Sergei Skripal initially did not believe Russia tried to kill him – book
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Urban discovered that Skripal spent much of his day watching Russia’s Channel One, a pro-Kremlin state broadcaster. He adopted “the Kremlin line in many matters”, the journalist writes, “even while sitting in his MI6-purchased house”, especially over Moscow’s fraught relations with Ukraine.
Skripal, a former paratrooper, supported Putin’s 2014
annexation of Crimea and referred disparagingly to Ukrainians as “simply sheep who needed a good shepherd”. Skripal also refused to believe Russian troops had entered eastern Ukraine covertly, saying that if they had, they would have quickly reached the capital, Kiev.
The book does not answer the key question as to why Skripal’s former organisation – the GRU – tried to kill him shortly before Russia’s presidential vote. His two would-be assassins – Col Anatoliy Chepiga and “Alexander Petrov”, a pseudonym – are
career intelligence officers, the government believes.