Original subtitles

(regal fanfare playing)

(sheep bleating)

Director: So, Viktor, what's your favourite British food?

Do you feel safe here?

(sinister music)

Reporter: Now to an extraordinary story here in UK.

Reporter: Salisbury is at the centre

of a major incident tonight

involving a former Russian spy.

Reporter: A quiet, small, sleepy city in southern England.

Reporter: Sergei Skripal,

a colonel in military intelligence,

accused of spying for Britain's MI6.

Reporter: The lingering question, who did it?

(foreboding music)

Reporter: Moscow might deny it, but many point the finger

of blame squarely at Russia.

Reporter: Mysterious case of a poisoned Russian agent

getting even stranger tonight.

Reporter: Now it's murder.

Reporter: A counterfeit bottle of designer perfume,

the suspected weapon.

Neil: There was enough poison in that tiny bottle

to kill 10,000 people.

Trump: The security council is called to order.

Reporter: What started in a placid cathedral town

has now led to the biggest diplomatic face-off in years.

I give the floor to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Thank you.

(speaking in Russian)

(Viktor speaking)

(sinister beat)

(birds singing)

(bells ringing distantly)

Meg: Salisbury's a small city.

Local people call it Smallsbury for that reason.

(jaunty music)

I amongst many, many other people in Salisbury

have a favourite place to go and sit

on one of the many benches down by the river.

The whole area is so magical.

Archive: Here in the heart of Wiltshire lies Salisbury.

Founded some 800 years ago,

this mediaeval city is most famous

for its magnificent cathedral.

Dominating the skyline, its spire, Britain's tallest,

rising some 404ft soars heavenward.

(bells ringing)

Caller: Seven, four....

Archive: Oh, how the locals love to ring those bells.

Kelvin: I value normal life

and Salisbury is a provincial corner of England.

Big things don't tend to happen in places like that.

(accordion playing)

(dramatic music)

(suspenseful music)

It was my first kind of week as a radio reporter

at the local radio station.

When I got the job, they said, oh, you'll be getting to do

really local stories,

you know, the giant vegetables,

the village fair, the flower show.

And I thought, oh, that's great, a really good kind of way for me

to learn what I'm doing.

(phone ringing) And then the phone rang,

and I...it just changed everything, really.

It was my news editor who had phoned me

and she said two people were having a medical incident

that the police are dealing with.

Can you go and cover this?

So I said to myself, don't worry.

Nothing happens in Salisbury.

So, then I got down there.

First week on the job.

You don't expect to see two people on a bench,

foaming at the mouth.

I've never seen anyone having a drug overdose before.

I can't even remember how to use a Dictaphone,

it's been so long ago.

Well, I'm now at the Maltings

where these two people were found collapsed.

They are now in a critical condition

at Salisbury District Hospital.

(sirens wailing)

Stephen: We'd had a really busy weekend.

I was looking after the intensive care unit by myself.

Things had quietened down a bit.

I got a phone call from one of my colleagues who said, Steve,

there's two drug overdose patients coming in.

They both sound really unwell.

Can you come and give me a hand?

The two patients came in...

(suspenseful music)

...and immediately this didn't look right.

There was a guy in his 60s,

smartly dressed, a suit and jacket,

and a girl in her 30s.

They didn't look like your conventional

recreational drug overdose patients.

Then I became aware of his name,

Sergei Skripal, and I thought, this is a little bit odd,

you know, for Salisbury.

I started to initiate intensive care,

and Sergei is breathing, just.

He's not speaking.

He's sitting bolt upright, almost like a statue.

-Producer: Eyes closed? -Eyes were open,

but he was absolutely rigid.

It was the most bizarre presentation.

And it suddenly began to dawn on me

that something has poisoned these people.

At that moment, somebody came up to me and said, Dr Cockroft,

I've just googled Sergei Skripal

and you're not going to believe what I've just found out.

So, I went and looked and there it was.

He had a Wikipedia page.

I thought, right, okay...

this is beginning to smell a bit fishy, this.

Amber Rudd: When I first heard about this, I was in London...

(suspenseful music)

...and I got a call from my office

telling me that an incident had taken place

and they had concerns about it.

You're not called on every incident as Home Secretary.

You're called out for something of national significance.

Theresa May: The key role of a prime minister obviously

is to ensure that you keep the country safe.

And this attack took place in, in, if you like,

the heart of middle England.

Amber Rudd: And so we had a COBRA meeting.

And the purpose of COBRA is to bring all the different people

involved together so that decisions can be made.

Right from the start, it was clear to me

that this wasn't just a poisoning,

but it was an attempted assassination.

The target being Sergei Skripal,

and given his background as a Russian intelligence officer...

there was only one entity, the Russian State,

that was possibly responsible.

Amber Rudd: For a hostile state to do that

in a British town... city was extraordinary.

But I think really the dominant feeling was

concern about this lethal poison,

because initially at COBRA, we didn't know what it was.

But two people had gone into a coma.

Mark: In the past, while carrying out assassinations,

the Russians have used a range of different poisons,

and so we had a high degree of suspicion

that the public was at risk.

