UK assesses Putin approved Skripal attack that endangered thousands - intel officials

CNN — The UK has assessed that the brazenness of the attacks that killed one Briton and sickened a former Russian spy and his daughter — including the amount of nerve agent used — point to approval by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, two officials familiar with the matter told CNN. “What that actually means, we can have a good guess.” British officials have warned allies that Russian intelligence agents risked killing thousands when they smuggled a perfume bottle packed with the deadly nerve agent Novichok into the UK to try to assassinate Sergei Skripal, a former Russian agent, according to two European intelligence officials. “The working assumption is that it was used and in a way resealed, and discarded — and that’s the perfume bottle being referred to in the Panorama report,” the British official said. While technically there were enough doses to kill “thousands” — a fact that shocked European security officials when they were briefed — there was no indication that the Russian agents wanted to kill that many people, a British official told CNN, speaking anonymously to discuss the ongoing investigation. He’s just a scumbag, that’s all.” The Russian embassy in Washington pointed to a November 23 statement by Alexander Shulgin, the permanent representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons: “We consider absolutely unacceptable the groundless accusations … pertaining to the alleged involvement of Russian nationals in the use of a nerve agent in Salisbury.” On the charge that Russia was more dangerous than ISIS, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said, “Russia couldn’t ‘forbid anyone’ from “demonstrating their intellectual and political capabilities,” according to Russian embassy spokesman Nikolay Lakhonin who cited remarks reported by Sputnik, a Russian government-controlled news site.