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Skripal poisoning victim disputed UK narrative, official inquiry reveals

By Kit Klarenberg · The Grayzone · January 13, 2025

An official inquiry into a notorious 2018 Novichok poisoning case has found the victim briefly emerged from a coma, revealing information which wholly undermined the British government’s narrative. While the medical professional she told was muzzled, mainstream media has ignored the new finding.

On March 8, 2018, just four days after being hospitalized for having allegedly been contaminated with novichok, which is said to be the world’s deadliest military grade nerve agent, Yulia Skripal was roused from her coma. Upon waking up, she communicated to an intensive care consultant that she and her father, the turncoat former Russian spy, Sergei, had been “sprayed” with an uncertain substance while dining at a restaurant, before their collapse — and not at their home, as claimed by the UK.

The revelation, which runs completely contrary to widespread reports that Yulia spent almost a month in critical condition before regaining consciousness, stems from recently-disclosed transcripts of an official British inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, who supposedly died after having inhaled novichok from a sealed perfume bottle.

For several years, British authorities have stonewalled, prevaricated, and connived to prevent an inquest into the Sturgess case, and perhaps now it is clear why.

According to the British government, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned by two GRU assassins who snuck into Britain using false identities with Russian-produced Novichok, which was supposedly smeared on the doorknob of Sergei’s MI6-furnished home in Salisbury. The Skripals ultimately survived, but in the intervening years, this story has been repeatedly retold by legacy media outlets to hype up the threat Russia poses to the British public.

That narrative is substantially undermined by the recent revelation that Yulia briefly awoke from her coma and countered the official story through a form of visual communication.

The Sturgess inquiry also revealed that after Yulia awoke from her coma and interacted with a doctor, high-ranking officials at Salisbury hospital forbade the healthcare professional from divulging details of his interchange with Yulia with anyone or having any further contact with the Skripals, and warned him not to discuss the poisoning case with anyone.

The Russian government’s supposed involvement in the Salisbury poisoning has proven pivotal in igniting a new Cold War. Moscow was universally depicted as a dastardly pariah in the media, precipitating a British-instigated expulsion of Russian diplomats, dramatically escalating a conflict that eventually erupted in the Ukraine proxy war.

Even if Yulia’s hospital bed claims were inaccurate, they still undermine the British government’s official narrative, while raising serious questions about which substance was used to poison the Skripals, and who was actually responsible. The public is also left to ponder whether the silencing of the healthcare professional who received Yulia’s testimony resulted from state pressure on Salisbury hospital.

Meanwhile, the Dawn Sturgess investigation has closely emulated past British government coverup inquiries, such as the questionable 2016 probe into FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko’s strange death a decade before. In an effort to validate the preordained conclusion that Sturgess was poisoned with the same Novichok that purportedly nearly killed the Skripals almost ten miles away, the inquiry’s chair and counsels have routinely relied on stultifying illogic, highly gymnastic legalistic arguments, speculative claims, and anonymous security and intelligence personnel testimony, while ignoring or outright dismissing inconvenient evidence.

Skripals ‘sprayed’ with poison at restaurant?

Over six weeks from late October 2024, a formal inquiry probed the July 2018 death of Dawn Sturgess resulting from alleged Novichok nerve agent poisoning. The investigation had been rigged to prevent the truth about that tragic incident from reaching the public, and to to suppress inconvenient details about the poisoning of GRU defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia three months earlier. However, the inquiry nonetheless yielded a number of important findings.

That there has been any official investigation into the death of Dawn Sturgess — even a flagrant whitewash — is miraculous. Under English law, a coroner’s inquest is typically completed within six to nine months of an individual’s passing. But as independent journalist John Helmer has exhaustively documented, British authorities have stonewalled, prevaricated and connived to prevent an inquest. This was after an inquest was opened, then immediately adjourned pending further police investigations, on the very same day in July 2018.

After heavy legal tussling between British authorities and Sturgess’ grieving family, British authorities finally authorized a public inquiry in November 2021, with no date for commencement given. This was a highly suspect maneuver. Inquests are legally-mandated to establish how, when and why someone died, and the wider circumstances surrounding it. They have sweeping powers to subpoena documents and witnesses, evidence is given under oath, and absolutely any member of the public, the British government, and its national security apparatus can be called to testify.

Previous high-profile inquests have shed important light on potential MI6 assassinations, and exposed major scandals involving British police.

By contrast, as one law firm explained, inquiries are little more than “highly emotive” public relations exercises, intended to “attract large scale media coverage”. Their terms — who can be interviewed and what evidence will be considered — are sharply limited by direct government decree, and they have no power to compel anyone or anything to turn over evidence.

That authorities exerted so much energy to avoid holding an inquest before opting for a toothless PR stunt should be an obvious source of concern. While some testimony was publicly broadcast and transcribed, the BBC reports that many inquiry sessions were held in secret, with some witnesses’ “names, faces and even voices hidden.” Meanwhile, “only three accredited journalists” were allowed to report directly on proceedings, prohibited from using any electronic devices throughout, and reduced to making notes on whatever was said using “old fashioned pen and paper.”

