The Skripal Files: The Life and Near Death of a Russian Spy

by Mark Urban

The explosive story of the poisoning of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and what it reveals about the growing clandestine conflict between the West and Russia

Salisbury, England: March 4, 2018.

Slumped on a bench, paralyzed and barely able to breathe, were a former Russian intelligence officer named Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. Sergei had been living a quiet life in England since 2010, when he was expelled from Russia as part of a spy swap; he had been serving a lengthy prison sentence for working secretly for the British intelligence agency MI6. On this Sunday afternoon, he and his daughter had just finished lunch at a local restaurant when they started to feel faint. Within minutes they were close to death.

The Skripals had been poisoned, not with a familiar toxin but with Novichok, a deadly nerve agent developed in southern Russia. Was this a message from the Kremlin that traitors would not escape violent death, even on British soil? As Sergei and Yulia fought for their lives, and the British government and their allies sought answers, relations between the West and Russia descended to a new low.

The Skripal Files is a remarkable and definitive account of Sergei Skripal's story, which lays bare the new spy war between Russia and the West. Mark Urban, the diplomatic and defense editor for the BBC, met with Skripal in the months before his poisoning, learning about his career in Russian military intelligence, how he became a British agent, his imprisonment in Russia, and the events that led to his release. Skripal's first-hand accounts and experiences reveal the high stakes of a new spy game that harks back to the chilliest days of the Cold War.

Genres: Nonfiction, Russia, History, Espionage, Politics, True Crime, Biography

320 pages, Hardcover

Published October 2, 2018

About the author

Mark Urban is a British journalist, author and broadcaster, and is currently the Diplomatic Editor for BBC Two's Newsnight.

Reviews

[Geevee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sergei Skripal, along with his daughter Yulia, were poisoned in Salisbury by the nerve agent Novichok A234 on 4th March 2018.

Skipral had worked for Russian military intelligence (GRU) including being posted to Malta and later to Madrid, Spain. He was recruited by British intelligence in 1995 whilst in Spain and worked in his role as a spy for the UK being given the codename Forthwith. He returned to Russia to take up a post in the GRU HR department continuing to provide information on people, postings and other detail to Britain's intelligence services. He was arrested by the Russian authorities in 2004 and placed in high-security prison. In 2010 he was part of a spy swap being released and taking up residence in Britain settling in Salisbury.

Mark Urban's book covers Skripal's life, family, career and subsequent turning to be a agent for Britain very well. He also adds further colour to the story with details in Skripal's time in prison and the eventual swap that led to his freedom and presidential pardon by Putin.

Urban is able to provide this detail based on a series of interviews he conducted with Skripal that covered his life, operational military and intelligence careers as well as the work at the GRU HQ in personnel and then imprisonment. This then is the first part of the book and primes the reader for the subsequent part of the story: the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter.

The events of the poisoning, the medical treatment of the Skripals and the police/intelligence investigation are well covered. Skripal did not speak to Urban about the poisoning or events after, so the author uses his journalist's nose and his law enforcement/intelligence contacts, along with public statements by UK Government, police and medical services to build the story.

We then understand the context of what was done, by whom and how the subsequent poisoning of Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess happened and led to Ms Stugess's death, and in turn how this led to the two Russian agents Alexander Petrov (real name Alexander Mishkin) and Ruslan Boshirov (Anatoliy Chepiga) being named, in part by excellent work of Bellingcat and Russian based activists, and then Mishkin and Boshirov's hilariously inept and comedic interview on Russian television.

During this period between the Skripals and the later 2 poisoning we read of Russian attempts to disrupt world bodies from investigating, notably the Swiss based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and the expulsion of 150 Russian diplomats from UK/British/European and other nations (a larger expulsion than took place at any time in the Cold War) and joint statements by UK, Germany, US, Canada and France stating they had full-confidence that the poisoning of the Skripals was orchestrated by the Russian state and almost certainly approved at the highest levels of government.

Overall, Mark Urban weaves a fascinating story about spies, intelligence operations, state revenge and the use of nation manufactured nerve agent on the streets of Salisbury in Wiltshire, England.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to confess to having been a little dubious of a book published on the Skripals this soon after the events surrounding their near death. At the time of publication, the online investigators of Bellingcat had only just unearthed the identities of their alleged GRU poisoners and I doubted this would make it into the narrative (I was correct on that). But the author, Mark Urban, is a highly respected journalist and author, a number of his books on the SAS in particular being essential reading.

