ord’s male partner.
Two police officers quickly arrived on the scene, as did several paramedics a few minutes later. According to paramedic Ian Parsons, Yulia’s respiratory rate was low at about 8 breaths per minute; her heart rate was also low at 50 bpm. Using a pulse oximeter, Parsons found Yulia’s oxygen saturation to be at 98%, but Dr Ord claims it was only 80-85% and that Yulia needed oxygen. Dr Ord requested a suction device to remove the saliva and vomit that were blocking her airway, and an ‘I-gel’ tube was placed in Yulia’s throat in an attempt to keep her airway viable. Yulia was then manually ventilated with oxygen using a bag-valve mask by a paramedic, whilst Dr Ord used the suction device at full power to remove the secretions. Dr Ord in all probability saved Yulia’s life (assuming she’s still alive) because the paramedics likely wouldn’t have realised how bad the secretions were until it was too late.
Sergei, who was still sat on the bench, appeared to be in a better condition than his daughter, though still unresponsive. The paramedics found him to have a normal breathing and pulse rate. However, he soon started vomiting profusely, so the paramedics pushed his shoulders forward so that he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit. Initially suspecting an overdose, due to inter alia his pinpoint pupils, the paramedics administered Naloxone nasally but had no response. They next cannulated his arm and inserted a breathing tube up his nostril. He was then transferred to an ambulance where he was put on oxygen.
While Dr Ord and the paramedics were attending to the Skripals, the police had managed to find Sergei’s wallet containing his driving licence photocard in his jacket, which revealed his name and that he lived at 47 Christie Miller Road. They then cordoned off the immediate area. Acting Police Sergeant Tracey Holloway arrived on the scene a short while later and took control of the situation. She organised a brief search of nearby bins for any drug paraphernalia, but they didn’t find any. She also instructed PC David Jones to drive to Sergei’s address to see whether his car was there, and to ring the doorbell and see if there was a response. Upon arrival at Christie Miller Rd, he couldn’t find Sergei’s car and got no answer from number 47. Sergei’s next-door neighbour came out of her house and gave PC Jones a key to Sergei’s house, but he didn’t use it to enter and instead waited outside in his car.
cont…
The Skripals were taken to Salisbury District Hospital in separate ambulances shortly after 5pm. In the ambulance, Sergei was mistakenly given two shots of atropine by a paramedic who thought it was Naloxone. Upon arrival at the hospital, they were both intubated and mechanically ventilated in the emergency department by doctors including the experienced consultant Dr Stephen Cockroft, even though Sergei was, to some extent, capable of breathing on his own. Yulia was also given a shot of atropine for her slow heart rate.
In view of their conditions, the Skripals were both quickly moved to intensive care. On Monday afternoon, their care was transferred over to Dr James Haslam. Judging by their symptoms, Dr Haslam thought they may have been poisoned by a nerve agent. This was supported by tests which show that their levels of functional acetylcholinesterase were very low, so they were treated with pralidoxime, atropine & hyoscine. Further tests performed at Porton Down allegedly revealed that the nerve agent was a type of Novichok.
On Thursday, 8 March, Dr Cockroft was attending to a patient in the ICU when he was interrupted by another doctor, Dr Anna Barton, informing him that Yulia had woken up. Dr Cockroft immediately rushed to her bedside, and indeed found that she was indeed awake and attempting to pull her lines out. He found out that Dr Haslam had been performing a ‘sedation hold’, in which sedative drugs are withheld from critical ill patients in an attempt to establish whether they can achieve some level of consciousness, but had been called away.
According to his witness statement, Dr Cockroft tried to explain to her that she was in Salisbury Hospital, she’d been in a coma for four days and to reassure her that she and her father were safe, which she appeared to acknowledge with a slight nod. Whilst the other doctor and a nurse prepared drugs to sedate her again, he then asked her some questions about whether she remembered anything about Sunday, and whether she’d been sprayed with something, but got no response before the sedatives kicked in and she became unconscious again.