Amber Rudd: The atmosphere in COBRA was tense.

Cabinet ministers had different views about how fast

we should go in terms of attributing

and responding to Russia.

Theresa May: When you're faced with something like this,

sometimes in today's world,

the temptation is to say something immediately.

Actually, you just have to take a deep breath and step back

and be very clear that there's a longer-term aim here,

which is making sure we absolutely hold them to account.

You just have to be a bit careful

and wait until you've absolutely got the evidence.

(siren wailing)

Neil: In 2018, I was the national lead

for counterterrorism policing.

Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary of the day...

How can I put it?

"What are you doing about it, Basu?"

You know, "the Prime Minister needs your help."

(tense music)

First, how quickly can you prove

this is an assassination plot?

Second, find out exactly what this poison is

and tell me what kind of resources you need

from the rest of government

to help you bring this under control,

which might involve using the military.

Meg: I heard a helicopter overhead.

Which is unusual.

Emma: Then it was like, why are the military here?

Why are there, like, senior police officers here?

You know, this seems a bit of an overreaction to it being,

you know, a drug overdose or, you know,

just a medical episode.

What's really going on?

And I remember them looking very, very worried.

Okay, good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

The focus at this moment in trying to establish

what has caused these people to become critically ill,

and we currently do not believe there is any risk

to the wider public.

Thank you.

Emma: You know, they were trying to reassure people

that everything's absolutely fine.

But...

clearly it wasn't.

So I'd be on the phone like,

"Yeah, I think we're gonna need backup here."

Go on, keep going...

And then, that tiny little story

suddenly exploded into this international news story.

The biggest story in the world.

Two people in the town of Salisbury in England

were admitted to hospital after being exposed

to an unknown substance.

Salisbury District Hospital is at the centre

of a major incident tonight involving a former Russian spy.

Nearly 200 British troops have been called in to help police

with the investigation.

Reporter: Moscow might deny it, but many

point the finger of blame squarely at Russia.

Kelvin: No one expects terrible things

to happen in their community.

And this was a real incident in which the ugliness of the world

was suddenly on our doorstep.

Emma: There were journalists literally everywhere.

You know, CNN, you've got, you know, people from France

just wandering around the city

trying to get a bit more information.

Which country?

That's the United States of America.

Okay then. What brings you here?

Well, I'm the foreign correspondent for ABC.

And what brings us here is you.

Newsreader: These images show the former Russian military

intelligence colonel buying sausages

and lottery scratch cards from a shop close to his home.

(mysterious music)

Meg: We were living next to this perfectly normal guy,

and turns out that he was a Russian spy.

You wouldn't dream it, would you?

Mark: Unlike most people in Salisbury,

I knew rather a lot about Sergei Skripal.

A couple of years before all of this happened,

I wanted to write a book about defected Russian spies.

And strangely enough,

I didn't have to go through the intelligence services

or the Foreign Office to get to meet him.

He was living an open life.

He was on the electoral register under his own name.

So he clearly felt safe.

And when I went to meet Sergei in his home,

he was standing outside the house ready to greet me.

My impression of him was that

he was a typical Soviet military guy

or a typical Desantnik,

which is a paratrooper in Russian.

You know, big, physically self-confident.

Sort of no nonsense, you know, plain speaking,

deadpan sense of humour.

The sort of person you wouldn't want to antagonise.

We went through the front door, and you know,

being a journalist, you...

You just sort of take in the details, I suppose.

And curiously,

he was sort of mid-construction with an Airfix kit

of HMS Victory,

which he told me he'd been to visit.

(haunting Russian folk music)

I think the sort of enigma about Sergei, in this respect,

was that...

on the one hand, he wanted me to understand

that he had a love of English history,

but on the other hand,

he remained a sort of patriotic Russian.

He liked the songs and the old Soviet movies.

He even had Russian TV on when I arrived.

I think these were all things that gave him a sort of happy,

nostalgic glow.

I certainly think he would have regarded the things he did

as a Russian intelligence officer

with a lot of pride.

Another thing I noticed on the bookcase,

sort of directly ahead of me as I was talking to him

as we did our interviews,

was a little resin model

of a very typical twee English country cottage.

The sort of thing you could buy in a souvenir shop.

And at the time, um, I noticed it,

but I didn't really understand its significance.

But he explained later on,

just how big a part of his whole story

that English country cottage actually was.

(suspenseful music)

Reporter: Troops from Wiltshire

with training in chemical warfare

and Royal Marines from Somerset have been sent to Salisbury.

Reporter: Almost 700 investigators are at work.

We're not quite sure what's gonna happen

in the next couple of hours.

There's still very much more questions than answers.

There was a lot of panic.

You know, why are there people walking around in hazmats?

Where is this chemical? What is it?

What could it do to you?

Reporter: British soldiers in hazmat suits

search for possible contamination in the area

where former Russian spy Sergei Skripal

and his daughter were found.

Suddenly, we had cordons, we had public health warnings.