Once I started The Skripal Files, any concerns I had were allayed. It turns out the author had been in conversation with Sergei Skripal long before the attack on him, having been speaking to him for a book project on post-Cold War spying. So, much of this book consists of information the author had already researched, and thus this is far from a tabloid tome rushed out to cash in on a headline news story.

The Skripal Files is in many ways a biography of Sergei Skripal himself, a biography that helps illuminate the history of the post-Cold War Russian intelligence apparatus, with a particular focus on the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. Skripal, a military engineer by training, had joined the army airborne corp, from which many members of the elite Spetznaz are drawn (while the Spetznaz have often been compared to the SAS or US Navy Seals, the author Mark Galeotti argues that they are not actually comparable). Skripal was then taken on by the GRU and was posted abroad to Malta, then later Madrid. Perhaps ironically given what was to come, his job was to recruit agents to spy for Russia, though he does not appear to have achieved much success. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Skripal suffered the same crisis of purpose as many Russian intelligence officers and was ripe for recruitment by MI6.

Mark Urban outlines all this in fascinating detail, before going on to explain how Skripal’s cover was finally blown to the FSB, the Russian internal intelligence service; how he was arrested, interrogated and sent to the gulag; how he was eventually traded in a spy swap; his life in the UK; and what might have led the Russian state to target him. Apart from being interesting in itself, this all gives a good insight into the decline of Russia’s intelligence agencies in the early 90’s, how MI6 and other western agencies targeted officers within those agencies for recruitment, and how post-Putin’s rise, Russia has tried, often brutally, to stop the rot.

What I found most interesting about this title however, was the insight it gave into Skripal himself. Pictures of him from his life in retirement in Salisbury prior to the poisoning give the impression of a rather harmless, slightly overweight, elderly man. This is misleading. Skripal was tough, indeed in other circumstances he might well have been the one doing the poisoning. Prior to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, when Skripal was with the airborne forces, he was sent into the country on an assassination mission. While not spelt out, it’s clear they did what they were asked. Other anecdotes scattered throughout the book make it clear that on occasion Skripal was more than happy to rely on his fists. None of this of course means we should have any less sympathy for Skripal, his attempted poisoning was without a doubt a serious crime, but again it gives an insight into the kind of people that make up the GRU.

Alongside the Bellingcat revelations, which this book was completed prior to, and so does not feature in the narrative, Mark Urban’s writing leaves little doubt as to the GRU’s complicity in Skripal’s poisoning, and thus that of the Russian state. This is a fascinating account of both Skripal’s near assassination, the GRU organisation he was once a part of, and the ongoing war Russia is engaged in with the West.

[Star Merrill · Rating 5 out of 5]

A scary look at the vendettas against previous Russian spies. They'll get you even after you've "retired".
So much information just about shorted out my brain. Some parts I had to read over and over to understand, but I'm glad I did.

[Morag · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only criticism is that i'd like more time to have been spent on the fatality, Dawn Sturgess. Maybe there's no more to know but I felt her story was glossed over

[Translator Monkey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was published so (relatively) quickly after the entire Skripal poisoning affair and the fallout thereafter that I thought it was surely going to be a slap-dash affair, cobbled together from random sources and reading as though it were put together by an amateur sleuth. We've all read rushed-to-publication books at least once in our lives, so I think you can appreciate my concern. But it IS a library book, so nothing ventured, nothing gained.

This book is nothing of the sort. By happy circumstance, Mark Urban had already been working in a book that leaned heavily on his interviews with Skripal over the years, and he had already done a remarkable amount of research on Skripal's background which would have made an excellent book by itself. Add to this the Novichok poisoning of Skripal and his daughter in March 2018 (as well as three other named bystanders), and you have in your hands an implausible thriller.

Urban's writing is first-rate. I'm amazed at how many journalists are able to turn what could just as easily be a set of articles into a true page-turner of a book, all without feeling the need to sensationalize the subject matter - in this case, it sensationalizes itself throughout.

My one very minor gripe is that the book was trotted out before any real suspects could be fingered in the affair. Hindsight's perfection tells me that suspects were identified in August, and while the book itself was published in October, one could argue that getting the book back from the editors and wiping the pre-publication proofs was possible in order to cobble together a postscript containing the information, but naming suspects in a book can be a fairly calamitous affair, from a legal point of view; even stating suspects have been identified, without naming them, could have been an embarrassment if that particular part of the Skripal case fell apart. So mine is a very thin bone to pick - the book's merits are numerous, and it is an excellent study, from start to near-finish.