Shortly afterwards, Dr Haslam returned, and Dr Cockroft told him what had happened which, according to Cockroft, he didn’t seem particularly perturbed by. Dr Cockroft didn’t make any notes about this incident, but Dr Barton did. In them, contrary to Dr Cockroft’s witness statement, she states that Yulia somehow indicated ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to most of his questions, including in the affirmative to his asking whether she had been sprayed in the restaurant, but that when he asked if she knew the person who did it, she became emotional but didn’t answer. Assuming Dr Barton’s version of events is correct, was Yulia delusional due to the effects of Novichok and/or the other drugs, or telling the truth about being sprayed at Zizzi?
Dr Cockroft’s manager, Dr Christine Blanshard, soon found out what had happened on Thursday from two nurses, and judged his actions to be highly unprofessional. He was summoned to her office the following Monday, and the highly-experienced consultant was barred from working on the intensive care unit with immediate effect until such time as both of the Skripals were either discharged or had died. He was also instructed not to discuss any aspect of the poisonings with his colleagues or anyone else, and told that if he did, it would be treated as serious misconduct.
On 21 March, Sergei & Yulia were both subjected to tracheotomies. A few days later, representatives from the OPCW arrived to take blood samples from both of them for analysis in European labs, including one in Spiez, Switzerland. The full results were made available to state parties, including the Russians, a few weeks later. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has claimed that they showed that the Novichok agent A-234 (see Part 1) had been detected, along with traces of the incapacitant agent BZ. The OPCW stated that a BZ precursor compound had been used as a control.
On 27 March, Yulia’s tracheotomy tube was removed and two days later it was reported that she was no longer in a critical condition. She was discharged from hospital on 9 April and taken to a secure location. Sergei was stated to no longer be in a critical condition on 5 April, and he was discharged on 18 May. Since then neither of the Skripals has ever been seen in public, and they didn’t testify at the Inquiry (even via video-link), supposedly due to perceived security risks.
cont…
A few minutes after the ambulances had left the Maltings with the Skripals, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey arrived on the scene with his colleague, Detective Constable Dawn Rowan. He was briefed by APS Holloway and the pair of detectives decided to see whether the could find Sergei’s BMW in the Sainsbury’s car park. This search yielded no results, despite the car being present on the top floor. (It was later found by a PCSO.) The two of them then went back to Bourne Hill police station in Salisbury. One of the detectives at Bourne Hill googled the name ‘Sergei Skripal’, discovered that he was a former Russian spy, and informed the other detectives. Based on this information, CID put out a message that neither PC Jones or anyone else was to enter Sergei’s house without PPE.
After attending a series of meetings and briefings to discuss the developing situation throughout the evening, DS Bailey then travelled by car with Detective Inspector Ben Mant to the hospital, arriving around 1am. There, DI Mant was updated by phone on the Skripals’ condition by Dr Cockroft. They then travelled to Sergei’s house after picking up an unnamed CBRN-trained officer at Bourne Hill. They arrived around 2:30am, and were met outside by PC Oliver Bell, who had taken over guard duty from PC Jones with his colleague PC Sue Ellway. DS Bailey, DI Mant and the other officer then donned the PPE consisting of oversuits with hoods, gloves, goggles, overshoes and face-masks. Bailey borrowed PC Bell’s torch, and opened the front door, using the key that he had obtained from APS Holloway via PC Jones, touching the handle with his gloved hand.
They switched on the lights and checked every room, but didn’t find anything untoward. At one point, Bailey recalls wiping his forehead (the only uncovered part of his body at the time) with the palm of his gloved hand. DI Mant has stated that he saw him do this. This may well explain how Bailey became contaminated. After leaving the house, Bailey locked up, again touching the handle, and returned the torch to PC Bell, who used it to shine a light on the three as they carefully removed their PPE. Bailey, Mant and the other officer then travelled back to Bourne Hill, and Bailey caught up with some paperwork. At some point, he went to the toilet, and thought his pupils looked small in the mirror. He showed them to APS Holloway, but she told him they looked normal. Around 6am, he left the police station, drove back to his family home in Dorset and then went to bed.