We'd been told, "Don't pick up rubbish."

And so, there's considerable worry in the community.

I think people felt we were a city under attack.

"A strange and unreal time."

"Did this really happen in our special city?"

"Living amongst spies?"

"Do we now look at everyone with suspicion?"

"Eerie silence."

"The ducks have gone, the rats moved in..."

"One day, normality will return."

At least that's what I hope.

Amber Rudd: The job of the Home Secretary

in the middle of all this is to reassure the public.

Whatever I was feeling,

and a lot of it was pretty uncomfortable and concerned,

my job was to go out there

and tell them that we have got this.

They needn't be worried because we know what we're doing.

Can you guarantee the public their safety?

Of course, I can guarantee the public their safety.

You know, the public don't want to hear

we're not actually very sure what they this is

or where it's come from or where else it could be.

They want to know that their government is on top of this

and is going to keep them safe. And that's what you have to say.

Didn't always feel that, but that was my job to convey it.

These are all questions I will want answered.

Producer: Keep calm and carry on.

Keep calm and carry on.

(helicopter whirring)

Reporter: Well then, Joanna, just in the last half an hour,

police officers, military personnel

and specialist officers

have been getting kitted up with those

forensic suits and gas masks that we've been seeing.

Neil: There was huge pressure to get it right,

but there is no playbook for this.

We're looking for expert assassins.

I'm not expecting them to leave their fingerprints

or leave their DNA at a crime scene.

We were literally faced with two individuals

who had fallen seriously ill on a park bench in Salisbury.

So the park bench became a crime scene.

That was our start point.

The first thing you're trying to do

is trying to track every movement

going back as long as you possibly can

before the park bench,

'cause we want to know how the victims

came into contact with the poison.

We knew they went to the restaurant to have a meal.

Before that, we know they went to a pub,

um, where they have a drink.

You're eventually getting to the car,

you're eventually going back to the house.

Dean: We were gradually finding traces of the poison used,

and the highest detection rate was the door handle

of their home address.

One theory is that they had sprayed it on the door handle,

and when Sergei and Yulia came out and closed the door,

that's the time when they were poisoned.

(helicopter whirring) (distant sirens)

The next job is to find the perpetrators on CCTV.

Sadly, there was no CCTV, um, at Christie Miller Road.

So we had to collect hundreds of thousands of hours of footage

from across Salisbury town centre.

But it was looking for a needle in a haystack.

What does a Russian agent look like?

Christo: I think there's a general understanding

that there are spies around us,

but...

Russian spies are literally everywhere.

(playful music)

I think there is a lack of understanding

for most of the people of how dangerous it is.

It's not just snooping around,

it's not just secret back-alley conversations and recruitment,

it's assassinations, it's explosions,

it's sabotage,

it's poisoning the water systems of countries.

All of that actually does happen.

Watch this.

Russian operatives, they literally have licence to kill.

There's a law in Russia that allows them to pursue

enemies of the state that are deemed traitors.

Putin calls Russians who change sides, rabid dogs,

he calls them animals, he calls them scum of the earth.

And they can go and work for their overlords in the West.

But somebody who betrays the motherland

should be burned alive.

(dramatic Russian music) And for new recruits,

that becomes part of your fabric,

part of your mentality,

and you'll be chasing enemies of the state,

and you can kill them, and you should kill them...

because successful killers get an award.

That's why...

hundreds of these young people...

become killers for their country.

(suspenseful music)

But then I discovered that actually, you can

expose espionage operations using breadcrumbs of data.

Every person does that in their own life,

leaves these breadcrumbs behind.

Every time you even look at your phone, you leave a trace.

Every time you buy a ticket to go into the subway,

every time you buy lunch with your phone,

every time you book a hotel,

you leave a digital trace behind.

And I thought, well, why don't we just use that digital trace

to try to expose names of spies involved in assassinations,

poisonings,

but also to prove who gave them carte blanche

to go around the world and create havoc.

How many Russian agents have you uncovered, do you think?

Probably...definitely more than a thousand,

I would say in the range of 4 to 5,000.

Christo Grozev, who identified the Russians involved

in poisoning Putin opposition leader, Alexei Navalny.

Christo was just placed on Russia's wanted list.

I think it's a fatwa of some sort.

I mean, it's like a message that to other journalists as well

that don't come and don't meddle into...

Don't do investigations into Russia.

And yet you continue to do it.

Um, and you more than anyone know

at what possible cost.

It's become a sort of an obsession,

and if a day passes without me

having found at least a couple of spies,

I would really, really feel a withdrawal.

But what really drives me and a lot of my colleagues is

the cat-and-mouse nature of it and the game of it.

(playful music)

And what is interesting is that

I started with the case of the Skripal poisonings.

We wanted to be the first to crack it for the world to know.

And so the question was: who were the assassins?

So we assumed that they would have been in Britain between

March 2nd and March 5th.

So I'm like, hm,

if we were able to get all the passenger lists of all flights

into London from Russia on these days...

maybe we can find these guys.

And I found...

two passengers travelling together.

