UK summons Russian ambassador over Moscow-linked chemical attack in 2018

The UK Foreign Office has summoned Russian Ambassador Andrey Kelin following the release of a report on the death of British citizen Dawn Sturgess, who died in July 2018 after exposure to a toxic substance.

The main purpose of summoning the diplomat is to seek explanations regarding “hostile activities against the United Kingdom” conducted by Russia, Caliber.Az reports, citing the Foreign Office's website.

The public inquiry report states that Sturgess, who died after contact with the poison, was an unintended victim of the Salisbury incident, which British authorities say was an assassination attempt on Russia's former General Staff of the Armed Forces (GRU) officer Sergei Skripal.

London claims the substance involved was the Russian-origin nerve agent Novichok.

The report attributes “moral responsibility” for Sturgess’s poisoning in Amesbury to the Russian leadership, while Moscow is directly accused in the Skripal case.

On June 30, 2018, Sturgess and her partner, Charlie Rowley, fell seriously ill in Amesbury, Wiltshire, after Rowley gave Sturgess a perfume-style bottle he said he found in a bin. Sturgess sprayed its contents on her skin and collapsed within minutes. Rowley also subsequently became ill.

Laboratory analysis by the UK authorities and later by the international watchdog Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that the substance in the bottle was a military‑grade nerve agent from the group called Novichok — the same agent used months earlier in the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury.

Investigators believe the Novichok bottle was a specially adapted counterfeit of a designer perfume — with fake branding and packaging — used to smuggle the agent into the UK or to conceal its identity.

The poisoning of Sturgess is regarded not as a targeted attack against her specifically, but as collateral damage from the earlier Skripal operation: the nerve agent had been discarded after the assassination attempt, and Sturgess’s death became a tragic by‑product of the broader attack on UK soil.

By Jeyhun Aghazada