All language subtitles for Secrets.Of.The.Salisbury.Poisonings.(2021).1080p.WEB-DL.Rus.Eng.[sub.Eng]-BLUEBIRD

[Reporter] The BBC understands
that a former Russian spy

is in a critical condition
in hospital in wiltshire.

They were severely critically
ill, developing multi-organ failure.

It's such a crazy kinda
story, it's almost unbelievable.

[Man] I knew it was novichok,
a military-grade nerve agent.

Even tiny amounts can kill
tens of thousands of people.

[Sirens wailing]

This is being treated as a major
incident involving attempted murder

via a nerve agent.

She was staring at nothing

and foaming at the mouth.

The first time in a century

a chemical weapon had
been used in Western Europe.

"It's only a matter of time
before I slip into a coma and die."

[Theresa may] It is now clear
Mr. Skripal and his daughter

were poisoned with a
military-grade nerve agent

of the type developed by Russia.

There was absolutely no
doubt that this is an operation

controlled by Vladimir putin

through Russian
military intelligence.

The intent is to kill people.

I've been caught up in an
international assassination attempt.

The substance could potentially
be anywhere in the city.

It was as though a bomb had
gone off on the streets of Salisbury.

Ordinary people caught in
absolutely extraordinary circumstances.

He's like, "I've literally
poisoned my girlfriend."

You know?

"Unknowingly, I've
killed me girlfriend."

[Man] People would come from
far and wide to Salisbury to visit.

It's always had a very nice
kind of feel and atmosphere.

Such a small city.

I was just a normal guy,

a normal police
officer doing his job

before march the
4th, 2018 happened.

And it changed my life forever.

My name is Nick Bailey.

I was a detective sergeant

in the criminal investigation
department in Salisbury.

I was at my desk in
bourne hill police station.

I just remember
hearing a call on the radio

about two people that were found

in the maltings, in the city.

It's a stone's throw,
effectively, from the cathedral.

They were unconscious
and slumped on a park bench,

heavily salivating.

[Woman] The air
ambulance had been spotted

over Salisbury city center.

And as I was heading
home that way,

I said I would go
and investigate it.

My name is Rebecca Hudson

and I was a trainee reporter
at the Salisbury journal.

There was a police cordon.

They said that it was a couple who had
suffered some sort of drug-related incident

and been taken to
hospital as a result.

We didn't know anything about
what condition they were in.

But to have that police cordon
seemed bizarre at the time,

and it sparked a lot
of curiosity, I think.

On the bench over there

there was a man being
sick on the floor, leant over,

and a woman lying on the floor.

She was sort of leant in on him,

it looked like she'd
passed out maybe.

He was doing some
strange hand movements,

looking up to the sky.

Nobody knew what was going on,
we didn't know what had happened,

we didn't know if a
crime had taken place.

Maybe they'd been contaminated
or poisoned with something.

It could have been
a drugs overdose.

Didn't really know
why they were that ill.

One of the police officers
said, "you might want to stay

because something
interesting is going to happen."

And when the fire crews arrived,

a couple of them immediately

started to put their
chemical Hazmat suits on.

It looked like they were
swabbing the bench.

And then we realized they
were cleaning something up,

someone at the scene
had said it was vomit,

and began a fairly
lengthy process of bagging

and double-bagging and
triple-bagging this vomit up,

and then put it inside
a metal container.

I just didn't know why they
were taking so many precautions.

There was no
explanation at the time.

My uniformed colleagues
had found a driver's license,

and on the driver's license it
said the name Sergei skripal

and gave a local
Salisbury address.

One of my team googled
Sergei skripal's name.

I remember vividly him saying, "sarge,
you're gonna need to come and see this."

And I walked over and looked
over his shoulder at the computer,

and it was a picture
of Sergei skripal,

and it was a newspaper headline.

And it basically said that
he was a former Russian spy

who'd been released as part of
some kind of international spy swap.

That information
changed everything.

He was deemed to
be a traitor to Russia.

The biggest spy swap
since the cold war.

[Reporter 1] Two planes, one
from america and one from Russia,

met on the tarmac.

[Reporter 2] The four men who
were released from Russian prisons

had all been convicted of handling
highly classified information.

[Speaking Russian]

[Speaking Russian]

[Dramatic music]

[Nick] Sergei skripal was
not just a Russian spy,

but a former double
agent working for MI6.

He chose Salisbury, or
MI6 chose Salisbury for him.

It is amazing that he'd gone
from being behind bars in Russia

to suddenly being here,
in little old Salisbury.

[Man] That is the first
time that I become aware

that we've got a Russian spy
who was actually living in Salisbury.

I'm Paul mills, I'm the deputy
chief constable of wiltshire police.

The Salisbury
poisonings, without doubt,

was the most complex, challenging policing
incident I've ever been involved in.

[Man over radio] Approaching
christie Miller road.

[Mills] After the
incident on the Sunday,

we've got three officers that we decide
will go into Mr. Skripal's home address

to look to see whether
there's any information or clues

which would indicate
actually how they'd become ill.

[Man over radio] They've
obtained key from the neighbor.

[Rebecca] As a girl in her
early 20s in Salisbury at the time,

I never in my wildest dreams

thought I would
be writing headlines

that were referencing
a spy living in Salisbury.

To find out that there was a
spy living in christie Miller road,

which was a road I'd walked past

on my way to and
from school even,

was bizarre, I couldn't
make any sense of it.

We had to borrow
suits from the fire station,

latex gloves, goggles and masks,
like, kind of breathing masks.

We had to protect
the scene from us.

We got kitted up on the
driveway of the house.

So I unlocked the front door

and undid the handle and
walked into Sergei skripal's house.

I did think,

"why is a former Russian
spy living in Salisbury?

And how did we not
know that he was there?"

Surely we should
have been made aware.

By all accounts, no one knew.

There was nothing
obvious in the house

that would give us
any more of an idea

as to why they were in
critical condition in hospital.

I went home after
a 15-16 hour shift.