[Steve G**** · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Urban’s The Skripal Files is far more than a journalistic investigation into the notorious Salisbury poisonings — it’s a compelling, often sobering biography of Sergei Skripal himself. Rather than fixating solely on the attempted assassination that captured global headlines, Urban delves deep into Skripal’s life as a soldier, spy, and ultimately, a double-agent. What emerges is a rich, human portrait of a man who operated in the murky shadows of Cold War and post-Soviet espionage, yet retained a clear sense of identity, values, and surprising resilience.

One of the book’s strengths lies in how it frames the Salisbury attack not merely as a personal vendetta, but as a brutal, symbolic gesture — a chilling message from the Russian state to those it considers traitors. Urban avoids sensationalism, instead showing how such operations serve geopolitical goals as much as they do punitive ones.

While the poisoning incident is clearly a pivot point, the narrative soon broadens into a reflection on the broader forces at play — notably the disintegrating relationship between Britain and Russia, and the rise of disinformation as a geopolitical tool. Urban is careful not to lose sight of the human dimension, but there’s no denying that the political and diplomatic aftermath often overshadows the personal tragedy at the story’s core.

This book is less a thriller than a quiet, methodical unpacking of a man’s life in espionage and what it means to be caught between two worlds. It’s well-researched, thoughtful, and manages to humanize a figure often reduced to headlines. A recommended read for anyone interested in modern espionage, Russian-Western relations, or the personal costs of geopolitical conflict.

[Muhammad Ahmad · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a book produced in such short time, this is a surprisingly deep and well-informed account not just of the Skripal affair but also of post-Cold War espionage between Britain and the Russia. The picture that emerges is the obvious one of a Britain which sees greater value in its economic relations with Russia than in any effort to sanction Russia for its repeated provocative acts on British soil, from the killing of Litvinenko to the attempt on the Skripals. The MI6 is not quite the competent super-spy operation of the Bond movies though far more subtle than its Russian counterpart. And in the contest with an aggressive Russian FSB, it has been mostly outmatched because, unlike the Russian FSB, it is constrained by cautious national leadership and uncertain aims. The segments on the rivalry between the FSB and the GRU and Putin's taming of the latter were particularly good.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published relatively quickly after the attempted assassination of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury by means of a nerve agent four years ago, this book focusses a lot more on Skripal's background and intelligence work than on the investigation into the poisoning - which is just as well, as I followed the reporting closely at the time and knew a lot more about March 2018 and its aftermath than I did about Skripal himself before picking up this book. Definitely an interesting read.

[Lottie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good insight, lovely to listen to Mark Urban. Listened to the book which was very nice.

[Andrew Foote · Rating 3 out of 5]

As described in the introduction, this is a book about an "East-West spy battle that had barely slackened after the end of the Cold War". Originally it was going to focus on the story of Operation Ghost Stories, the 2010 FBI operation that resulted in the capture of ten Russian sleeper agents in the USA, and the deporting of these sleeper agents to Russia in exchange for the release of four people imprisoned in Russia.

An amusing thing about Operation Ghost Stories is that apparently, the reason only four people were exchanged for ten was that Russia simply didn't have enough captured spies to make a fair trade. Two of them are widely believed to have never even spied against Russia. One of them, Gennady Vasilenko, had been involved in a long relationship with a CIA officer named Jack Platt, where each tried to convince the other to betray their country, and they became close friends along the way, but neither of them ever actually gave in. Even so, the Russian authorities became suspicious and fired him from the KGB in 1988 after subjecting him to much interrogation. After various attempts to charge him with various crimes over the years he was eventually found guilty in 2006 of possessing illegal firearms and explosives (part of his bond with Platt, a Texan, was that they were both really into guns) and his term was later extended due to his alleged bribery of officials at the penal colony in which he was imprisoned.

Another one of the exchanged prisoners, Igor Sutyagin, had merely done research, using publicly available data, for a British firm that, unbeknownst to him, was a front for MI6. The fact that this firm, was, in fact, actually a front for MI6 is something that was only revealed in this book. This is evidence that Mark Urban was not simply acting as a mouthpiece for Western intelligence agencies when writing this book, as I imagine the British authorities would rather have had him not reveal this. Apparently an MI6 officer commented that the incident "raised some difficult ethical questions for the Service". (I recommend you read the interview Sutyagin did with RFE/RL, in which he displays an admirable characteristically Russian sense of black humour.)