And look at this, the passport numbers

are only three digits apart.

Two people sat next to each other with two passports

issued literally within an hour of one another.

That's not possible.

That sort of thing doesn't naturally happen.

And then the question was, are these real names

and real people, or are they fake?

It was just a breadcrumb of data,

but that's literally where it all began for us.

(helicopter whirring)

Reporter: Police say the man and his daughter

remain critically ill in hospital,

and the case is being treated as attempted murder.

Amber Rudd: When I went to the hospital

to talk to the medical staff there...

survival of the Skripals looked in doubt.

(tense music)

And the senior consultant in charge was tired,

to say the least, and was, you know, there were doctors,

medical people at their best,

trying to keep these two people alive.

Stephen: It was chaotic. It became more and more chaotic

as the week went on.

Yulia and Sergei remained extremely unwell.

They were in an induced coma and I...

I honestly thought they were going to die.

They had very unusual symptoms,

the slow heart rate, the low blood pressure,

the slow respiratory rate, the pinpoint pupils.

There was no way this was a conventional poisoning.

But this was something far, far darker.

(wind howling)

Newsreader: British police now believe

that former Russian spy Sergei Skripal

and his daughter Yulia

were poisoned with a nerve agent.

(sinister music)

Amber Rudd: After it had been tested at Porton Down,

they were able to explain that this had been

a poisoning of Novichok.

Reporter: Novichok is the name for a family of nerve agents

said to be the most deadly ever created.

It's a terrifying word, Novichok,

and then most of us were hearing it for the first time.

You learn about quite how lethal it is.

Only a tiny amount was needed to potentially kill somebody.

We were told it was sort of Russia's favourite agent,

Putin's, particularly.

Richard: Putin was sending a very clear message.

You know, assassination has been part of Russian political life

since the Middle Ages.

I mean, it was used by the Tsars.

And the interesting thing

is it's usually used against people

who the Russians would categorise as traitors.

I mean, that means in Russian eyes, spying for the West.

I mean, when I was in MI6,

Russian military intelligence officers were extremely angry

about the way that they had emerged from the Cold War.

And the, sort of, breakup of the Soviet Empire.

You know, it was a good time to recruit Russians.

(chuckles)

Mark: Putin has described the collapse of Soviet Union

as the greatest tragedy of the 20th Century.

And in some ways,

I think Skripal would also have seen it as a great tragedy.

It's one of those curious things, isn't it,

about human nature that people can have the same starting point

but end up in very different places

or mentalities about things.

Reporter: The ruble has lost another 10% of its value

against the dollar since the start of the year.

Mark: In the mid-1990s, when everything in Russia

was really going haywire,

oligarchs gobbling up key sectors of industry.

And so Putin has come to the conclusion

that he's got to rebuild, in effect, the Soviet Union,

whereas Skripal has come to the conclusion

that, no, it's gone,

and that his primary interest is to make sure

that he and his family are looked after.

And so MI6 gave him the opportunity to get out.

(bells tolling)

Reporter: The historic city of Salisbury.

Population around 50,000

and the location of the first chemical weapons attack

in this country.

Good evening, ladies and gents. I'm Keir Pritchard,

the Chief Constable for Wiltshire...

Meg: At one of our public meetings,

we were told that a nerve agent had been used,

and it was one of those moments where you think,

"Well, that's actually quite serious."

The agent couldn't possibly still be out

there somewhere in Salisbury.

Apparently, it would have taken only a few drops to have killed,

I think it was 4,000 people.

And then we were told exactly where it had come from.

Reporter: This afternoon, the UK released a statement

saying they had pinpointed a Russian military research base

as the place that produced the Novichok.

Theresa May: The intelligence made very clear

that Russia had been responsible for this.

I mean, we have international laws and rules

about not using chemical weapons.

So there's that point in time where

you have to start preparing for the worst.

(press clamouring)

Will this government stand up to Russia

if a link is proved?

Amber Rudd: There were people who thought

we should treat this attack as an act of war.

(suspenseful music)

And so the Prime Minister decided it was time

to call out Russia.

Order!

Order!

Order!

I say to members, Order!

Members must calm down.

It's as simple and incontestable as that.

(jeering)

Statement, the Prime Minister.

Hear, hear!

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House

on the incident in Salisbury, and the steps we are...

Amber Rudd: It was a very serious moment.

House was packed, and it was incredibly quiet.

And you know, the House of Commons is usually...

There's a lot of kind of shouting and name-calling

and argy-bargy.

Not that day.

As a nation that believes in justice and the rule of law,

it is essential that we proceed in the right way.

Led not by speculation, but by the evidence.

Hear, hear.

Amber Rudd: I was feeling

pretty uncomfortable and concerned.

Producer: Was Theresa feeling the same way?

Did she ever tell you about how she was feeling?

(laughs) No, the Prime Minister doesn't tell you her feelings.

It is now clear that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned

with a military-grade nerve agent

of a type developed by Russia.

This is part of a group of nerve agents known as Novichok.