I think I left the police station
at about half six in the morning.

And I remember feeling
a bit kind of sweaty,

my forehead was sweaty,

which I put down
to just kind of...

[Chuckles bitterly]
Stress and exhaustion.

And I remember, as well,

my pupils were quite small.

But I didn't think
anything more of it.

[Radio] A man and a woman

are in hospital after an
incident in the maltings

in Salisbury
yesterday afternoon.

Firefighters were also called to
assist with a hazardous material.

[Man] Salisbury's fairly sleepy.

Who would have thought
someone had a spy living next door.

My name is James haslam,

I'm a consultant in anesthesia

and intensive care
medicine here in Salisbury.

I remember coming into
work on the Monday morning,

was about to take over
the icu for the week.

I'd heard that there'd been two
patients admitted the previous afternoon.

There was an older
gentleman and a younger lady.

They were getting
sicker and sicker.

[Woman] In terms
of the symptoms,

in the first 24-48 hours,

it was a bit of a mystery

why they were
with us in hospital.

Whether that was an overdose,

whether it was an
accidental poisoning,

what had caused this?

They were critically ill,

they were requiring
full life support.

[Dr. Haslam] In the handover, the working
diagnosis was opioid poisoning or toxicity.

And I just, in my gut, I felt
like that wasn't quite right.

They were
severely, critically ill,

developing multi-organ failure.

I thought, at that stage, it was likely
to have been an assassination attempt.

And then your mind starts
spiraling as to what that means.

I spent most of the night
on the Internet, researching.

[Man] I got a phone
call from a doctor saying,

"there has been an incident
in Salisbury, it's really bizarre.

We think it might be some
sort of chemical incident.

We're really unsure
what it is, so stand by.

We might need some advice."

My name is Hamish
De bretton-Gordon,

I commanded the cbrn regiment,

chemical, biological,
radiological and nuclear,

for the UK and for NATO.

When I saw the first pictures

of Sergei skripal on the bench,

almost frozen,

it looked like this is
probably a nerve agent.

And that's when the
alarm bells started ringing.

[Heart monitors beeping]

[Dr. Haslam] There was a real
sense of threat from this substance,

which we didn't know much about.

What we had to do was
kind of formulate a recipe

of drugs that would
keep them alive

and hopefully give
them time to get better.

I was concerned
about these patients,

I was worried that
they were gonna die.

I was stunned.

I mean, I'd dealt with biological
weapons attacks by al-qaeda,

in both Iraq and Afghanistan,

I had personally experienced
a chemical attack in Syria.

One of the shocking
things was, you know,

this is right on our doorstep,

my family were in
Salisbury at the time.

I rang my wife,

"guys, you need to be careful.

You're gonna hear pretty soon,

this is gonna go
stratospheric in the media,

there's a chemical
attack in Salisbury,

there's something pretty
horrendous out there,

we don't know what it is.

I'd suggest you
stay out of the place."

[Rebecca] The motto
for thesalisbury journal

was "the heartbeat
of your community."

You're just covering the small, often
fun stories that people love to read

but that don't hold a
huge deal of news value.

A cow that gave
birth to triplets,

a cat that was stuck
under the bonnet of a car.

This is the picture that our
photographer took at the scene,

which then was used
all throughout the world.

Given the level of secrecy,

I was very proud
that we got this picture

because there was
nobody else there

who was documenting
what had happened.

That picture was the beginning

of Salisbury being known for an
international nerve agent attack

on a Russian double agent.

The biggest story
that I would ever cover,

and I think that
Salisbury would ever see.

[Nick] That Monday
morning I wasn't due to work.

Three o'clock in the afternoon

I was woken by a
phone call from work

asking me some questions
about the events of the night before.

I was a little bit anxious
about how I was feeling.

I just didn't feel good at all.

The start of a
migraine... I don't know.

And at that point, I just put it
down to, I must be... just exhaustion.

My wife and two
girls were at home

and I said, "why I've
been at work for so long?

Because we're dealing with
something that is potentially quite big,

but we don't know a lot yet,

but it's very strange,
it's very quite sinister."

The BBC understands
that a former Russian spy

is in a critical condition

in hospital in wiltshire

along with a
woman in her thirties.

A major incident was declared

and decontamination
teams were called

into the local hospital
and part of the city.

[Woman] "Is this some
kind of toxic poisoning?

How many people could
potentially be at risk of harm?"

To me was the thing that
was keeping me awake at night.

My name is Tracy daszkiewicz.

I was director of public
health for the wiltshire council

during the time of the
Salisbury poisonings.

"Was it an
assassination attempt?"

Those sorts of
questions start to emerge.

That's a really
horrible feeling,

that something like that
can happen in peace time

in a place like Salisbury.

The information
that was disclosed,

I wasn't able to share
that with anybody.

A nerve agent is
a chemical weapon

developed by the Nazis.

One molecule of this
stuff is enough to kill you.

The challenge then is to
work out where it could be.

[Tracy] The imagination
then breeds fear and anxiety.

In those early days,

it could've easily been full
scale of fatalities and casualties.

[Rebecca] At thejournal,
we had heard a rumor

that there was runoff
from the nerve agent

in the river avon.

And that that was
flowing through the city

and that that had come
about when the fire service

hosed down the bench
the skripals were found on.

Ducks and swans in the city
were being poisoned or were dying.

We couldn't rule any
of these rumors out.

This substance could
potentially be anywhere in the city

and that anyone could
have come into contact with it.

[Tracy] For the community
living in Salisbury,

it was frightening,
unusual, very scary.

It's quite daunting really,
and it's just quite worrying

to know what's
gonna happen next.

Because the fact there's a
Russian spy living right next door

and we never knew about it.

And then for something
like this to happen,

it's quite concerning.

People are nervous about it

because it's so close to home.

It's the not knowing and
what's going on, really.

I mean, there's a lot of security
around and a lot of police around.

So, yeah.

Within the space of less
than 24 hours, it was clear

it was clear that there was a
major incident evolving here.