He was woken around mid-day by a phone call, and then went for a shower. During the afternoon, he began to feel sweaty and noticed in the mirror that his pupils were constricted, so decided to drive from his home to Salisbury District Hospital’s A&E. He only had to wait a short while before being seen by a doctor. The doctor couldn’t detect anything obviously wrong with him apart from his constricted pupils. He then drove back to his home. As time progressed, his symptoms became progressively worse with sweating, blurred vision, dizziness, hallucinations and vomiting, and he endured a sleepless night. In the morning, he decided to go back to A&E but didn’t feel able to drive, so his wife’s parents drove him there.
He arrived at the hospital around 9am. The doctors were told that he had been present at Sergei’s house shortly after the Skripals had been admitted, so treatment for nerve agent poisoning was commenced and he was moved to intensive care, though he didn’t require mechanical ventilation. Subsequent tests revealed that he too had low active acetylcholinesterase in his blood. His condition gradually improved with time, and he was discharged on 22 March.
—
About 15 minutes after after DS Bailey, DI Mant and the other officer left Sergei’s house, PC Bell felt a twitch in his right eye, so he rubbed it with his right hand, but it continued to irritate him. Shortly after this, he and PC Ellway were relieved by other officers, and the pair drove back to Bourne Hill. He went to the toilet, and when he looked in mirror whilst washing his hands saw that his right pupil was constricted. He showed it to APS Holloway, who told him that it looked the same as Sergei’s eyes did and that he and PC Ellway should go to A&E.
After waiting in the seating area in Salisbury Hospital’s A&E dept for about half an hour, he and PC Ellway were instructed to wait outside in the car park. Over two hours passed before someone brought them chairs and blankets as it was cold outside at night. Another hour passed before the Hazardous Area Response Team arrived. The team assembled tents and then cut off Bell & Ellway’s uniforms with scissors, before they were instructed to wipe down their bodies with wet wipes. After this, they were given paper fabric clothes to wear. PC Bell was then allowed to see a doctor and had a scan, before being driven home.
PC Bell’s eye condition persisted, and he had a series of appointments with eye specialists at the hospital. At first they thought he may have Horner’s Syndrome but, after that was ruled out, consultant ophthalmologist Dr Roger Humphry diagnosed poisoning with nerve agent in one eye. He applied a few drops of atropine solution to it and PC Bell’s pupil soon began to dilate. Bell was instructed to apply the drops once a day for three days but, at a follow-up appointment, he complained that they were making his pupil too large, so Dr Humphry prescribed him tropicamide drops instead.
cont…
In late March, the police announced that analysis by Porton Down had found traces of Novichok at several locations in Sergei’s house and BMW, with the largest amount being found on the front door handle of his home. Traces were also found on the tables and chairs at which the Skripals had sat in The Mill pub and Zizzi restaurant. They concluded that the Novichok had been applied to the door handle and then transferred to the other locations by the Skripals, DS Nick Bailey, and possibly other police officers.
—
Two days before the Skripals were found on the bench, on the afternoon of Friday, 2 March, two Russian nationals named on their passports as Alexander Petrov & Ruslan Boshirov landed at Gatwick Airport on Aeroflot flight SU2588 from Moscow. They proceeded to the City Stay Hotel, a budget hotel in Bow, where they stayed overnight, having checked in around 7:30pm.
The following day, Saturday 3 March, their mobile phone records indicate that they left the hotel around 10:30am and then travelled to Waterloo train station where they caught the 12:50 train to Salisbury. Arriving in Salisbury around 2:30pm, they were seen on various CCTV cameras starting to walk in a westerly direction on Wilton Road, before doubling back on themselves and walking roughly north-west along Devizes Road until they got to the junction with India Avenue, where they turned left. They were then seen a short time later on CCTV walking eastwards along Wilton Road back to the train station.
At the station, they briefly looked at the train times, before exiting and being captured on CCTV walking back along Wilton Road. They are then inferred to have walked north up Highbury Avenue, across to Christie Miller Rd via the alleyway that runs behind Sergei’s house, before walking south along Canadian Avenue or Montgomery Gardens back to Wilton Road where they proceeded east back to the station in time to catch the 16:47 train back to Waterloo. They then spent some time in the West End before going back to their hotel.
