Finding Your Name On Russia's Hit List

The nerve-gas poisoning of a former KGB agent in the U.K. has Moscow’s foes spooked

- Kitty Donaldson, Henry Meyer, & Irina Reznik

It was just before 10 p.m. on Feb. 12, Boris Karpichkov’s 59th birthday, when the former KGB agent got an unexpected call at his home in the U.K. It was a Russian secret service friend phoning covertly from mainland Europe to warn him of a hit list with eight names on it. Karpichkov, who’d defected to Britain in 1998, was on the list. So was Sergei Skripal, another ex-Russian double agent.

Karpichkov initially dismissed the warning— he’d faced death threats before. Three weeks later, he changed his mind. On March 4, Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were rushed to a hospital after collapsing in a crowded shopping mall in the sleepy cathedral city of Salisbury in southwestern England. British officials determined the two—who remain in critical condition and may never recover—were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in what the U.K. says is the first offensive use of a chemical weapon in Europe since World War II. A local policeman was also hospitalised, and as many as 130 other people in Salisbury may have been exposed.

The attack, which London and its allies blamed on Vladimir Putin’s government, led the U.K. to expel dozens of Russian diplomats. The U.S., along with NATO and 25 other allies of the U.K., followed on March 26 and 27, kicking out about 130 Russian diplomats. Britain is facing calls to crack down on illicit Russian money. Russia, which denies responsibility in the Skripal attack, has vowed to retaliate in kind for the expulsions.

The Skripal case disturbingly echoes the 2006 death of ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who was killed with radioactive polonium slipped into his tea in London. A week after Skripal’s poisoning, a second Russian exile and Putin critic was murdered at his London home. Police are re examining 14 suspicious deaths in the U.K., dating to 2003, of opponents of Moscow and others with links to Russia.