The world's press
descended upon Salisbury.

[Woman] It was becoming crazy.

The city streets themselves
are part of the news.

My name is Olga ivshina,

I'm a senior reporter
for BBC Russian service.

I was on the phone
talking Russian.

Just saw that there is
an old lady staring at me

and sort of waiting
for me to finish the call.

I put down the
phone and she said,

"oh, it's you Russians! What
have you done to our city?

What have you done?
Why do you do this to us?"

It was a moment which
told you the story, in a way.

How frightened and
angry people are.

There you are in Salisbury,

but give us your perspective

as a journalist for the BBC
Russian service, about how this...

[Olga] I was the only Russian
speaker which worked on that news.

And they said, "listen,
your job is very important.

To learn more
about Sergei skripal,

about his family, about
his past in Russia."

We know that there
was someone with Sergei,

some other woman who
was sitting next to him

and who's also in the
hospital at the moment

in a very bad condition.

But that's it, we didn't
know anything else.

During these days, BBC
spoke to a number of experts,

and all say that we
should be cautious...

And certainly we shouldn't issue
any accusations at the moment.

Some day, at like
six A.M. London time,

I got a message saying,

"yes, I am a niece of
Sergei skripal, call me."

[Speaking Russian]

You could hear
her voice trembling.

And then she said,

"what's going on, is she alive?"

And then I had to tell her that she's
in the hospital in critical condition.

[Dr. Haslam] By this
stage, on the Tuesday,

the patients were
close to death.

We had armed guards
at the end of our icu.

Is anybody gonna come back
and try and finish our patients off?

And could we get
caught in any crossfire?

That was certainly something
that we worried about.

[Machines beeping]

[Olga] When
viktoria skripal said,

"what have they done to him?"

I asked her, "who do you mean?"

And she said, "security services,
Russian security services."

That was her initial reaction.

[Nick] Tuesday night, that's when
things started to change for me.

They were like nightmares
or hallucinations.

Like, pure hate and flames
right in front of my eyes.

As if you were able to get close
enough to the surface of the sun,

it was like a Tsunami
of pure hate and fire.

That was terrifying, but when
I woke up I was boiling hot

and I was literally
pouring with sweat,

just pouring with sweat.

And I got out of bed and
I staggered downstairs

'cause I needed to
get a drink of water,

and I felt really, really
unsteady on my feet.

And my vision was impaired,

it was like still frames that
were jittering from one to the next,

that's how my eyesight was,

and it was horrible.

I looked at the mirror again
and my pupils were still tiny,

and I was scared, physically,
by how I was feeling.

It was terrifying,

so I went to
hospital, to a&E.

That's the first
time I met James.

[Dr. Haslam] I went
down to examine him

and, by this stage,

I know what nerve
agent poisoning looks like,

although nothing had
been officially confirmed.

But there were lots of
conversations behind closed doors.

[Hamish] I've seen how
these things kill people.

So, when your body
starts shutting down,

the initial look is statuesque,

where people are frozen

because their
muscles can't move.

There will be choking
because you can't breathe,

you get pin-pointed pupils

because your eyes
are shutting down.

[Dr. Haslam] I had to
break the news to him

that there was a class of
nerve agents called "novichok,"

something that is
extremely terrifying.

It was designed to kill

on a mass scale.

And then there is the
horror, the fear factor,

of being poisoned.

[Nick] James came in and said,

"you have a nerve agent
called novichok in your system."

We were in completely
unknown territory now.

I'd been caught up in an
international assassination attempt.

Even the staff of the
hospital were scared

about how this was gonna work

and what was going on.

And I... yeah, it's pure terror.

I cried a lot

'cause I was so scared.

I thought it's only
a matter of time

before I slip into
a coma and die.

[Machines beeping]

[Dr. Haslam] I felt
under a lot of pressure.

I was really worried
about my three patients.

The ramifications were
starting to play out in my mind.

This is going to be some
sort of international scandal

if one of them died.

That could be the start of war.

[Woman] It was outrageous
that two people living in Salisbury

had been attacked in this way.

It was as though a bomb had
gone off on the streets of Salisbury.

This was almost an act of war.

As a cabinet minister
and as a home secretary,

you feel the affrontery,
really, of the violence

of this act on British soil.

And so we attributed
it as a terrorist attack.

Until we could actually
pinpoint it as attributed

to an individual
leading a nation-state.

[Camera shutters clicking]

[Man shouts] Are you ready
to retaliate, prime minister?

How will you hit back?

[Amber rudd] But Theresa may was
determined that we shouldn't rush it

in order to have
a proper response.

[Man] It's hard to imagine a situation
where the stakes could be higher.

"International
terrorist operations"

fundamentally goes to
the defense of the realm

and the security of the country.

My name is Mark rowley.

When the Salisbury
poisonings happened,

I was the head of UK
counter terrorism policing,

leading that national
responsibility from Scotland yard.

[Rowley] It is being
treated as a major incident

involving attempted murder

by administration
of a nerve agent

finding the weapon,
finding the suspects

was a massively high priority.

The challenge was we didn't
know how it'd been brought in,

and who'd brought it in.

So many unknowns.

[Paul mills] What's
really, really critical

is to catch those
who have done it.

It was tense, but
we had a job to do.

The counter-terrorism police

had to firstly establish where the
skripals had actually been poisoned

and ultimately, by who.

Clearly at the center
of that was cctv.

Piecing all of that together and
then tracing that back to Russia

was one of the most complex investigations
I would say in recent policing history.

[Mark rowley] We've got the police
forensic experts on the ground,

armed specialist
protection officers

protecting the
skripals at the hospital.

The lead intelligence
agencies, mi5 and MI6,

it's like bringing an
orchestra together

from scratch at high speed.

One of the key
things about novichok

that the Russians
designed into it,

that it was undetectable.

And after they were first
infected with nerve agent,

they were spreading
contamination.

It's a bit like your DNA,

you leave it whatever you touch.

