While America celebrated Thanksgiving, the UK's senior official responsible for Russia policy was testifying across the pond about the assassination attempts against former spy Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia Skripal. Among the biggest revelations from Jonathan Allen, who spoke in London at the inquiry into the 2018 Novichok poisonings: that the decision to OK the move against the Skripals "would have gone to [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin," not a "rogue" Russian intel group, per Politico.
Allen, head of defense and intelligence at the UK's Foreign Office, noted during his three-hour testimony that, due to the "highly bureaucratic" nature of the Russian government and the "enormous" risks of using the nerve agent Novichok in the UK, he believes that only Putin could've been behind the attempt to take down the father-daughter duo in Salisbury. Allen also testified that Putin may have wanted to kill Sergei Skripal because he had confidential intel on the Russian president's "criminal embezzlement" of money made from the production of rare metals, per the Guardian.
Allen also said Thursday that he believed Russia actually wanted Britain to figure out who was behind the poisonings of the Skripals, who both survived the attempt on their lives. "Use of a nerve agent in this way is clearly going to be traced back to Russia," he said, per the BBC. "That's why I believe it wasn't intended to remain covert entirely—it was meant to act as a warning, in my view." Russia's government has consistently denied having anything to do with the Skripal poisonings, which also injured a local police officer. (More Sergei Skripal stories.)
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