The government has concluded that it is highly likely

that Russia was responsible for the act against

Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

-Hear, hear! -Mr Speaker,

this attempted murder using a weapons-grade nerve agent

in a British town was not just a crime against the Skripals.

It was an indiscriminate and reckless act

against the United Kingdom,

putting the lives of innocent civilians at risk.

And we will not tolerate such a brazen attempt

to murder innocent civilians on our soil.

I commend this statement to the House.

Order! Order!

Mark: Of course, attributing these attacks was important,

but I felt we needed to go further,

um, and actually impose significant sanctions.

Amber Rudd: Our ambassador was dispatched...

...military-grade nerve agent...

Amber Rudd: ...because whatever we did,

it had to be done in unity with other countries,

but we didn't know how each country would actually respond.

(tense music)

Trump: Getting along with Russia

would be a good thing,

not a bad thing.

And just about everybody agrees to that,

except very stupid people.

It was really challenging,

partly because of Russian disinformation.

They say we have actual facts that you did it.

Okay, if you have facts, come to us, put the facts on the table.

There's something in the psyche of the Russian state

which long pre-dates the Putin regime...

President Putin, is Russia behind the poisoning?

Mark: ...in which lying

and everyone knowing that you're lying is a sign of power,

because you can lie and you aren't held accountable for it.

(speaking in Russian)

I thought it was grotesque seeing these people mocking us,

telling these colourful lies.

It caused a certain amount of confusion.

(speaking in Russian)

(laughter)

Richard: I don't think anyone really anticipated

how far relations between Russia and the West would go belly up.

(ominous music)

Putin's attitude to the West had changed.

(speaking in Russian)

Well, my last visit to Moscow was...

probably the beginning of 2004.

Tony Blair asked my advice,

whether the UK couldn't have a different relationship

with this Russian leader.

And I was certainly one of the people that said to Blair,

"Well, why not give it a try?"

You know, we were quite keen,

and I mean, we, I'm talking almost generally about the West,

to try and have a different relationship

with a different sort of Russian leader.

I don't think we initially saw him

as this autocrat he's become.

(suspenseful music)

The investigation was still working at incredible pace.

Neil: Our whole team had been working night and day on this.

Going through it frame by frame,

tens of thousands of hours

of closed-circuit television footage.

And then I remember getting the call from Dean

and going into Dean's office.

He said, I've got a photograph of the suspect in the case.

Dean: They came into the country on false identities.

On the Sunday, 4th of March,

the suspects travelled down to Salisbury,

they walked around the town centre

and then, for a short period of time,

their movements are not captured by CCTV,

but we're confident they went to the home address of Sergei,

placed Novichok on the door handle.

They then left and immediately flew out of the country

via Heathrow Airport, returning to Moscow in Russia.

Neil: So we're sitting there thinking how brilliant it was

to have images of these people.

Dean: The key outstanding issue, though, was the Novichok.

How did it get into the country, and where was it now?

Neil: We were pretty sure

they've discarded the Novichok in Salisbury.

It could've been in the park, it could've been in the bin,

it could've been thrown in the river.

And I was getting paranoid that somebody else was gonna

potentially fall seriously ill or...or die.

Charlie: I had just moved into my place.

(mysterious music)

It was a place that houses people that need to be rehoused.

And I was happy as punch to move in.

I was planning for Dawn to move in.

I'd known her for 16 months,

so we'd probably been an item for a year of that.

And she was a very, very kind, loving person.

Yeah, we were quite happy together.

(horn tooting)

I used to go around Salisbury and get things for the house.

There's a few charity places.

They would always leave unwanted stuff out the back.

(eerie music)

They're very large bins, you could climb in them,

they were that big.

That's where I'd find most of my things, yeah.

It did carry a bit of a stigma being seen in a bin...

(chuckles)

...but, uh, it reaped its rewards.

Very occasionally, I'd find jewellery and give it to Dawn.

She often made comments about getting her an engagement ring,

so I would always dig to the bottom

just in case I'd find that... that ring.

And then one time, I couldn't believe it.

Right at the bottom was a very expensive-looking perfume.

I didn't give it to Dawn immediately, it just sat around.

I was waiting for the right time.

Reporter: It had been feared that neither Sergei Skripal

nor his daughter Yulia would ever recover

from the nerve agent attack.

But now, after a month in a coma

in Salisbury District Hospital,

there was this announcement.

(speaking in Russian)

I didn't realise she was going to come on the television.

And I became slightly emotional.

(haunting music)

When I last saw her, she was desperately unwell.

Was trying pull at the tube that was in her trachea,

and she was terrified.

But during that time, I was talking to her,

uh, reassuring her that she was safe.

And meanwhile, Sergei next door, he was,

"When I get out of here, I'm going to kill these...

you know, I know who's done this.

I'll kill the fuckers."

Sergei, you can't say that!

You know, everything he said was being recorded.

At any one time, there were four police officers

who were clearly very heavily armed,

and there was always a people carrier

with other police officers in the car park.

And it was like that until they were discharged.

Reporter: Sergei Skripal's home

is still a closely guarded crime scene,

As to where he and his daughter are now,

well, that's a secret.

