LONDON — A damning British public inquiry has found that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally approved the 2018 Novichok nerve-agent attack against former spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, and that he carries “moral responsibility” for the subsequent death of local resident Dawn Sturgess. The Russian military intelligence operation must have been signed off at the highest level of the Kremlin, said the inquiry chair, Lord Hughes, turning Britain’s long-running Skripal saga into a personal indictment of the Russian leader, Dec. 6, 2025.
In releasing his report after years of hearings—some held in private—Hughes explained that a GRU team brought a bottle labelled as “Nina Ricci” perfume, but filled it with Novichok, from Russia. They put the poison on Skripal’s front-door handle and then discarded the bottle in Salisbury, creating a serious and obvious risk to anyone who might find it.
That victim was Sturgess, 44, who four months later became the second and unfortunate person when her partner, Charlie Rowley, stumbled upon the bottle — discarded after the two Russians used it to apply novichok on Skripal’s doorknob — and took it home in nearby Amesbury; she sprayed the liquid on her wrists and died in hospital days later. Her father, Stan Sturgess, told the Guardian that the ruling meant they could finally bury her and dispel any remaining suspicion that she had been in some way responsible.
Putin Novichok investigation links Salisbury and Amesbury attacks.
The Putin Novichok saga began on March 4 last year when former Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia fell ill on a bench in Salisbury after being exposed to a military grade nerve agent, according to Reuters’ reconstruction of the day Skripal collapsed and subsequent police investigations. They, as well as Detective Sgt. Nick Bailey also survived the following weeks in intensive care.
British officials later said the same type of Novichok nerve agent contaminated Sturgess and Rowley when they fell ill in Amesbury, and forensics matched the fake perfume bottle to the attack on the Skripals. First reported in full at the time by The Guardian, Sturgess’s death is now the subject of a separate lack-of-candour public inquiry following questions about police messaging and an apology in 2024 for wrongly labelling her a “drug addict.”
The report emphasises that the Putin Novichok operation was not a rogue mission but followed an established pattern: A similar British inquiry, into the 2006 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko with polonium in London, concluded in 2016 that Mr Putin probably also ordered the killing of him too, adding to Western intelligence assessments of a Kremlin prepared to eliminate perceived traitors abroad.
In Westminster, ministers were quick to cast the findings as a direct assault on British sovereignty. The administration also sanctioned Russia’s GRU military intelligence in its entirety, including individual cyber-officers, to its blacklist and summoned the Russian ambassador, according to reporting from AP on the new sanctions package as well as a separate thing issued by the government, reinforcing support for Ukraine against ongoing Russian aggression.
Reuters’ report says three GRU officers entered the country using false names, brought in the poison labelled as “Putin’s bottle,” put it on Skripal’s door, and threw away the container that caused Sturgess’s death. They remain in Russia and cannot be tried in Britain.
Russia has rejected the Novichok findings as “baseless” and politically motivated. Officials in Moscow and at its London embassy repeated claims that Britain has not shown evidence and is conducting an anti-Russian campaign. This is despite years of forensic work and international support for Britain’s accusation against the GRU.
For Salisbury residents and victims’ families, the inquiry offers a clear verdict: The Kremlin-approved assassination chain led, in British law, to Dawn Sturgess’s front door. The case will likely affect British–Russian relations for a generation, regardless of any future trial outcomes.
