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Images issued by Bellingcat of the second suspect in the Sergei and Yulia Skripal poisoning case that the investigative website have named as Dr Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin Bellingcat via AP

Second Skripal poisoning suspect named as 'Russian GRU doctor'

The Kremlin has rejected past charges about its involvement in the case.

INVESTIGATIVE GROUP BELLINGCAT has identified the second suspect in the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal as a doctor employed by Moscow’s GRU military intelligence service.

The Kremlin has rejected past charges about its involvement in the case as fabrications aimed at discrediting Russia.

Yet analysts will read Bellingcat’s latest publication for more clues into the alleged workings of a Russian spy agency at the centre of several international disputes.

“We have now identified ‘Alexander Petrov’ to be in fact Dr Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin, a trained military doctor in the employ of the GRU,” the British-based group said in a report published on its website.

Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by a Soviet-designed chemical agent called Novichok in the English town of Salisbury in March.

Britain accuses the Russian government of trying to kill Skripal in retribution for his ongoing work with European intelligence agencies.

Russia says Britain has no proof. 

The Skripal case and last week’s revelations that the GRU also allegedly tried to hack into the world’s chemical weapons watchdog in the Netherlands have further tattered Moscow’s strained ties with the West.

Bellingcat became a thorn in the Kremlin’s side by detailing its alleged crimes during the wars in Syria and Ukraine.

It worked with the Russian investigative team at The Insider to name the first of the two Skripal suspects as GRU agent Anatoly Chepiga last month.

Bellingcat said Chepiga was decorated in 2014 with the nation’s top award in a secret ceremony at the Kremlin.

“While Alexander Mishkin’s true persona has an even sparser digital footprint than Anatoly Chepiga’s, Bellingcat has been able to establish certain key facts from his background,” it wrote.

The group showed an apparent scan of his real national ID card – called a passport in Russia – from 2001.

Mishkin was identified there as having been born in July 1979 in the northwestern region of Arkhangelsk.

Bellingcat said he graduated from one of Russia’s elite Military Medical Academies with the qualification to become a doctor for the Russian naval armed forces.

“During his medical studies, Mishkin was recruited by the GRU, and by 2010 had relocated to Moscow, where he received his undercover identity – including a second national ID and travel passport – under the alias Alexander Petrov,” Bellingcat said.

Mishkin was said to have made repeated trips to Ukraine and had even stated the GRU headquarters as his home address.

Bellingcat said it gathered its information from open sources and ‘testimony from people familiar with the person’.

Bizarre interview

The two suspects gave a bizarre interview to a Russian TV channel after the UK government released CCTV footage of their trip to Salisbury around the very time the Skripals were poisoned.

They explained that they went to the small town as tourists and had always wanted to see its tower.

The interview was not only widely mocked but also left security analysts at a loss to explain why Russia would stage-manage their hapless TV appearance in the first place.

One theory suggested by British intelligence was that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to publically punish the two men for both fumbling their assignment and getting caught.

Putin added to the mystery by unleashing a fresh attack on Skripal at an energy forum in Moscow last week.

“He is just a scumbag,” Putin said of Skripal.

“He is just a spy, a traitor to the homeland.”

Putin was himself a foreign intelligence officer who was based in the German city of Dresden in the years leading up to the Soviet Union’s collapse.

- © AFP, 2018

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    Mute I invented the @
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    Oct 9th 2018, 7:26 AM

    Sure. The same Bellingcat that’s run by Eliot Higgins, the same Eliot Higgins that’s a fellow of the Atlantic Council….

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    Mute Philip Exley
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    Oct 9th 2018, 7:49 AM

    @I invented the @: ahh, in the face of all the evidence that keeps tumbling out and in the face of the utterly ludicrous sightseeing cover story with which the Russians insulted everyone’s intelligence…..you choose to believe it’s a frame up.
    I hope you get a good exchange rate for your roubles.

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    Mute Donnacha Bhoicaire
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    Oct 9th 2018, 8:29 AM

    @I invented the @: dont be talking nonsense now. Caught out end of…

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    Mute Patrick J. O'Rourke
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    Oct 9th 2018, 9:18 AM

    @I invented the @: one thing is for certain, in that if it was a Russian operation the last people they would have used would have been Russians. If you believe this garbage from Bellingcat I feel sorry for you.

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    Mute Boyne Sharky
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    Oct 9th 2018, 10:29 AM

    @I invented the @: So, if I understand your logic, a truth can’t be considered a truth unless… what exactly?

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    Mute Philip Exley
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    Oct 9th 2018, 2:15 PM

    @Patrick J. O’Rourke: they should clearly consider recruiting idiots like you then. I assume you’re not Russian?

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    Mute Mark Jones
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    Oct 9th 2018, 7:38 AM

    Maybe it was the Russians maybe it wasn’t, who cares. It’s not like MI5 or the CIA don’t send assassin’s into other countries to murder people. Pretty sick of all this “The big bad Russians” stuff at this stage.

