Salisbury attack - as it happened: Second novichok suspect Dr Alexander Mishkin was 'awarded hero of the Russian Federation'
Bellingcat investigators say Mishkin was photographed 'shaking Vladimir Putin's hand'
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The second Russian man accused of launching the Salisbury novichok attack was also a decorated "hero of the Russian Federation", investigators have said.
Experts from the website Bellingcat said a photograph showed the man shaking hands with Vladimir Putin as he received the country's highest award.
They have named the alleged assassin who arrived in the UK under the alias Alexander Petrov as Dr Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin, who was employed by Russia's GRU intelligence agency.
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The 39-year-old graduated from one of Russia's elite Military Medical Academies, the group's website said.
During his studies he 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, it added.
Bellingcat has already identified the assassin who arrived in Britain under the name Ruslan Boshirov as Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga - a highly decorated officer who also worked for the GRU.
A spokesperson for the Home Office said: “We are not commenting as this is still a police investigation.”
The men are believed to have smeared novichok on Sergei Skripal's front door on 4 March and returned to Moscow hours later.
The attack left Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia critically ill, while Dawn Sturgess, 44, was later accidentally exposed to the same nerve agent and died in July.
Theresa May said their actions were not a “rogue operation” and would have been approved at a senior level in Moscow.
Police release images of suspects in connection with Salisbury attack
Show all 19The activities of the GRU have come under further scrutiny after the agency was accused of trying to hack the global chemical weapons watchdog as it worked to identify the substance used.
Officials in the Netherlands, where the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is based, said four Russians had been expelled after the alleged cyber strike.
British intelligence helped thwart the operation which was launched in April, a month after the poisoning.
The GRU has also been blamed for a string of cyber attacks targeting political institutions, businesses, media and sport.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said a number of hackers known to have launched attacks have been linked to the GRU.
The NCSC associated four new attacks with the GRU, on top of previous strikes believed to have been conducted by Russian intelligence.
Among targets of the GRU attacks were the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), transport systems in Ukraine, and democratic elections, such as the 2016 US presidential race, according to the NCSC.
The centre said it was “almost certainly” the GRU behind a “BadRabbit” attack in October 2017 that caused disruption to the Kiev metro, Odessa airport and Russia's central bank.
Christo Grozev, a Bellingcat investigator, is now giving more detailed evidence on the identification of the second suspect.
He used the alias Alexander Peskov but has been identified as GRU agent Dr Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin
Mishkin is from a Russian village "in the middle of nowhere" in marshland, he says. Bellingcat has identified the street he grew up on until the age of 16
Mr Grozev notes that the village is in permafrost and currently covered in slush - which was the reason the two alleged spies said they had to go back to Salisbury two days in a row. They claimed to be tourists in an interview on Russian state television
Mishkin was a military doctor before being recruited by the GRU and moved to Moscow under his cover identity around 2010.
After that extensive travel started, including visits to Ukraine during the peak of the Maidan protests. He was allegedly involved in military operations in Eastern Ukraine in 2014.
He was also named a "hero of the Russian Federation"
Residents in his village say it was related to Ukraine, but they are not sure if it was to do with the annexation of Crimea or the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych
Mr Grozev is going through how Bellingcat identified Mishkin, using phone records and address details to narrow down an "Alexander from St Petersburg". They traced him to a flat opposite a medical military academy where Mishkin trained.
In an open database they found a phone number of someone with the same name and cross-referenced it with Moscow car insurance details to link it to Volvo. That car registration was put into another database that gave the driver's address as the GRU headquarters in Moscow.
Mr Grozev said soldiers and militants are "relatively unprofessional and careless" but spies are not, so there was no route to track him down via social media.
Another company, which Bellingcat cannot reveal, agreed to hand over his passport details and driver's licence. They then started looking for "real human confirmation" that the man was the same person as 'Alexander Petrov'
Two people contacted by Bellingcat then confirmed that Mishkin was the same person in their military academy class, and that they recognised him from police information on the Skripal attack.
Apparently everyone from the class had been contacted several weeks ago and ordered not to say anything.
Bellingcat investigators then visited Mishkin's village yesterday, meeting one woman who has a photo "of President Putin shaking Mishkin's hand and giving him the Hero of Russia award"
Mr Seely says the GRU uses different material in different spheres, such as Syria and Ukraine, for information warfare
He says Russian military counts information and "non-military measures" as part of contemporary warfare.
"The role of the GRU mainly for the last 20-30 years has been the Kremlin's one-stop shop for global subversion"
Mr Seely says the "GRU is a significant operation and if anything they're too ambitious, which is their main downfall at the moment".
He says we may never know about the successful operations.
Questions are just starting. A journalist from the Kyiv Post asks what they may have been involved with in Eastern Ukraine.
Mr Grozev says GRU operatives were "directly involved" in the takeover of city councils and the "fake idea of local defence units". A resident of Mishkin's village believed he was involved in the extraction of Yanukovych after the Maidan protests but there is no proof
Mr Seely says they are "firestarters" who kick of wars, such as in South Ossetia.
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