It's a mystery, you know, no one knows...

he got poisoned, he was in hospital,

and then he disappeared.

I'd imagine Yulia

is leading more of a normal life than her father.

You know, you do think, where did he end up?

(haunting Russian folk music)

(indistinct shouting and cheering)

(cheering)

(suspenseful music)

Mark: Basically, Sergei's posting to Madrid

produced a moment of opportunity.

MI6 had been looking at him for a while.

Often these targets for cultivation,

it's through things like interception of communications.

Hello?

They hear them on the phone moaning.

They haven't got enough money, or

they don't like what's going on at home politically.

"I'm disgusted with the collapse of Soviet power."

- (speaking in Russian) -But there's no point

crying over spilt milk.

(speaking in Russian)

And it's really every man and woman

for themselves.

So the officer who was sent to cultivate Skripal

was posing as a businessman.

(speaking in Russian)

They had multiple meetings, various contacts.

Restaurants, and once or twice I think they went to nightclubs,

and Skripal felt they were becoming actual friends.

I've heard it described by a former MI6 officer

as, you know, a seduction in which you're using

all your intelligence and guile and charm and persuasiveness...

to get someone to make the worst mistake of their lives.

Uh, in other words, to turn traitor, in Russian terms.

(speaking in Russian)

This MI6 officer, he brought presents.

And one of the presents he brought

was this little resin model of a typical English country cottage.

And clearly, to him...

(poignant music)

...meant a great deal.

(speaking in Russian)

In some ways, I suppose

it sort of symbolised his dream of oldie England

or Little England, or however you want to put it.

Richard: The myth of England is quite powerful.

A lot of the best spies are attracted by the myth.

Producer: What is the myth?

Well, it's been created over time.

It's a combination of fact and fiction.

(jaunty music)

(cheering)

(background laughter)

Richard: This country can offer something

which is pretty unique.

-Producer: The brand is good? -Well, the brand is bloody good.

Excuse my language, but... (chuckles)

You don't spy unless there's a damn good reason for it.

It's a massive risk for them to take.

(wind whistling)

(brooding music)

The information MI6 got from him was technicolour.

You know, this was not just a vivid picture

of the internal structure and machinations

of Russian intelligence services,

it was the whole thing.

John: Putin is a man who requires loyalty

in order to stay in the exalted position that he has.

It's about instilling fear.

If anybody ever betrays him,

they will never be forgiven.

In a sense, it's a sign of his own weakness.

(foreboding music)

It's not as if he's deeply unpopular

amongst the Russian people,

but those close to him know the level of corruption around him.

And know how brutal he is.

And many of them despise Putin's leadership

and know that Russia could actually do better

with a different type of leader.

It takes incredible bravery and courage for individuals

to decide that they're going to buck their own system

and they're going to follow their values.

(foreboding music intensifies)

You know the risks associated...

and you still do it.

If you're risking your life for something,

you rarely risk your life just for a bit more money.

It has to be something more fundamental than that.

Mark: At a certain point,

the spy hunters in Moscow,

they got these indications that there were some leaks.

(suspenseful music)

Russian intelligence had been watching Sergei for a while.

One of the things you'd have to say about Sergei Skripal

is that he didn't have a very finely developed sense

of when he was in danger,

right up until, you know, the time when he was lifted.

(banging)

(indistinct shouting)

(speaking in Russian)

(applause)

John: If your upbringing is in a country like Russia,

then you know what the price of betraying your country is.

Sergei Skripal was sentenced to 13 years of hard labour

in one of Russia's brutal prison camps,

and of course, many people who go into those labour camps

aren't expected to survive.

And the only way of getting them out

is offering the Russians something that they badly want

in return for something which you would rather like.

(siren wailing)

Luckily for Skripal,

in the early months of 2010,

an opportunity came. (hopeful music)

Speculation is reaching fever pitch

that the biggest spy swap since the end of the Cold War

is about to take place.

Reporter: An American official says CIA chief Leon Panetta

personally worked out the deal.

Leon Panetta, my US Counterpart, called me and said,

"We have caught and arrested a network of sleeper agents,

Russian spies, who were deeply embedded

inside the American system.

The Russians really want these people back,

and we're going to obviously negotiate terms for that.

"Is there anybody on your side

who you'd like to see extracted from Russia?"

And so I said, "Yes."

Reporter: A few hours earlier, the swap itself

occurred at Vienna Airport.

Reporter: 10 Russian agents who confessed to spying in America

have arrived in Moscow, and four Russians

who'd confessed to spying for the West

have arrived in Britain.

Mark: At that time...

the relationship between Putin and the West

was good enough for Sergei to consider his own safety

to be pretty much airtight.

He definitely did not consider

that an assassination unit would be turning up on his doorstep.

(bells ringing distantly)

Emma: It did actually feel like things

were getting back to normal.

We couldn't be sure that we were safe but...

the police, they seemed so chilled about it.

You know, if the future king and queen of England

are in Salisbury, you know, speaking to people,

it's surely over by this point, isn't it?