On Sunday, 4 March, they checked out of the hotel around 8am and again travelled from Waterloo to Salisbury, but this time by an earlier train at 09:54, which necessitated a change at Basingstoke. Once at Salisbury, they again walked along Wilton Road, being captured on several CCTV cameras, including the one at the Shell petrol station at around noon. They were next seen on CCTV walking south-east on Devizes Road around 15 minutes later. There is no footage of them in Christie Miller Road, but would been feasible for them to have put nerve agent on Sergei’s front door handle during this interval.
They were next seen on CCTV walking towards the City Centre on Fisherton Street, before turning right into Water Lane. After this, they disappear from CCTV for around half an hour, before being picked up again walking north along High Street. Further footage then showed them on the Fisherton St bridge, where Petrov stopped to take a photo of the River Avon with his phone, and a minute or so later they were also seen outside Dauwalders coin shop, which they tried to enter but found closed. It’s not known where they went and what they did during the half-hour when they disappeared from CCTV. There would have been sufficient time for them to walk to the Brown St Car Park and deposit a bottle of nerve agent disguised as perfume (see Part 1). However, in view of Petrov’s seeming penchant for photography, it’s probably more likely that they went to the cathedral environs and took some photos.
A short time later, CCTV showed them again walking west along Wilton Road and then south-east along Devizes Road in a similar circuit to before. However, this time there was no footage of them on the camera at the Shell garage, so it’s probable that they turned north along Highbury Avenue. Again, they would have had enough time to briefly visit Christie Miller Rd via the above-mentioned alleyway. Whilst walking along Devizes Rd, it’s likely that they were passed by the Skripals travelling in their car to Salisbury City Centre. They then caught the 14:33 train back to London, again requiring a change at Basingstoke, arriving at Waterloo around 5pm. From there, they proceeded to Heathrow Airport to catch an Aeroflot flight back to Moscow.
Two months later, the police tracked Petrov & Boshirov’s movements back to the City Stay Hotel. Thirty swabs were taken from the room in which they stayed, and two reportedly showed low levels of Novichok; these were from the window latch and the en suite sink, which would presumably be regularly cleaned. Further swabs were taken from these sites but these came back negative. In contrast to The Mill pub, which was closed for deep-cleaning and refurbishment for over a year from the date of the Skripal incident, and the Zizzi restaurant, which was similarly closed for eight months, no deep-cleaning of the room has ever been reported, and the hotel was allowed to remain open and receive guests.
—
LA’s VERDICT: Sergei & Yulia Skripal, DS Nick Bailey and PC Oliver Bell were poisoned by A-234 Novichok nerve agent (99%+ probability), which had been applied to Sergei’s front door handle (Bell indirectly via the torch he gave to Bailey), at some point between 6:30pm on Saturday 3 March and 1:30pm on Sunday 4 March 2018, by persons other than Alexander Petrov & Ruslan Boshirov (95%+ probability) – most likely the British security services, who were prepared to potentially commit murder in order prevent Sergei’s free movement and increase anti-Russian sentiment within in the country.
Thanks again for reading this far. I hope at least some of the above has been informative.
Part 3 to follow.
LAPSED AGNOSTIC’S SALISBURY & AMESBURY POISONINGS REPORT
Part 3: Technical Aspects
In the words of Jennifer Aniston in the shampoo ad: Here comes the science bit. Concentrate!
Anyone such as I who claims that Sergei & Yulia Skripal, DS Nick Bailey & PC Oliver Bell were poisoned with Novichok after coming into contact (either directly or indirectly) with Sergei’s door handle has to answer the following questions:
– If Sergei & Yulia Skripal and DS Nick Bailey were poisoned with Novichok after coming into contact with the door handle, how could it take over two hours to incapacitate the Skripals, and over 24 hours to render DS Bailey unable to drive, when Dawn Sturgess supposedly became unconscious a few minutes after applying Novichok contained in the perfume bottle?
– If the Skripals deposited Novichok at various places in The Mill and Zizzi restaurant on Sunday, 4 March, and these establishments weren’t sealed off till late on Monday night, why was nobody else in Salisbury (apart from Bailey & Bell) poisoned?
