Vladimir Putin would have ordered Salisbury Novichok poisoning, inquiry told

"It is His Majesty’s Government’s view that President Putin authorised the operation".

Those were the words of Jonathan Allen, a senior Foreign Office official, on the attempted assassination of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018.

Mr Allen told an inquiry that the risks involved in carrying out such an operation on British soil were "reputationally enormous", and would have required authorisation "at every level".

The Skripals were poisoned with the military grade nerve agent Novichok, which had been smeared on the front door handle of their home.

Within days, the then prime minister Theresa May had publicly blamed Russia for the attack.

Mr Allen said the UK had learned from the death of Alexander Litvinenko, another former Russian agent who was fatally poisoned with polonium in London in 2006.

"Russia played all sorts of games, played with the police investigation and ultimately the inquiry, pretending that it was going to cooperate and never doing so.

So there was absolute clarity from the start that we were not going to let Russia string this out in the same way," he said.

He said Russia would have been "quite shocked" at the speed of the international response to the poisoning of the Skripals, which included the expulsion of 153 Russian intelligence operatives from 29 countries.

Jonathan Allen was speaking at the inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, who was poisoned after coming into contact with Novichok four months after the attack on the Skripals

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The chemical was concealed in a fake perfume bottle which was found by Ms Sturgess’ partner, Charlie Rowley.

The inquiry has heard that he may have found it just minutes after it was discarded by two Russian agents who were trying to assassinate Sergei Skripal.

Mr Allen said that it was unlikely that the Novichok could have been made and deployed by "non-state actors", because the conditions required to make such a "dangerous substance" indicated that it would need to have been made in a highly sophisticated state run lab.

The inquiry heard how Sergei Skripal, a former double agent, was "perceived to be a traitor" after being tried and convicted of high treason, but may have "believed his (subsequent) pardon would protect him".

He said he believed that the outcome of the operation against Mr Skripal was not intended to remain entirely covert, and that the Russian state expected them to "put two and two together".

"To use a nerve agent in this way was clearly going to be traced back to Russia", Mr Allen said.

"It was meant to act as a warning in my view."

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