How the poisoning of a former Russian spy might be part of a deadly trend

Earlier this week, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, and his daughter Yulia, were found collapsed on a bench in Salisbury, England. 

Since the discovery on Sunday, authorities have confirmed that the pair were poisoned with a nerve agent in a targeted attack. They are both in critical condition.

Russia has denied any involvement in the incident, but many are comparing it to the 2006 attack on Alexander Litvinenko — another former Russian spy who died after drinking tea that was, unknown to him, laced with polonium. 

• DAY 6: Why was Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko poisoned to death?
• DAY 6: Political fallout from the Litvinenko inquiry

Heidi Blake, Buzzfeed U.K.'s investigations editor, believes the attacks on Skripal and his daughter are part of a widespread, deadly trend.

Last summer, an investigation by Buzzfeed U.K. uncovered evidence of at least 14 other suspicious deaths of men with Russian ties, all whom died in the U.K. 

Blake spoke with Day 6 host Brent Bambury about the Buzzfeed investigation.

Brent Bambury: Your investigation looks at the suspicious deaths of 14 men in the U.K., many tied to Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Why would anyone in Russia have wanted these men dead?

Heidi Blake: The 14 men whose deaths we investigated had all enraged the Kremlin or fallen foul of powerful figures in Russia, in one way or another. Nine of them were connected to, as you say, the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who fled Putin's Russia in 2001. He was really Russia's public enemy number one until his death in 2013.

There were eight men in his immediate circle, people who'd assisted him in moving his money out of Russia, people who had been engaged in the kind of political disruption that he was organizing and various business associates of his, all of whom have died in highly suspicious circumstances in the U.K.

But authorities have ruled that many of these deaths are suicides, even in the case of Berezovsky himself. What is the evidence that you have found that suggests foul play?

In all of the 14 cases we've looked at, we know that these are people who'd received death threats from Russia, had feared for their lives [or] told friends they believed they were being targeted. We know that in all 14 cases, U.S. spy agencies have gathered intelligence linking these deaths to Russia and that they've passed that on to British intelligence agencies, but it hasn't been acted upon.

Why not? 

What we've learned from our sources is that the British government has been unwilling, over the past 17 years since Putin's rise to power, to take a firm line with the Kremlin and in particular, after the death of Alexander Litvinenko. 

That was a very brazen assassination quite similar to the attempt we've seen on Sergei's Skripal​'s life. He was exposed to this toxin, which was only made in Russian laboratories. He died very publicly and the killers left a radioactive trail all over London, which meant they could be immediately identified as FSB (Federal Security Service) agents. It was very difficult for the government to ignore that. But the stance they took on that killing plunged Britain into 10 years of diplomatic pain in which intelligence sharing with Russia ground to a halt.

The Litvinenko investigation was an outlier, but it also had an effect. The effect was that these investigations stopped. In fact, you go so far as to suggest that Russian assassins had no fear of reprisal in the U.K. Was that the official line on what you say are 14, perhaps, murders? 

I was told by one government security advisor that he had been specifically told that there was no appetite in the British government to take a firm line with the Russian Federation. We were told by multiple serving intelligence sources in the U.S. that Britain had shied away from tackling the Kremlin over these suspicious deaths on British soil. And as a result, Russia had become so emboldened that they felt they could just come to the U.K. anytime they wanted and kill. 

A feature of Vladimir Putin's Russia is the entanglement of Russia's sprawling and powerful organized crime groups with the apparatus of the Russian state.- Heidi Blake, Buzzfeed U.K.'s investigations editor

I think that there has been a steep change in the response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, in that the police came out very quickly and made a statement, a counter terror command got involved very quickly, and within less a day ministers were making statements in the House of Commons and drawing parallels with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. 

I think that's indicative that the British government has finally woken up to the fact that by continuing to turn a blind eye to Russian operations in the U.K., they are almost giving the Kremlin a carte blanche to come here and target those living under the protection of the British state.

Is that who you think is the perpetrator in the 14 cases? Are these Russian state actors that are murdering these men, or are they in fact Mafia thugs?

In the cases that we've identified, we've connected either to the Russian state or to Russian Mafia groups. Those two entities work very much hand in glove. A feature of Vladimir Putin's Russia is the entanglement of Russia's sprawling and powerful organized crime groups with the apparatus of the Russian state. You often have, for example, an assassination which is ordered by Russia's secret service but actually carried out by a Mafia organization, contracted out in order to give a degree of deniability. 

On the flip side of that, you quite often have FSB officers who are moonlighting for Mafia groups and therefore carrying out the dirty work of a major criminal organization on the side, which means it's very, very difficult for the intelligence community to work out whether an assassination was ordered and conducted by the Russian state or Russian Mafia organizations.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. To hear our full interview with Heidi Blake, download our podcast or click 'Listen' above.