Anyway, the author (Mark Urban, a well-known British journalist who can often be seen reporting on foreign affairs on BBC Newsnight) decided that in order to report on this story, he would interview the one man out of these four who had actually spied for the UK---a man named Sergei Skripal.

As everyone now knows, there was an unexpected twist in the story that occurred while Mark Urban was doing his research. On 4 March 2018, Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found collapsed on a park bench in Salisbury, close to death due to the effects of a little-known Russian-developed nerve agent called Novichok. The incident raised alarm in the UK not only because of the cruelty and contempt for the British state shown by Russia in its carrying out of an assassination on British soil of somebody who they had pardoned (all the prisoners released during Operation Ghost Stories were pardoned by Dmitry Medvedev beforehand) and released, but also because of the prospect that quantities of the poison, which is invisible, highly potent and absorbable through the skin, could still present in Salisbury as a risk to public health. Indeed, several months after the incident, three more people were poisoned, and one of them died as a result, after they found a perfume bottle filled with the poison while searching bins in Salisbury. It's now believed that this bottle was the container used by the poisoners. Anyway, that second incident came after this book was published.

I started reading this book after watching the documentary the BBC released about these poisoning incidents. The BBC's documentary focuses on the public health angle, which is obviously particularly relevant in 2020 as we seek to protect ourselves against a similar invisible agent of disease and death. Mark Urban's book is a useful complement to this, as it is more focussed on Sergei Skripal himself, and on what might have been the motivation for the attack.

The way I actually came come across this book was that I was looking online for people's opinions on the BBC documentary, and came across some conspiracy-minded people, such as Craig Murray, who were pointing out how odd it was that Urban was already writing a book on Skripal before the incident occurred. There are certainly weak points in the official narrative, and a lot of people have raised questions about it. I remember there was widespread suspicion, among ordinary British people who I came into contact with at the time of the event, that our government was giving us a false narrative. With regards to the fact that Mark Urban was already writing this book, it did seem like a startling coincidence to me at first, but now that I've read the book and seen that there was already quite an interesting story here about the continuation of the Cold War spy game, it doesn't seem so startling. Before 2018 Mark Urban had already published many books in his career, all about war and/or espionage in some form or other---it's hardly an unusual topic for him to decide to cover.

The other fact the conspiracy-minded people like to point out about Mark Urban is that he, in his previous career in the British army in the early 1980s, was once part of the same regiment as Pablo Miller. This Pablo Miller is somebody who is said---the claim appears to originate from the Russian FSB ---to have been responsible for the turning of a number of Russian spies, including Sergei Skripal. In the West, all official services have to say about Pablo Miller is that he is a diplomat. By the way, something I didn't know, before I started reading this book and getting a bit interested in how spies operate, is that spies very often have "diplomatic cover", which is to say, they do their job while pretending that they are merely diplomats posted in the countries they're spying in. The advantage of diplomatic cover, over other kinds of cover, is that diplomats have diplomatic immunity, so they can't be arrested and can only be expelled from the country. Now, after the Skripal incident, the UK, along with many other countries, expelled a number of Russian diplomats; Russia responded in turn by expelling a number of UK diplomats. I didn't know at the time that most of these expelled diplomats were probably spies! (Looking back at some reports now, it appears that some countries did explicitly accuse the diplomats they expelled of being spies; I just missed that at the time.) Of course, given that they had probably been known to be spies beforehand, and their presence in the country had been felt to be acceptable before then, the expulsions were probably still ultimately just a symbolic gesture of disapproval.