– If Yulia Skripal was poisoned with Novichok on 4 March, how could she wake up from her coma four days later and be well enough to be able to move her muscles to some extent, and respond to questions from the doctors?
– If the Skripals didn’t become completely incapacitated on the bench at exactly the same time, why was one or other of them not able to alert any passers-by or dial 999?
To answer these questions, we first have to have an idea about what happens on the molecular level when nerve agents are absorbed through the skin. Most chemical substances take hours to be fully absorbed by most areas of human skin, which forms the basis of slow-release patches for nicotine & fentanyl etc. The reason for this is that the outer layer of skin, the stratum corneum – which usually consists of a layer of flattened, overlapping dead skin cells 10 to 20 cells deep, like a microscopic brick wall – forms a substantial obstacle to most molecules. Essentially, it acts like a maze through which the molecules have to navigate, which takes them a considerable amount of time to do.
Once they’ve got through the stratum corneum, the molecules pass through the lower levels of skin consisting of living skin cells, which is much easier for them, and into the intercellular fluid. From there, a substantial fraction of them will pass through the capillary walls and enter the bloodstream. It’s there that they first come across the acetylcholinesterase (AChE) that nerve agents bind strongly to and inhibit. This is found mainly in the cell membranes of trillions of red blood cells, but also in the blood plasma. Nerve agents can also bind to another blood protein called butyrylcholinesterase, though not as well.
AChE and butyrylcholinesterase in the blood have no physiological functions (apart from in metabolising certain drugs such as cocaine), which means that nerve agents binding to them usually has no effects on the body. However, as an increasing fraction of nerve agent becomes bound to the AChE in the blood, the nerve agent molecules, which can pass through the capillary walls to other parts of the body, begin to encounter it elsewhere. Much of the body’s AChE is found in the central and peripheral nervous systems, where it performs a vital role in degrading acetylcholine, a prominent neurotransmitter used in signalling by nerve cells.
Nerve agents binding to AChE in the peripheral nervous system causes its parasympathetic component to go into overdrive, leading to inter alia highly constricted pupils, constriction of the airway, excess salivation, vomiting and uncontrolled defecation. They also have an effect on its sympathetic component, causing excessive sweating. Furthermore, nerve agents are capable of passing the blood-brain barrier into the central nervous system, which causes delirium and convulsions, followed by unconsciousness. Finally, they affect the neuro-muscular junctions, resulting in a type of flaccid paralysis of the muscles, including in the diaphragm, which leads to respiratory depression and ultimately death from lack of oxygen.
cont…
All things being equal, the rate at which a substance is absorbed by the skin is proportional to the area of skin it covers. We can estimate that the Skripals got an area of very roughly 10 square centimetres of their palms covered by Novichok when they touched the door handle. In contrast, DS Bailey probably got none on his palm as he was wearing gloves when he opened the door, but may have transferred less than 1 square centimetre to his forehead when he touched it with his gloved hand. This could explain why Bailey took a lot longer than the Skripals to succumb to the effects of Novichok. We don’t know the extent of the area of skin that Dawn Sturgess applied the Novichok to; however, according to Charlie Rowley, she rubbed it into her wrists. This would likely have increased the area, as well as its speed of passage through the outer layer of skin, considerably.
We’ve been informed that Novichok A-234 is around 5 to 10 times more potent than the nerve agent VX. However, no evidence to support this statement has ever been produced. In reality, they are probably of a similar potency, i.e. 5 to 10 milligrams absorbed through the skin is enough to kill most people if no treatment is provided. It’s therefore unlikely that less than 1 milligram absorbed through the skin will be sufficient to cause any symptoms due to it binding to the AChE (and butyrylcholinesterase) in the blood rather than the nervous system. This could explain why nobody else who touched the doors, chairs, glasses, knives & forks, napkins etc that the Skripals used in The Mill & Zizzi became ill. It’s also possible that nobody came into contact with Novichok because the Skripals generally touched things with their fingertips rather than their palms.