(suspenseful music)

Meg: Everything calmed down,

we got the city back,

the ducks returned,

and it was just a joy.

I think everyone was happy to celebrate being safe again.

We had such an enjoyable time, very special.

Kelvin: It was a magnificent day.

And in this church...

(distant singing)

...we also had a ceremony of going out into the Maltings,

where it had all taken place.

It was a way of saying, actually, this is our city,

and, uh, we have our values.

This water of new life, I symbolically cleanse our city.

(cheering and laughing)

Emma: The cleansing of the city of Novichok

was quite a thing to see.

(ominous music)

But there was part of me that thought, "This is not over yet."

It was just a normal Saturday.

We were just watching a bit of daytime TV,

and...

I decided to give Dawn the perfume which I'd found.

(foreboding music)

She'd sprayed it, and gave it a sniff,

then applied it on her wrists.

But it was strange.

A perfume with no smell.

A short while after that, she said she felt peculiar.

She left to go to the bathroom and I, um, heard a clonk.

I went in the bathroom,

and she wouldn't... wouldn't respond.

Yeah, it's...

Sorry, yeah.

Yeah.

(suspenseful music)

Phoned 999,

before I become ill myself.

Neil: Paramedics had been called to the house.

Salisbury police seemed very confused.

They've immediately jumped to the conclusion

that this is just a couple of drug addicts,

which is a terrible assumption

because she wasn't a drug addict.

She was a...

you know, a loving mum of three.

It was the worst-case scenario.

Reporter: The nerve agent incident

that's cast a shadow over Salisbury

has taken a serious turn for the worst.

Now it's murder.

It was just the hugest shock.

Reporter: Dawn Sturgess died following exposure to Novichok.

Emma: I was the first person at the scene where she was found.

I just burst into tears.

This woman, you know, this innocent woman...

It could've been me. It could've been any of us.

I also felt incredibly sorry for Charlie because he loved her,

and he effectively felt responsible for killing her.

It was just the world's greatest tragedy.

Reporter: A counterfeit bottle of designer perfume

brought from Moscow,

the suspected weapon.

There was enough volume of Novichok

in that tiny perfume tester bottle to kill 10,000 people.

Which, to me, made it a weapon of mass destruction.

I dunno about you, but I tend to think of

intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads

as weapons of mass destruction.

Not a Nina Ricci perfume tester bottle.

Journalist: Should the public have been alerted sooner

to potential dangers?

Theresa May: What I felt was a...

not just a profound sense of sympathy

um, and concern for her friends and family

and obviously for her partner,

(indistinct dialogue)

...but also immense anger at the Russian agents who did this

and a steely determination that we were going to get them.

And I've got a prime minister, a national security advisor,

a cabinet secretary and an entire cabinet going,

"We need to say something."

So, the press conference was called

largely to say we've done everything we possibly can do.

Both suspects are approximately 40 years old.

They are both Russian nationals,

and they were travelling on Russian passports.

(tense music)

It is likely that they were travelling under aliases,

and these are not their real names.

Reporter: Police have determined that the pair left

soon after the attack

and that neither of them were known

to British intelligence authorities.

Christo: So here we're looking at this press release,

which showed clearly nobody knew the real names

behind these fake identities.

We see it as a puzzle,

and we have to start with the data we have.

Two faces, two fake names, a rough age.

So that's a puzzle we have to fit all of these few clues

into a world of what, 200 million people living in Russia.

And then suddenly, Putin comes into the whole story

and makes a statement.

(speaking in Russian)

Christo: And he goes and says,

"I think these are very law-abiding, good citizens."

"There's nothing criminal about them,

but let them speak about themselves,

let them come forward."

(speaking in Russian)

(mysterious music)

So we stop in our tracks and say,

"Well, this is becoming bigger than we thought."

"Why don't we just wait and see what gets published?"

And the next day, Russia Today airs the famous interview

with the two of them.

(speaking in Russian)

Christo: The whole world was waiting to see

what the hell this could be.

They must have a really strong case.

Well, it's still as cringeworthy as anything I've seen.

I've never seen anything more cringy.

Christo: You just have to look at the

ridiculousness around their face

to know that that is just a lie.

(mysterious music)

Christo: And so we started trying to contact

former military officers from Russia,

asking a simple question.

If these are people in their early 40s,

and they are professional military spies,

where would they have studied their trade craft, their skills?

And we received two answers from two different people

that converged on the same thing.

There were only two elite schools that was mentioned

as a sort of breeding ground for spies.

One of them was the Far Eastern military institute.

Why don't you look there?

So we started digging into it.

And then the evidence came in the form of a Facebook page

of a former graduate,

and he's literally photographing everything as he walks around.

And then he goes to something

that is called the Wall of Honour.

And there in the blurriness,

we saw a silhouette of somebody with a Hero of Russia award,

who looks so much like one of our spies.

But then we zoomed in, we enhanced the photo,

and there was no doubt that this is our guy.

But the name under the photo was Anatoliy Chepiga.