So one had to find the source

and then track where
the skripals had been.

Trying to trace all the novichok
was a absolute nightmare.

You're looking for the
smallest smears of a liquid

across a whole city.

But the forensic examination

is far harder, far slower

than the normal
forensic examination.

It's a long, slow process

requiring immense care.

Being a reporter, you know,

you have to be close.

You can't see it,
but it might be there

and it might be really,
really dangerous.

[Paul mills] We had to
sample every blade of grass,

take it to a mass spectrometer

and work out whether
there was novichok there.

The threat was massive.

[Mark] Due to the
nature of novichok,

this stuff lives for a very, very
long time, it doesn't degrade.

All of those people
that actually responded,

whether or not that
was police officers,

ambulance staff, the hospital,
other members of the public,

that had actually come
into contact with the skripals,

the potential for
chronic illness

meant we had to destroy 18
police vehicles, nine ambulances...

We start to lock
down all of the scenes.

It was huge.

[Hamish] We buried 37 vehicles.

So little of it can be fatal

that you have to
track every molecule,

but we're talking about millions
and millions of molecules.

[Paul] Early on, every
option has to be on the table

if it's gonna help save lives.

A mass evacuation of
large areas of Salisbury

to protect the public

was a possibility.

[Man] A chemical weapon hadn't
been used in Western Europe

since world war I.

And it was clearly
and unlawful use

of a very reckless form of force

against the UK and
against a British citizen.

Novichok was a new nerve agent

developed in the late
years of the Soviet union

in the 1980s.

As soon as it became clear that
the nerve agent was a novichok,

we knew that only Russia
possessed that kind of capability.

Me, as the national security
advisor advising the prime minister,

I was always clear that the
Russians were the prime suspect.

[Speaking Russian]

[Hamish] The Russians
were trying to put across

that this novichok had
not originated in Russia,

creating the view that the
brits were responsible for it,

you know, they'd
done it to themselves.

Near everybody had done
it, except the Russians.

Yet every news channel
was full of this stuff.

Information warfare,
disinformation, or propaganda,

it is part of the
Russian armory.

[Man] Why don't you ask
yourselves the question,

"how can the British
authorities so quickly

manage to designate
the nerve agent used

as something called novichok?

It has a chemical signature
that they were able to...

But when you have a
nerve agent or whatever,

you check it against certain samples
that you retain in your laboratory.

[Man] The defence science
and technology laboratory

at porton down,
just near Salisbury

I've worked with most
of my military career.

They are the world's experts

in chemical and
biological type warfare.

Porton down is the
largest military facility

in the United Kingdom

that has been dealing with
chemical weapons research.

And it's actually only
eight miles from Salisbury.

I've lived in Salisbury
my whole life,

but I couldn't tell
you a great deal about

what actually goes
on inside porton down.

Porton down does have a
reputation for being quite mysterious,

and for having strange conspiracies
and stories that surround it.

They're investigating aliens,
they're talking about mass poisonings,

they're doing all sorts of
experiments to do with animal testing.

Porton down, I am sure,

has the files and details of what
novichok is and how to make it.

We certainly have the formulas

and that was from people
who'd defected from Russia

back in the 70s and 80s.

But the fact that a level
four biosecure laboratory

where the most deadly
pathogens are stored

and worked on is in Salisbury

is just a quirk of fate.

[Olga] For the
Russians, in spy stories,

there is never any coincidence.

You're not suggesting that porton
down is responsible for this nerve agent?

I don't know. I don't know...

I don't have an evidence of
anything be... having been used.

I was following the Russian
take on the story quite closely.

The Salisbury journal
website was flooded

with hundreds of comments
that were from Russia.

[Lord Mark sedwill]
Through various means

they put out dozens and
dozens of different stories,

some of them
completely implausible,

just simply in order
to confuse people.

[Speaking Russian]

People believed the
conspiracy narrative.

I think in that first week after the
attack we lost the information war.

[Crowd jeering]

It is now clear that
Mr. Skripal and his daughter

were poisoned with a military-grade
nerve agent known as novichok.

Based on the positive
identification of this chemical agent

by world leading experts at the
defense, science and technology laboratory

at porton down, the government
has concluded that it is highly likely

that Russia was responsible.

[Russian anthem plays]

[Lord sedwill] The willingness to use
chemical weapons, targeted assassination,

operations of the kind we
saw against the skripals,

it's inconceivable that a program of
that kind would have been conducted

without the approval
of president putin.

[Russian anthem continues]

[Woman] Are you strong enough
to take on putin, prime minister?

[Theresa may] Mr. Speaker, this
was not just an act of attempted murder

in Salisbury, it is an affront to the
prohibition on the use of chemical weapons.

The United Kingdom will now
expel 23 Russian diplomats

- [audience murmurs]
- Who have been identified

as undeclared
intelligence officers.

Nerve agents are a
weapon of mass destruction.

Having been chucked
in the deep end,

and I had to learn on the job how
these evil toxic substances work.

You know, that's why I didn't
sleep much that first week

because every sinew
was straining for that.

Given it was such an evil act
we felt like we wanted to beat it.

[Nick Bailey] My room in
intensive care became my world.

The doctors and the nurses, the
consultants would come in to see me

in completely, like,
full suits, masks, visors,

double, triple gloves.

You know, they have
to protect themselves,

but that kind of fueled
my fear of the unknown.

It fueled my terror. I've got no
idea how this is gonna play out.

I thought that I was gonna be
locked up in a mental institute.

[Amber rudd] Very dramatic, it
felt to me, visiting the hospital.

I was taken up to see
detective sergeant Nick Bailey.

I've never seen so many
wires going into a man's body.

It was a shock just to
see him in that state.

I was conscious throughout
my time in hospital,

whereas Sergei
and yulia weren't.

They were worse
because they had, probably,

had a stronger
hit of it than I did,

and as such I didn't
fall unconscious

or wasn't needed
to put into a coma.

[Rudd] The consultant
who was in charge

was on the verge of
tears as I spoke to him.