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    Mute Noel James Doherty
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    Oct 9th 2018, 8:20 AM

    @Mark Jones: all the big boy’s have blood on they’re hands down through the year’s, no more so than the UN & their late intervention in the Balkans not so long ago. It was these lads surely, but what’s going to happen now? An elite crack group of operatives into Russia to get these two, pfft not a hope

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    Mute Liam O’Conchubhair
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    Oct 9th 2018, 9:12 AM

    @Mark Jones: that’s blatant whataboutism, you’re deflecting criticism of Russia by bringing up the CIA and MI5

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    Mute TamuMassif2019
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    Oct 10th 2018, 12:36 AM

    @Mark Jones: They sent spies into the IRA to join the IRA and used this to kill British soldiers with the blessing of the head of the IRA and other times without. In British intelligence even their own citizens are expendable for a result? Have people forgotten the Gilford 4 or Birmingham 6 or the Monaghan and Dublin bombings or even their shoot to kill policies? Even the British Intelligence trained the CIA in torture as well as created the term “Black Propaganda”.

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    Mute TamuMassif2019
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    Oct 10th 2018, 12:43 AM

    @Liam O’Conchubhair: Remember that it was the CIA who trained and put into power Bin Laden, the Taliban, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Pinochet, the birth of Isis and the replacement of 50 so called Communist South American governments after WW2. They also created the Iran mess in the mid 1950′s in Iran that has created the Iran of today. How many times have they tried to kill Castro and how many times has the CIA been caught working with the mafia in the US as well as drug running?

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    Mute Seán Ó Briain
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    Oct 9th 2018, 8:33 AM

    Watch all the Putinbots swarm here trying to spread doubt and lies. They’ll attack the source or deflect and say it doesn’t matter. It does matter. A highly dangerous poison was used which killed and innocent woman. If it happened in Ireland wed think differently.

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    Mute Donal Desmond
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    Oct 9th 2018, 1:32 PM

    @Seán Ó Briain: If it had happened in Ireland nothing would have been done. Since time began intelligence services from all countries have used whatever methods nessecery to protect their country. C.I A., British intelligence, K.G.B. have been responsible for thousands of deaths for years.

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    Mute mattoid
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    Oct 9th 2018, 10:49 PM

    @Seán Ó Briain:
    Although it’s notable that as facts have been uncovered and the “Russia didn’t do it” line has become untenable, the narrative for many of them has shifted to “Well so what if Russia did it, every government does it”…..

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    Mute mattoid
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    Oct 9th 2018, 10:52 PM

    Sometimes it’s hard to tell the Putinbots apart from the useful idiots on here.
    Some are deliberately spreading disinformation and some are just deluded, but they sound much the same in practice…

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    Mute Cormac Ó Braonáin
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    Oct 9th 2018, 9:40 AM

    Bellingcat lol. Might as well be reporting the ‘Syrian Observatory for Human Rights’.

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    Mute Diaspora'd
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    Oct 9th 2018, 2:29 PM

    @Cormac Ó Braonáin: apart Putin himself announcing it was a GRU operation what source or agency’s evidence would you believe?

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    Mute Cormac Ó Braonáin
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    Oct 9th 2018, 3:07 PM

    @Diaspora’d: not one that was directly set up for propaganda purposes might be a start.

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    Mute TamuMassif2019
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    Oct 10th 2018, 12:30 AM

    @Cormac Ó Braonáin: Bell*ndcat as some call him?

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    Mute Diaspora'd
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    Oct 10th 2018, 1:45 AM

    @Cormac Ó Braonáin: I take it then none apart from Putin himself would convince you..

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    Mute Liam O’Conchubhair
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    Oct 9th 2018, 9:17 AM

    All the deflection and whataboutism done by commenters here. Ridiculous.

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    Mute Barry O Toole
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    Oct 9th 2018, 12:56 PM

    @Liam O’Conchubhair: dont think its deflection liam people are merely questioning elements of this a lot of it doesnt add up

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    Mute Philip Exley
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    Oct 9th 2018, 2:58 PM

    @Barry O Toole:
    Answer me this…
    Were the Skripals attacked?
    Did another innocent individual die?
    Were two Russians filmed visiting the area?
    Do you think they flew all the way from Moscow to see Salisbury cathedral?
    Do you think, having gone all that way they went back to London on the first trip because it was too slushy in Salisbury (clue..it wasn’t).
    If you think it doesn’t add up because they were so amateurish I’d say this. They know full well that once they were back in Russia they’d be untouchable and that they could rely on gullible fools to give credence to their ridiculous protestations of innocence and cries of “there’s no evidence” in the face of….all the evidence.
    Do you also believe the Russians just kicked out of Holland were innocent? Maybe they’d gone to have an extended look at the tulips?

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    Mute Barry O Toole
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    Oct 9th 2018, 5:44 PM

    I am sceptical of the narrative being peddled thats all there are many actors in this drama who knows what the truth is

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    Mute Mark Mc Steve
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    Oct 9th 2018, 1:36 PM

    Who actually believes this ha

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    Mute TamuMassif2019
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    Oct 10th 2018, 12:26 AM

    How and why was it Bellingcat who discovered this and no one else as in government bodies???

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    Mute mattoid
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    Oct 10th 2018, 8:38 AM

    @TamuMassif2019:
    What makes you think government bodies didn’t know it from a relatively early stage?

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