The Skripal Files: Putin, Poison and the New Spy War

Description

'A scrupulous piece of reporting, necessary, timely and very sobering' John Le Carre A Sunday Times Best Book of 2018 Agent. Prisoner. Target. Who is Sergei Skripal? 4 March 2018, Salisbury, England. A man and his daughter are found slumped on a bench, poisoned by the deadly nerve agent Novichok. He was a Russian national that became a MI6 spy. Russia are publicly accused of carrying out the attack by the British government, sparking a diplomatic crisis between Russia and the West. Then two innocent people find a discarded perfume bottle used in the attack and one of them, Dawn Sturgess, tragically dies. It is now a murder investigation. How exactly did we get here? Based on interviews with Sergei before his poisoning, Mark Urban explains the most shocking espionage incident in a decade. Describing precisely how an otherwise loyal Russian intelligence officer was turned into an agent by MI6, how Skripal was betrayed so that he found himself in a Siberian prison, and why, years later, was he was targeted for assassination.

Mark Urban is a broadcaster and historian. Prior to working for the BBC he was defence correspondent for the Independent for four years, covering the end of the Cold War and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. He is also the acclaimed author of Task Force Black: The explosive true story of the SAS and the secret war in Iraq; Big Boys' Rules: The SAS and the secret struggle against the IRA and Rifles: Six years with Wellington's legendary sharpshooters. Mark read international relations at the London School of Economics and served for a short time in the British army.

Fascinating account of the poisoning case . . . Other books will follow on the Skripals, but they will struggle to match the texture of Urban's research, its knowledgeable hinterland * The Times * A scrupulous piece of reporting, necessary, timely and very sobering -- John Le Carre Engrossing . . . Urban tells the story of Skripal's undercover career well, much of it previously unknown and gleaned from around 10 hours of conversations with him at his Salisbury home -- Luke Harding, Guardian Based on his extensive interviews with Skripal, provide an original and often fascinating read on the games that spies played in the wake of the Cold War * Sunday Times * A detailed account of Skripal's life leading up to these terrible events * Daily Telegraph *