[Machines beeping]

I went into intensive
care as a profession,

partly because my dad was
critically ill when I was a kid.

And...

The icu guys saved his life.

And so, [voice shaking] Yeah, that's
what I wanted to do for my patients

was to save their lives.

- [Siren wailing] - [Rudd] I realized
that Nick Bailey was going to live

because the consultant
slept hardly at all in days,

trying to keep his patients
alive and he was winning.

There were so, so many people,
doctors, nurses, consultants

that were involved
in looking after me.

Undoubtedly, they saved my life.

James haslam was
one of those people

and he's got a tiny
little place in my heart

because he's part of that
horrific ordeal in hospital,

and I'm incredibly grateful.

At heart, I'm an emotional
englishman and I...

[Scoffs] Emotions are just
below the surface for me.

I've looked after all kinds
of dying, sick patients and...

I think every patient
who survives is...

Wonderful, and that's
why we do the job.

I do care deeply about patients.

With all the press around,
we had to sneak Nick out

of the backdoor of the hospital.

[Woman] Sergeant Nick Bailey's condition
has now improved, and he was discharged

from Salisbury district
hospital this afternoon.

I personally want to wish
Nick and his family well,

and I know that the staff
right across the hospital

will want me to share
their very best wishes.

I also want to update you on
the condition of Sergei skripal.

He's responding well to
treatment, improving rapidly,

and is no longer in
a critical condition.

[Dr. Haslam] My sickest
patients, two Russian nationals,

had dramatically turned a corner

and had stabilized physiologically,
which was a huge relief.

[Machines beeping]

[Lorna wilkinson] And, as
the skripals started to wake up,

they both made quick
strides in their recovery.

It actually was then
shorter than we expected

from that time to them
actually gaining consciousness,

being awake, being
able to converse with us.

But, obviously, very quickly
the police got involved.

This was part of a
major investigation.

This had so much complexity
to it. It had the political angle,

it had the world of espionage,

and took us to
the edge of a world

that most of us don't
even know exists.

We think it's the stuff
ofjames bond films.

The Russians like
using exotic methods

to take out people who
they don't approve of.

You know, the stabbing,
the spraying or whatever.

You know, litvinenko, polonium-210,
a drop being put in his tea.

You let mother Russia down and
mother Russia will take you down.

[Speaking Russian]

A case like this is enormously
complex, and just one strand of that

was Sergei and yulia
skripal's movements

on the day the poisons
took a hold on them.

In terms of the investigation
tracking down ground zero,

where was novichok administered?

The cctv was giving
us the picture of

the movement of the
skripals during that day.

[Ebru ozturk] Mr. Skripal was
one of my favorite customers.

He made me always smile.

He's very kind, very
happy, cheerful, never rush.

He's very slow,
calm, you know, the...

And he use, "no problem."

He's always used
this, "no problem."

This phrases always
remind me of him.

He's like a proper, proper
grandfather, you know?

Last time Mr. Skripal
came to my shop,

he mentioned the daughter
is coming to see him

and they're going to
spend time together

which make him very happy.

You know, he was excited.

That was the last
time I saw him.

Yulia has recently
arrived from Russia,

looking forward to a
holiday with her dad.

We know that one of the first
things she did when she got to the UK

was go and visit her mom's
grave, which they had done together.

We know they've been into a pub.

[Paul mills] We know they've
then been to a restaurant

and then they've become unwell.

And we've got nine
different scenes

that are up and
running in Salisbury.

We learned more and
more, and what was very clear

that everybody
that had become ill

had been directly in contact with
the front door of Sergei's house.

[Nick] A couple of weeks
after leaving hospital

I was shocked to learn that
it was on the door handle.

I was the first person
through the door

after they had become poisoned,

and so it got onto my glove, and somehow
got onto my skin, and into my blood system.

[Tracy daszkiewicz] That door was
removed, and at that point we then knew

that the science that we'd
use to track his movements

had been the right approach.

[Nick] Such a brazen
attempt on someone's life,

and anybody could have
touched that door handle.

It angered me.

Novichok, without
a doubt, is a killer.

Let's be clear, it's a
military-grade chemical weapon.

Those that came to
target Mr. Skripal and yulia

were intending to kill them.

[Speaking Russian]

[Rebecca Hudson] Russian
disinformation was intensifying.

There were dozens of wild
theories about what I had done

or what I hadn't done.

I was accused of having burner
phones buried in my back garden

that I would dig up at night to contact all
sorts of people to help plan these attacks.

[Nick] At one point, I was
accused of being the assassin.

I was accused of
being Sergei's handler.

I was accused of
working for MI6.

The most ridiculous of those, I think,
was that I had stolen the skripal's cat.

Obviously, none of this true.

One of the lines that was
coming out in Russian reporting

was that Sergei and yulia
skripal were being, almost,

held against their
will in the hospital

and not being allowed to talk
to relatives or see relatives.

We want to see the evidence.

We want to have access
to Russian nationals.

We are denied.

And we want to make
our own investigation,

and we want to understand
what happened there.

The Russians suggested
that the skripals had been

abducted by UK
authorities in some form,

which, obviously, was
completely ridiculous

but it was part of their
disinformation campaign.

[Speaking Russian]

There were people even
within the city, a minority,

but who started to question, "is
this real? This hadn't happened.

These patients weren't here. Sergei
didn't survive. He couldn't have survived.

This was all fake."

He absolutely did survive,
the same as yulia survived

so yeah, they're wrong.

[Speaking Russian]

[Speaking Russian]

[Lorna] Yulia had survived.

We hadn't thought anybody
would survive novichok poisoning.

I think that, collectively,

there was almost a sadness
at saying goodbye to her

because she was also
saying goodbye to somebody

who you knew would get
swallowed up into a secret world.

We all knew that her life
would be changed forever.

It was Sergei's choice to be a
professional spy and he answers for that.

But then, suddenly, you know, it affects
other people who never signed up for that.

Did his daughter sign
up for that? No, she didn't.