In contrast to the situation with VX, when Novichok A-234 binds to AChE, it forms a tight chemical bond over several hours which is impossible for antidote drugs such as oximes to disrupt. This is known as ‘aging’ and explains why the levels of functional AChE in the blood of the victims were found to be very low, even after they’d been given large doses of pralidoxime. In the nervous system however, AChE is constantly being destroyed by various enzymes, and then replaced by fresh supplies that have been synthesized in nerve cells. At the neuro-muscular junctions, this process happens at a rate such that all of the AChE is replaced over two to three days. In all probability, it takes a comparable amount of time in the central and peripheral nervous systems. This likely explains how Yulia Skripal could have had some degree of nervous and muscular function when her sedation was temporarily halted four days after being poisoned.
It’s highly unlikely that the Skripals became completely incapacitated at the exactly the same time. What’s more likely is that Yulia became unconscious soon after sitting down on the bench, but by that point Sergei was too much under the influence of Novichok to call for any help or dial 999. In a similar respect, look to what happened with Charlie four months later: Per Sam Hobson’s account, he remained conscious for a couple hours after first feeling the effects of the Novichok but, despite repeatedly accusing Sam of poisoning him, didn’t have the presence of mind to dial 999 to request an ambulance (or the police), as he had done shortly after Dawn collapsed.
That’s all folks. I’ll aim to pop in to this forum from time to time over the coming months (assuming I don’t get Novichok’d in the interim) and endeavour to answer any questions you may have, though don’t expect a prompt reply.
Thanks very much for reading. Thanks, too, to our host, Tim Norman, Rob Slane & John Helmer for useful insights into the Skripal saga over the years. Finally, I would also like to extend my gratitude to President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin for not nuking us – or at least not nuking us yet.
Thanks for that very interesting read on the Skirpal affair. While I find much in your analysis convincing, one thing that didn’t really come through in the text is why you’re quite so confident (95%+) that it was persons other than Alexander Petrov & Ruslan Boshirov that applied the nerve agent to the door handle? Do you think they really were just tourists whose movements happened to be sufficiently proximate to the Skirpals’ home for the government to blame them?
I guess what I struggle with here is that if it were the UK security services who planned and carried out the poisoning, surely they would see ahead of time the need to fabricate a more convincing explanation, and therefore the need to arrange for a third party to come into contact with Skirpals in a more reliable way. Why then, despite the resources at their disposal, did their plan instead rely on the coincidental visitation of some Russian nationals to the general vicinity of their planned operation?
RogerDodger
Thing is, WAS it coincidental? Of course not, and the obvious explanation is that those who concocted and contrived the whole episode/plot had Skripal get the Russians to send an agent or two over on the pretext that he had some valuable information to pass on to them. As you no doubt know, video footage of Petrov and Boshirov walking along a road in the vicinity of Skripal’s place on the Saturday was released, and if my scenario is right, then the rendevous was cancelled at the last moment on some pretext, and so they had to come back the next day.
I just checked, and Yulia flew into Heathrow Airport at 14.40 (on the Saturday), and what with collecting her baggage and customs ets and then the journey to Salisbury (she was picked up by a friend of Sergei), I wouldn’t have thought she got to Salisbury much before 5.00pm. And the reason I mention it is because Petrov and Boshirov just happened to arrive in Salisbury ‘about 2.25pm’ on the Saturday, as it says in a Guardian article (and no doubt elsewhere)…
OMG, I just brough up a Guardian article posted on October 28th last year, and:
Novichok was put on Skripals’ front door while they were home, inquiry hears
A deadly nerve agent was applied to former spy Sergei Skripal’s front door while he and his daughter, Yulia, were at home, a counter-terrorism chief has revealed.
The Skripals must have been just metres away when the door handle of his home in Salisbury was daubed with novichok, an inquiry into the 2018 poisonings has heard.
THAT caps it all fffs! Just how THAT fits in with everything else in the rest of the fairy tale I have no idea…. Got to stop there though for now, as I’m completely gobsmacked.
Hi Allan,
I can see what you’re driving at, but in that case, why wouldn’t Skirpal’s handlers let the meeting go ahead? If they were to do so, they could easily capture definitive evidence of it, during which the poisoning could be claimed to have taken place. It would be much more damning (or apparently damning) and the government’s story would be almost impossible to contradict.
