The photos show that the poisoning suspect, identified as Anatoly Chepiga, was a guest at the July 29, 2017, wedding of Russian Major General Andrei Averyanov’s daughter on the shores of Lake Senezh about 50 kilometres north of Moscow, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has reported.
It said less than a year later Chepiga was publicly identified by British police as one of two Russian military intelligence officers operating under cover names who allegedly planted a highly toxic nerve agent called Novichok at a house in Salisbury, southern England, in an attempt to poison Russian double agent Sergei Skripal.
Chepiga’s presence at the wedding adds to a substantial body of evidence linking him to the Russian military intelligence service known as the GRU, the broadcaster reported on its website.
The photographs further undermine Chepiga’s claim that he is simply a nutritional-supplements salesman named Ruslan Boshirov who travelled to Salisbury in March 2018 to admire its architecture, according to the rferl.org website.
The father of the bride shown in the photos, Major General Andrei Averyanov, is the secretive commander of a Russian military group, known as Unit 29155, that Western intelligence officials have reportedly linked to a range of malfeasance in Europe, the broadcaster reported.
It said it had obtained the photos through an investigation it conducted jointly with open-source research group Bellingcat that involved scouring social media posts and other online resources.
According to a report this month in the New York Times, Unit 29155 is a top-secret elite unit inside Russia's military intelligence service that has been used for a coordinated campaign to destabilise Europe.
Skripal, a former Russian intelligence agent convicted of spying for Britain, and his daughter Yulia were left fighting for their lives after they were exposed to the deadly Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury, a picturesque city near the famous ancient ruins of Stonehenge, on March 4, 2018.
Both became seriously ill, but made a full recovery after spending several weeks in a hospital, according to reports.
A British woman with no connections to Russia later died, apparently after accidentally coming into contact with the substance, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty said.
In response to the incident, London in March last year expelled 23 Russian diplomats believed to be intelligence agents.
Poland expelled four Russian diplomats as part of a coordinated international response to the suspected nerve agent attack in Salisbury.
Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz said at the time that Britain had been targeted in an "unprecedented attack which was the first deliberate use of chemical weapons against a group of civilians in Europe in the history of post-war Europe.”
Moscow has denied allegations of Russian involvement.
A senior Russian military intelligence officer was earlier this year named as a central figure in the attempted poisoning of the Skripals.
(gs/pk)
Source: rferl.org