This meant that Boshirov was in fact Anatoliy Chepiga.

We had a moment of jubilation, but where's the other one?

We had some minor clues of who this might be,

but ultimately, we came across a leaked car registration database

and that showed that the guy we knew,

Chepiga, had actually sold a car

to somebody called Alexander Mishkin.

And they were registered to the same address

at a dormitory in Moscow

belonging to Russian military intelligence.

So we thought maybe this Mishkin guy,

the guy with the car, is the one we're looking for.

But we needed to be really sure.

Then we had discovered that he grew up

and was born in this tiny village called Loyga.

And we sent somebody to Loyga.

Surely we can find somebody who can point him out to us

and recognise him on a photo.

It was a match, 100%.

Petrov was Alexander Mishkin.

But the biggest takeaway of that visit to Loyga was that,

like Chepiga,

Mishkin also had received the medal of Hero of Russia.

The thing is that award is only bestowed

by the President of Russia.

(dramatic Russian folk music)

That meant that both Mishkin and Chepiga

has shaken hands with Putin.

There was no way Putin would not have known who they are.

(line ringing)

I remember I got a call from a journalist to say,

"You've been asking for the evidence, here it is."

(suspenseful music)

So now we know exactly who's done this.

There's no doubt that something like this would have had to have

been sanctioned by Putin himself.

Morning.

There is overwhelming evidence

that the Novichok was brought to Salisbury

by Russian GRU officers.

I am sure that in conducting this attack on Sergei Skripal,

they must have been acting on instructions

received from their superiors.

And I've concluded

that the operation to assassinate Sergei Skripal

must have been authorised at the highest level.

Indeed, by President Putin.

Now our allies could be 100% sure that it was Russia,

that they'd done it deliberately.

The 8,362nd meeting of the Security Council

is called to order.

Thank you, Mr President.

The United Kingdom has presented detailed evidence

clearly laid out in charges of attempted murder

and the use and possession of a chemical weapon

against two agents of the Russian state.

And we will continue to take the necessary steps

to ensure our collective security.

I said to President Trump and to other world leaders,

if we let them do this without a reaction,

then they will think they are able to do it elsewhere.

Reporter: 16 EU member states

have announced the expulsion of Russian diplomats.

Outside the EU, Ukraine expelled 13 diplomats.

But the biggest batch of expulsions comes from the US,

where the White House announced

60 officials would have to leave,

including a dozen based at the UN.

And it was the biggest expulsion of Russian intelligence officers

around the world that had ever been seen.

Amber Rudd: Putin only respects strength.

The only way to respond to him is to stand up to him.

And we mustn't be frightened of doing that.

And we must guard NATO's borders literally with our lives.

Christo: The case of the Skripal poisonings

never finished for me and my colleagues.

It just became the beginning of a whole new series

of investigations.

Anyway, so I'll show you some specific data a bit later.

(tense music)

-Hey, man. -How are you?

The last trip taken by him

travelling on military planes undercover.

We continued tracking.

We found they're still living in Russia

and they're still very much active.

These are Mishkin's two daughters.

This daughter was literally born on the day they left Salisbury.

-No. -Yes.

I know them better than anyone.

I certainly know their life better than their wives do.

We have their medical records,

car insurance databases,

driver's licenses.

We even hacked traffic cameras.

And look at him, he's got like a new fancy beard.

By tracking them,

we uncovered a whole new unit run by these guys.

Nickname: Sabotage University.

Turns out they're training the new generation

of freelance killers.

(police sirens)

People from the street with no prior military background,

criminals from different countries...

(shouting)

...being trained to conduct acts of sabotage...

Stay still! Stay still!

...and assassinations.

The knowledge of what they're doing today

allows us to predict what might be happening next.

There's comes a point where you have to tell the world

what you've found.

Christo, thanks for joining us.

Hi.

We'll be going live in one minute.

Very good, thank you.

John: Everybody reads about the plots that get through,

but no one reads about the plots that are disrupted.

And there are thousands, if not tens of thousands

of people now going about their daily lives

who would have been killed had it not been for the people

who have helped Western intelligence agencies.

Okay, Christo, going live in 3, 2, and we're live.

Christo, thanks so much for being with us.

These are new, blood-curdling discoveries

that we find today about what these teams are doing,

all the way from connected crimes, as they call it,

like killing people, targeting people,

to disruption,

to disinformation projects around the world.

I guess what this also does is as well reminds the public

that this is sort of an ever-present danger.

-Totally agree. -Okay.

All the best with your work, Christo.

Thank you. Have a great day. Thanks. Bye.

Good.

(sighs)

(pensive music)

Meg: What had happened here was so surreal.

It took a while to sort of work out, what does it mean to me?

It was like fiction, but it was real.

Tragic.

It doesn't sound like it's something that happens

in your town.

Emma: You do wonder what happened to Sergei Skripal.

Is he still here? Does he still come here?

(jaunty music)

I mean, I have friends who claim to have seen him

at the cemetery,

where his wife is buried.

(wind whistling)

♪ I hear the thunder roar