There is something truly shocking about what happened to Dawn Sturgess, who died in Salisbury in July 2018 after applying some perfume to her wrist. You may not remember the name Sturgess, but the single word Salisbury will remind you, I suspect, of the attempted murder of retired Russian military intelligence colonel Sergei Skripal four months earlier.
What did Dawn Sturgess have to do with Skripal and the murky goings-on of international espionage? Precisely nothing, beyond geographical proximity and an apparently discarded scent bottle, which is what gives the case a shuddering “it could happen in our neighbourhood” sense. She was a blameless mother of three sharing her life with boyfriend Charlie Rowley, who reportedly found the bottle in a skip. Both became ill after contact with its contents, which turned out to be Novichok, a lethal nerve agent developed in the old Soviet Union in the 1980s. Rowley survived, and his evidence will be heard in the public inquiry which began this morning in Salisbury.
It is better late than never that it has taken six years for the law to get its act in gear. It is hard to imagine the decision to go after Skripal took a hundredth of that time. The Putin regime does not mess about, even if the competence of his operatives – who claimed to have gone to Salisbury to admire the cathedral spire – lacks a certain something. The case evokes the days of doomed plots involving exploding cigars, toxic fountain pens and poisoned face cream. A whole genre of entertainment has sprung from such bungling, from Our Man in Havana to American television’s Get Smart and Johnnie English.
This, obviously, is no laughing matter, but its seriousness should not be misinterpreted either. There is a much broader context that the west is inclined to overlook. Extrajudicial killing is shocking, and when tranquil Salisbury is the target, the sense of invasion feels all the greater. State-sponsored murder in Wiltshire. Whatever next? Quite so.
Moscow of course denies involvement in trying to kill Skripal, but in any event to Putin, the attempt was not extrajudicial. In little of the coverage of Putin’s extramural brutality does the western media explain that going after traitors abroad – and that is how Skripal, rightly or wrongly, is regarded - is permitted by Russian law. The paranoia, if that is what it is, is institutionalised. Skripal had an impressive record with Russia's military intelligence (GRU), but was then convicted for passing secrets to the west. He was later part of a spy swap deal, but seemingly the story didn’t end there, and maybe the spooks who give evidence to the inquiry will tell us more.Or maybe not.
We can all condemn the lack of due process in Russia, the autocracy of Putin, the routine mendacity, the disgusting suppression of dissent and, yes, the overseas and domestic killings of the regime’s enemies: the wanton disregard for human life in this case is both characteristic and shocking. But let us not forget where so much of that comes from – a fear about western intentions and the survival of the regime.
Isn’t diplomacy about understanding the other side, remembering that Russia’s history of autocracy cannot be effaced overnight, however horrified we are by what their leaders do? Of course we must be firm, and Iwrite as a supporter of NATO and believer in collective deterrence, but we have allowed the tub-thumpers to take over, prodding the bear relentlessly, not least through Nato expansion. Can we be surprised when it reacts? Let us hope the public inquiry into the case of poor Dawn Sturgess gets to the bottom of what happened. The rule of law demands answers.
But let us not forget the bigger picture too.