[Speaking Russian]

[Duncan Murray] Sergei
had been really sick.

In extraordinary circumstances
someone had tried to kill him.

My name's Duncan Murray,

and I'm a consultant anesthetist
and intensive care specialist.

I happened to be the
attending consultant

at the time that he was
able to breathe unassisted.

He didn't die when he
was in Salisbury hospital.

I don't know what's happened
beyond that, but, yeah.

The last time I saw him
[Laughing] he was alive,

and I've got no
reason to believe that

he didn't leave
the hospital alive.

Yeah.

[Dr. Haslam] On
discharging our last patient

there was a real sense of
relief, of accomplishment.

Things started to
return to normal.

All the fanfare of the press
and everything had gone.

- [Bells chiming]
- In the back of our minds

there was a sense that the
police hadn't found the novichok,

and so there was
a niggling feeling.

Could it still be out there?
Do we need to be worried?

When a story involves
spies and exiles,

the public will want to know, "well, what
really went on? What's under the surface?"

In terms of the investigation,

we're very interested in finding
the team behind this, the suspects.

[Paul] Slowly but surely, the counterterrorism
police were able to narrow down

with the cctv imaging, and
then have that Eureka moment.

We're able to see our two
suspects arriving at the train station.

Well, if they're only in Salisbury
for a short period of time,

and then we'd know that they
go back to London after the attack,

and certainly by early evening
they're on a flight back to Russia.

Counterterrorism police needed
to identify those two suspects.

[Sir Mark rowley] It was quite
possible that the offenders

may have taken the
exact novichok agent,

that was used to attempt to
kill Sergei skripal, with them.

They may have destroyed it in a
completely different part of the country,

but it stayed high
on our list of priorities

because public safety
was the number one issue.

[Paul] It's back to the
needle in the haystack.

The novichok
getting where that was

is still a major, major
question Mark for us.

We had gone through everything in
terms of checking and checking again.

I felt Salisbury was
safe. I wasn't in any doubt.

[Radio reporter] First of all,

spire fm news at three o'clock.

[Radio reporter 2] Prince Charles
and the duchess of cornwall

have visited Salisbury to help drum
up trade after the nerve agent attack.

[Rebecca] By June, we
were just returning to normality

and not writing about Russians
or nerve agents in every paper.

The big story at the
Salisbury journal at the time

was people coming from all over
the country, or from all over the world,

to celebrate the summer
solstice at stonehenge.

- Not many cities have a druid community.
- [Man] Diva.

-[All] Diva.
-[Man] ♪ diva, diva ♪

The stonehenge solstice that
happens in June every year

is our biggest
policing operation.

Over 10,000 people. You're
there as the sun comes up

and it's a wonderful
place to be.

[Arthur pendragon] And if
you grew up around here,

Salisbury and stonehenge are
part and parcel of the same thing

and it's in your DNA.

Solstice 2018,

this was the first ceremony
we'd had here after the poisoning.

We said some prayers
for all those affected.

This is rural wiltshire.
Everybody knows everybody.

Salisbury is a small community and
we jokingly refer to it as smallsbury,

so everybody knew someone
who was touched by it.

[Rebecca] We had been told
repeatedly that Salisbury was safe

and that the nerve agent
areas had all been identified.

And then... [sighs]

We had heard that there had been

an unexplained incident.

There were a lot of parallels with
what had happened back in march.

[Reporter] A major incident's
been declared in amesbury,

where police think a man
and a woman left critically ill

may have been exposed
to an unknown substance.

[Rebecca] I didn't
recognize Charlie rowley,

but Charlie had been
arrested a few times

and the journal
had reported on that.

[Charlie] I found a novichok
bottle a week after my girlfriend,

dawn, done the summer solstice.

Dawn, basically, grew up in
the closest village to stonehenge.

My name is Charlie rowley. I went
through a state of homelessness.

But it, you know,
and it got better.

You know, and I got me own
place. It was like a dream come true.

I had a lovely, lovely
girlfriend, dawn.

And the whole thing of getting
a new flat was overwhelming.

You know, it blew me socks off.

I knew that there was gonna be
sunshine at the end of the cloud.

[Reporter] The pair in their
forties were found unconscious

at a property in muggleton
road on Saturday evening.

Charlie got a brand new flat and he
invited dawn to come and live with him.

And the pair of 'em were like,
"wow, it's the perfect family home.

It's a brand new fresh start."

A dream home
for the pair of them.

And so, they set about building
their little love nest up together.

[Charlie] I furnished my flat with
stuff that had been thrown away,

and my past time was going
around various charity shop bins

and get electrical equipment,
or kitchenware and stuff.

Just digging in deep, really.

You could find, like, all sorts
of things, like gold necklaces,

to silver, to earings
and all sorts.

And it would all
be proper and gold.

And I would have treasures
to take back to dawn.

She would look forward
to seeing me the next day

to see what I'd
pull out of my sack.

One person's rubbish is
another man's gold as they say.

[Charlie] But I remember going
to the bin and going through it,

and I found a
perfume box for dawn.

I thought, "hey,
winner, winner."

And it was all in plastic, all
sealed, and it looked expensive.

So I put it in me pocket.

He loves little treasures
that he finds, but then,

obviously, he come
across this bottle

which he thought
was a good treasure,

a bottle of perfume.

He ended up doing something
the police didn't achieve

by finding the novichok bottle.

I mean, we think there
was about a a quarter,

an eighth of a cup of novichok.

If you administered
that correctly

it could have killed tens
of thousands of people.

This wasn't a standard
Nina ricci bottle.

This had been manufactured
so that the applicator was key.

Finding the perfume bottle was the
most important piece of the puzzle.

[Charlie] It was
Saturday, the 30th of June.

I gave the bottle of perfume
to my girlfriend, dawn.

She said, "oh, that's a good
one. That's a good make."

And I thought I'd done
well then, you know?

So, it was in a cardboard box
in a heat sealed kind of package.

