LONDON — A British inquiry has concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin bears moral culpability for the death of Dawn Sturgess, who died after being exposed to the Novichok nerve agent months after an attempted assassination on former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal.
The inquiry found that the attack on Skripal — said to have been authorised at the highest levels of the Russian state — created an obvious and foreseeable danger to the wider public. Sturgess, 44, later succumbed to poisoning from the same military-grade agent.
According to the report, the use of Novichok in a civilian area meant that injury or death to unintended victims was “entirely predictable.”