Family spends £375K on Salisbury Novichok house 5 years after attack
Family spends £375,000 to buy Salisbury house where the Skripals were poisoned with Novichok five years ago
A family has moved into the Salisbury house where a retired Russian spy was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent five years after the attack.
The property, which was purchased for £375,000 in February in a shared ownership deal, had been targeted by hitmen who sprayed military-grade chemical Novichok on the front door of the house in March 2018.
Ex-KGB agent Sergei Skripal, 71, and his daughter Yulia, 39, nearly died following the incident and were both found slumped on a bench in Salisbury city centre following the attack.
So deadly was the nerve agent sprayed it also hospitalised police officer Nick Bailey who had merely searched the house.
According to the Sun, the property is now being lived in by a local couple with young children after it underwent hundreds of hours of cleaning and had several key furnishings such as the front door and porch replaced.
The Salisbury house where a retired Russian spy was poisoned with Novichok has become a young family’s home (pictured in 2018)
In the five proceeding years the house has undergone hundreds of hours of cleaning
Following the attack, the Skripals were heavily sedated and given drugs to protect them from the side effects. Yulia was discharged in the April and Sergei in mid-May
The property was declared safe in 2019 but up until now nobody had expressed interest in buying it.
Indeed, some neighbours had called for the house to be demolished in the wake of the attack.
According to the newspaper, council officials were keen to sell the property to stop it becoming a ‘museum’.
The city of Salisbury was scarred by the attacks which were committed in the Spring of 2018.
Four months after the attempted assassinations, mother-of-three Dawn Sturgess, 44, died after she found a perfume bottle containing the nerve agent and sprayed it on her wrist.
Her partner Charlie Rowley became seriously ill after finding the bottle.
READ MORE: Salisbury house where retired Russian spy was poisoned with Novichok is bought in a shared ownership deal – but neighbours want it knocked down
It is believed the Russian state ordered the attack on Skripal – who was jailed in Russia for spying in MI6 – on March 4 2018.
The suspected assassins – Russian intelligence officers Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin – were caught on CCTV as they travelled from Moscow to the Wiltshire cathedral city.
A third suspect, senior Russian agent Denis Sergeev, was believed to be the on-the-ground commander. All three fled back to Russia after their failed murder attempt.
It took almost exactly a year for Salisbury to finally be declared clear of all traces of the deadly nerve agent. Police say it could have killed thousands.
Following the attack, the Skripals were heavily sedated and given drugs to protect them from the side effects.
Yulia was discharged in the April and Sergei in mid-May.
Mother-of-three Dawn Sturgess (pictured), 44, died after she found a perfume bottle containing miliatary-grade nerve agent, Novichok, and sprayed it on her wrist
He then joined her in hiding but had to be closely monitored by a doctor.
Britain responded to the poisoning of the Skripals by expelling 23 Russian diplomats. The United States expelled 150.
In the weeks after the poisoning, Putin claimed that Mishkin and Chepiga were innocent tourists and denied any Russian involvement.
In 1995, Sergei Skripal, a high-ranking member of Russian Intelligence, became a double-agent working for Britain. After nine years of passing secrets to MI6, he was caught by the Russian authorities and sentenced to 13 years in a penal colony.
Then, in 2010, he was pardoned by President Dmitry Medvedev and sent to the UK as part of a spy-swap deal. Sergei and his wife Liudmila began a new life in Wiltshire.
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