It was, like,
molded to the bottle

so I had to use a sharp
kitchen knife to cut it open.

I then put the top nozzle
on to the glass bottle

and covered me
hands in the spray.

I washed it off and
then gave it to dawn.

And she was quite happy
and sprayed it on herself.

She had one squirt on her wrists,
like that, and rubbed them together.

Yeah, one squirt on the
wrists and rubbed them.

I carry a hell of a lot of guilt

because I gave that...
Novichok to my girlfriend.

I knew that she
cared for me and stuff,

and she said that she wanted a
sapphire ring for an engagement ring,

but she would quite happily
settle for a haribo ring,

and that said it all, really.

Yeah.

I went into the bathroom
and she was in a bad way.

Like, staring at nothing and foaming
at the mouth. So I called her name.

Um...

I shook her and then realized
that I had got no response.

Dawn had given up
breathing for herself.

[Siren wailing]

I seen an ambulance outside Charlie's
house, and then I see getting dawn

taken out on a stretcher, and...

Yeah, it wasn't a nice sight. She
didn't look very well at all there,

and it was quite
upsetting to see that.

[Sam Hobson] We'd gone back
to the flat and Charlie was in bits,

like, emotional wreck, crying,

and then, suddenly, he started
acting all weird and paranoid.

And then he just started
to try to attack me.

I had him by the neck.

I was trying to strangle him because
I thought he'd kill me, try to kill me,

and I thought he'd
done the same to dawn.

I said, "Charlie,
what are you doing?

I'm your friend and I'm
not going to leave you,

even though you're attacking me.

I'm gonna stay with you
because it's the right thing to do,

because this isn't you."

But that's when he started showing
symptoms of frothing at the mouth,

sweating loads, and his eyes going
glazed and red and milky colored.

[Charlie] Oh, well, it's just like
something out of a horror movie kind of,

or a zombie film.

I was acting really weird.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Then he started rocking
backwards and forwards

and muttering some
weird tongue language.

I don't know what it was but I
couldn't get any sense out of him at all.

So, that's when I thought there's
something definitely wrong here.

So I had to call 999.

[Charlie] He'd done
the right thing.[Chuckles]

He'd done the right thing
'cause I'd be dead now.

[Ambulance wailing]

[Dr. Haslam] The
first I heard about it,

one of my colleagues had
admitted two patients in sequence

who had unusual... An
unusual presentation.

And again, alarm
bells were ringing.

Could this be similar to before?

It can't be, can it?

As we confirmed in the
early hours of this morning,

wiltshire police and partners
have declared a major incident

after two people were hospitalized
following their potential exposure

to an unknown substance.

I was so shocked.

I was so shocked when actually
one of my special advisors,

when I'd been home secretary,

texted me and said,
"it's happening again."

Oh, god.

[Rebecca] I was angry
that the message had been

that Salisbury was
completely safe for so long.

If Salisbury had
been safe then...

The second incident
wouldn't have happened.

You speak to the police and
obviously they can't comment.

And all you want to
know is are you safe?

Do you have to do anything?

Is your family gonna be safe?

Is there going to be
a further escalation?

[Mills] A real challenge for
us with the poisoning of Charlie

was to establish
where the novichok was

between incident number
one and incident number two.

Where was that novichok
for that three month period?

[Rowley] The applicator
had been left in Salisbury,

and clearly the
police hadn't found it.

And, of course, you'll always look
back on things like that and think,

is there something on my watch
we could have done differently?

But in the absence of any clues
for where they'd abandoned it,

I'm just not sure how
we could have got there.

[Reporter 1] Spy
affair news at 6:00.

[Reporter 2] Counter terror police
aren't ruling out more people falling ill

as a result of the
Salisbury spy poisoning.

Charlie rowley and dawn sturgess
remain in a critical condition.

[Rebecca] Salisbury's
not a big place.

You recognize and
know a lot of people.

Dawn was someone
who I'd often walked past

or seen on my way
to and from work

who was now in
hospital being treated

for a nerve agent attack.

Their photographs were
passed around the tables,

and I realized the dawn
that we're talking about

I'd spent some time with.

So I felt devastated

that she was so ill.

I spontaneously cried.

And, of course, she
died later that day.

Someone died and it was
a mom with three children.

And that is harrowing.

She was always bright and
breezy up in the morning.

She was a morning girl.

Yeah, I think her name
fitted her down to a t.

Yeah, she was a bright flame of light,
love, and laughter in a little shell,

and she had so
much love to give.

She liked glittery
objects [Chuckling]

And took a chance
on a perfume bottle.

So...

Yeah, real bright soul
that I'm gonna miss daily.

I think dawn dying was a real...

It was a heartbreaking
moment for the whole team.

Any patient who dies
under our care affects us.

[Neil basu] It is both
shocking and utterly appalling

that a British citizen has died having
been exposed to a novichok nerve agent.

But make no mistake.

We are determined to find out how
dawn and her partner Charlie rowley

came into contact with
such a deadly substance.

The police liaison officers

got hold of me to confirm
that it was novichok.

They organized for me to go
to the hospital to visit Charlie.

He had so many
machines around him,

and it was...

It was my brother.

It was heartbreaking to see it.

It really was.

I thought that was the
last time I'm gonna see him.

[Charlie] When I came
round out of my coma,

the police said about a
perfume bottle that they'd found,

and they said it contained
the nerve agent novichok.

I was like, "no, no.
It was perfume."

When he woke up and
came off the ventilator,

we had to explain to
him what had happened.

And it fell to me to be the one
to tell Charlie that dawn had died.

Yeah, I still to this day...

You know, it chokes me.

Yeah, it's my girlfriend I lost.

My partner.

My soul mate.

Mmm.

[Members of
parliament] Hear, hear.

[Theresa may] With
permission Mr. Speaker,

I would like to update the house on the
investigation into the attempted murder

of Sergei and yulia skripal,

and the subsequent poisoning of
dawn sturgess and Charlie rowley.

Since then, around
250 detectives

have trawled through more
than 11,000 hours of cctv

and taken more than
1,400 statements.

