Skripal poisoning: Second Russian spy's identity exposed

Alexander Petrov has turned out to be a doctor from the GRU, Russia's military intelligence service under the real name of Alexander Mishkin. Bellingcat and The Insider have publshed a fresh investigation on the attempted poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK. Back in September, they reported that Ruslan Boshirov is in fact a Russian GRU Colonel and Hero of Russia Anatoly Chepiga. It appears now that the 'entrepreneurs' lied in their interview with the Russian state TV channel RT when they claimed that they had visited Salisbury on a tourism trip on 4 March.

Mishkin was reportedly born in 1979 in the village of Loiga in the Arkhangelsk region of Russia. He was trained as a doctor at the military academy. Since 2010, he has lived in Moscow. Bellingcat and The Insider note Petrov has many things in common with the biography of the real person Mishkin.