Still, despite the veil of obfuscation, important public testimony emerged during the inquiry’s six-week-long span. It was Dr Stephen Cockroft, an intensive care consultant who treated the Skripals upon their admission to hospital, who revealed Yulia had awoken after just four days. Cockroft told the inquiry he “never thought [Yulia] would be capable of having a conversation” again, having “suffered a catastrophic brain damage.”

However, he noted that she seemed mentally competent, nodding and crying in response to questions he asked, while looking “absolutely terrified.”

He quizzed her about what happened prior to her collapse, to which she responded with a series of blinks — .

Among Dr Cockroft’s queries was whether she and her father were “sprayed” with a substance at a restaurant called Zizzi. This was where Yulia dined with Sergei on the afternoon of March 4 2018. She responded in the affirmative to the doctor’s question.

When asked if she knew who was responsible for spraying her, Yulia burst into hysterical tears. At that point, Cockroft stopped pushing his subject for answers.

Despite Yulia’s stunning responses, a senior British counter-terror police forensics expert who participated in the probe of the Skripals’ poisoning, Keith Asman, apparently decided not to interview her at all, and attached no credibility to her post-coma declarations.

During his inquiry testimony, Asman acknowledged he was informed that Yulia had indicated Zizzi was the site of her poisoning. But the revelation ultimately had zero bearing on his team’s probe. This, they said, was due to forensic investigators finding relatively “low-level” traces of Novichok at the restaurant compared to other sites, and suspicions Yulia may have “wittingly or unwittingly been involved” in the incident that landed her and her father in hospital.

Asman claimed his misgivings about Yulia were due to her crying “when asked who did it” by Dr Cockroft. “I did wonder… if she was crying because she felt maybe she had been identified,” he claimed. This doubt, combined with the Skripals having allegedly “eaten and drank different things” at Zizzi, led British police forensic masterminds to conclude it was “unlikely one particular item of food or drink was the source of the contamination,” and they therefore formally ruled out the restaurant as the site of their poisoning.

Shockingly, when inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arrived in Salisbury on March 21 2018 to investigate the incident, the Skripals were physically prevented from speaking to them. The inquiry has revealed that on the very same day the OPCW inspectors arrived, Skripals’ doctors unilaterally decided to simultaneously tracheotomize both him and his daughter. Yulia’s tracheostomy tube was removed March 27, two days after OPCW representatives left. Sergei had to wait until April 5 for his tube to be dislodged.

Hospital whistleblower silenced

Another deeply strange detail divulged by Dr. Cockroft was that his interaction with Yulia apparently caused significant consternation at the highest levels of Salisbury hospital. Following this incident, Dr. Christine Blanchard, the institution’s then-medical director, not only removed him from the intensive care rota, but “warned” him he “should not discuss any aspect of the poisoning with colleagues… or other individuals.” Cockroft was outright “forbidden to discuss any aspect of the presentation, recognition or initial treatment of Yulia or Sergei Skripal,” even at regular ICU hospital meetings.

Asked by inquiry counsel if Blanchard believed it hadn’t “been wise” for him to speak to Yulia “about these matters,” Cockroft concurred, though he said that based on his 24-year-long career in healthcare, he didn’t believe he’d done anything wrong. “I always talk to my patients… even when I think they can’t hear me,” he explained, opining, “the worst intensive care doctors… ignore the patients.” Describing the attitude of Dr Blanchard, who had no experience of working in intensive care, as “a little difficult,” he stated:

“I genuinely was concerned that if [Yulia] had some knowledge that somebody had assaulted them… that might be something she would be concerned about. I do feel this was a lost opportunity to discuss with my colleagues what I observed in those first few hours and how I recognized that the Skripals had been poisoned.”

“If [my colleagues] were having a conversation [about the Skripals] they would stop talking about it in front of me,” Cockroft revealed, adding: “it was odd. It was very odd.”

The inquiry made very little of Cockroft’s testimony on this point. Still, his declarations suggest a code of omertà was imposed by the British state around the facts of the Salisbury incident. Whether pressure of some kind was brought to bear on Salisbury hospital to prevent Cockroft’s interactions with Yulia emerging publicly may never be known.

However, it is clear the British government has been committed to preventing inconvenient facts about Salisbury from ever entering the public domain. The narrative of Russian culpability for the Skripals’ poisoning had to be sustained, even before a clear motive was established, perpetrators were identified, or other elementary facts were ascertained.

In the days immediately after the poisoning, a substantial slice of the British public expressed serious doubts about Moscow’s responsibility for the purported poisoning among Britons, and even entertained the possibility that the MI6 had carried out the operation. Battering down that skepticism has apparently necessitated some extreme measures at every level.

January 16, 2025 Posted by aletho | Deception, Russophobia | Leave a comment