Working around the clock,

they have carried out
painstaking and methodical work

to ascertain exactly which
individuals were responsible

and the methods they
used to carry out this attack.

[Neil basu] Today we're
releasing images of two individuals

Alexander Petrov
and ruslan boshirov.

They're Russian nationals who traveled
to this country on Russian passports.

The reason we're releasing
that footage today is

we need the public's help.

We strongly believe they
entered this country under aliases.

Somebody out there
will recognize them.

Somebody out there knows them.

We'd like those people to come
forward and tell us who they really are.

So, what we now know
from the investigation is

that Petrov and boshirov
come in via Gatwick

on Friday afternoon
on the 2nd of march.

[Mills] On the day
of the poisonings,

you've got these two white
males dressed for the weather,

and they've got a
backpack with them.

And we see them
arrive at the train station

and then ultimately make
their way out of the city.

We have good lines of inquiry

to try and establish
who they are,

but I need the evidence.

I need somebody to come forward

and give me their real names.

[Roman dobrokhotov] They ask
everybody for some more evidence

about what happened,

and it was pretty easy for us,

I mean the insider
and bellingcat,

to investigate them.

They made so many
very stupid mistakes.

My name is Roman dobrokhotov.

I'm editor-in-chief
of the insider,

which is Russian
investigative online media.

We found a lot of information.

When we started to pull it up,

we saw these people
in passport database,

but all the passport
info was empty.

It means that these
are fake people.

These are not real identities.

We learned that boshirov and
Petrov are really mishkin and chepiga.

Chepiga participated in
the conflict in chechnya.

Mishkin was a military doctor, so he was
supposed to save, actually, people's lives.

Not to kill them.

There is a picture of
chepiga and Vladimir putin

where Vladimir putin is giving
a medal of hero of Russia,

handing it directly to chepiga.

There were absolutely no doubt that
this is an operation controlled by kremlin

through Russian
military intelligence.

[Speaking Russian]

[Speaking Russian]

Perhaps the most
extraordinary moment

in some ways in this case was

the interview the two
Russian gru officers,

the military
intelligence officers,

gave on Russia today.

[Speaking Russian]

I'm thinking it's
dumb and dumber.

I think... I... You
know, I don't know

what the Russians were thinking.

I mean, they... yeah.

I'm hugely surprised.

They were...

Maybe this was
part of their joke.

They thought that people
in britain would fall for this.

[Speaking Russian]

It's not like James
Bond style spies.

It's more like Johnny
English kind of spy.

I think probably in some ways it was
the moment at which the rest of the world

woke up to the Russian
disinformation campaign

and realized that actually
what we had been telling them

about this case and about these
two individuals really was true.

[Dobrokhotov] But this actually
was only the beginning of the story

because we didn't believe
that two people is enough

for this kind of operation.

So there must be a
team helping them.

We found a third guy.

His real name is denis sergeev.

His fake name is sergey fedotov.

We found seven other gru agents
participated in the Salisbury poisoning.

We found a lot of other spies.

We found chain of command.

Now we know almost everything about
this program of extrajudicial murders

by Russian killing squads.

So, the police investigation
has now got evidence

to a criminal standard

of three people
involved in the attack.

We shouldn't assume that that's
where the investigation finishes,

and we shouldn't assume that
there were only three people involved.

Russian military intelligence would
often deploy more people than that

for overseas assassinations.

[Alexander yakovenko]
I think this is 1942.

So there's a war...
[Camera clicking]

[Charlie] We got invited,
me and my brother,

to see the Russian
ambassador in London.

And he seemed very pleasant,

friendly,

but he was very much
trying to pass the buck,

so to speak,

and it was all denial

all the way.

For us, this is the
blessing from Russia.

I asked the ambassador if
his country killed my girlfriend,

and he said, "no."

It's my flat.

It's the first flat
that I've ever had.

They had to tear it down.

The perfume bottle that I had

could have wiped out
thousands of people.

Thousands of people,

with the amount of
nerve agent that was

in the perfume
bottle found in my flat.

What I was told was that they had
discovered that there was nerve agent

in almost every
room of our house,

including my youngest
daughter's bedroom.

[Mills] Wedding rings, watches,

items from family members...

We had to say to
Nick and his family,

"sorry, you can take a couple
of possessions we can test,

but actually the rest we're gonna
have to, with partners, destroy."

That was a horrible moment.

[Nick] You know, the children
lost their toys, their books,

their clothes,
school certificates...

They lost everything that
meant something to them.

We lost everything that
meant something to us.

We had to move house

and we did lose about
all of our belongings,

but I'm incredibly lucky
that that's all we lost.

[Dr. Haslam] The whole
community was affected by this.

It was a traumatizing
experience.

I still feel emotional
thinking about it.

And I would say I was, um...

Drained

physically,
emotionally, mentally

for probably six
months after this.

It took a toll on all of us.

I suppose one of the
really unanswered questions

about the Salisbury affair is,

you know, have we
found all of the novichok?

Was there another
delivery device?

I personally believe they probably
had a second perfume dispenser

because, you know, they wanted
to be sure that they'd do a good job.

I believe that it wasn't the same
bottle that poisoned the skripals

for the simple reason
the poison turned up

three months after
the initial poisoning.

It was in a box,

a sealed box in
a sealed package,

which I had to break open

and physically put two
parts of the pump together

to make it work.

[Rebecca] I don't think we know
everything that there is to know

about the nerve agent attack,

and part of me thinks we
probably won't ever know

the full ins and outs
of what happened.

[Nick] I retired from the
police in October 2018.

I was medically pensioned
through grounds of ill-health.

I was deemed not to be able to be
capable of being a police officer anymore

under mental health reasons

and psychological reasons

because of the
Salisbury poisonings.

[Charlie] I literally
poisoned my girlfriend.

You know, unknowingly,

but I still did it.

Killed my girlfriend.

You know?

It's not a good...
Thing to live with.

Mmm.