Anyway, it seems plausible to me that Pablo Miller was or is indeed a spy and likely was the one who recruited Skripal and subsequently acted as his handler. But what is the significance of this? Well, apparently a LinkedIn profile for Pablo Miller (which has now been deleted) revealed that he was working for Orbis Business Intelligence, a security consultancy. I should note that this has been alleged to be false information placed on the Internet by the Russians. But anyway. This company came into the public eye back in early 2017 when Buzzfeed leaked a dossier compiled by its director, an ex-spy named Christopher Steele, containing a number of allegations about cooperation between Donald Trump and Russia during the 2016 US presidential election, most famously the allegation that the Russians had a video of Trump watching prostitutes urinate on a bed in a Moscow hotel, which they had been able to use as blackmail. This leads to the idea that Skripal may have been one of the sources supplying information that appeared in this dossier, and this may have been the motive Russia had to get rid of him. Craig Murray favours a somewhat wilder theory that Skripal was threatening to reveal that the information he supplied was actually a fabrication, and as a result, it was actually the US/UK intelligence services decided to eliminate him, while framing Russia for the deed. I don't find this very convincing: the connection is tenuous and in any case, many people were extremely skeptical of the dossier from the start, and in 2020 it has largely been discredited, without any help from Skripal. I don't think it is such a big deal that all this would happen over it.

It is remarkable that this all happened in Salisbury, the closest city to Porton Down, where the UK military does research on chemical and biological weapons, and that the military had been carrying out a big chemical weapons training exercise only a couple of months earlier, and that the first responder on the scene when the Skripals were poisoned happened to be the Chief Nursing Officer of the British Army, Alison McCourt. But as I don't see any credible motivation for the US/UK services to want to dispose of Skripal themselves and blame it on the Russians, I'm prepared to accept that these are just coincidences, for the time being.

So, to get back to the book, now that I've explained why I find the author reasonably trustworthy... well, it is basically a biography of Sergei Skripal. But Skripal spent all of his working life in first the Russian military, then the Russian intelligence services (after a certain point, as a double agent), so the other narrative thread is the history of these Russian institutions and their relationships with the West. This is perhaps what is of the widest significance in the book. The key point is that in these spheres, the Cold War never really ended. In the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was some hope that the Russian intelligence services would be able to start a relationship with foreign intelligence services that was more about cooperation, rather than conflict, dealing with common concerns such as preventing proliferation of WMDs, terrorist attacks and organized crime. This effort had already basically failed by 1994, when the Russians expelled a British spy who had already "declared" himself as a spy to the Russians in 1992, in the interest of cooperation. Apparently this was in retaliation for the denial of a visa to an SVR guy (the SVR is Russia's MI6, its external intelligence agency) who Moscow wanted to place in London. Urban doesn't go too much into that side of the story, and perhaps Britain has the responsibility as much as Russia here. But the point is that the intelligence services quickly fell back into the old mode of mutual distrust. The same happened, of course, in most of the spheres of the relationship between Russia and the West, only it took longer in other spheres.

One of the ironies described in the book is that Skripal himself was a pretty unreconstructed Russian. He had gone over to MI6 in the context of the Soviet Union's collapse and the farce of Yeltsin's presidency, which caused him to lose respect for Russia's governing institutions. But he was a patriotic Russian, with a strong allegiance to the military. He spent much of his time in Salisbury watching Russian state TV, and when asked about the Ukraine situation, he expressed his view that Ukrainians were like sheep, and their natural place was to be dominated by Russians. So perhaps he would have felt more comfortable in the Russia that developed after 2000. However, it is also significant that he was part of the GRU, Russia's agency for military intelligence. This agency has a long history of its own, and was always separate from the KGB. It was the few Russian institutions which was not closely monitored by the secret police. Immediately after the Soviet collapse, it apparently managed to maintain much of its independence, whereas the KGB suffered a kind of collapse as well, only reorganizing itself as the SVR and the FSB in the late 1990s. The emnity Skripal felt for Yeltsin's government was shared by most in the GRU; Yeltsin was not on good terms with the army. So as the regular intelligence services were reasserting themselves, there was some emnity between them and the GRU. In the end, of course, the FSB achieved the ultimate prize by getting their own man, Vladimir Putin, appointed as the President of the country. This is an important piece of context in understanding the motivation for the Russian state to want Skripal killed.

Of course we don't know exactly how far Vladimir Putin, or the Russian state, was involved in the specific operation to assassinate Skripal. But to me, it does make a lot of sense that this was something endorsed at a high level, now that I understand Skripal's history. I should note one argument I heard a lot at the time: people often said it would have been stupid for Putin to do something like this just before the election in Russia. Certainly, the Skripal incident certainly damaged Russian's *international* image. But that image had already suffered a lot of damage; I don't think Putin really cares too much about damaging it further at this stage. With regard to *internal* politics, it's a different matter. After all, Skripal was indeed a spy who betrayed his country. The effect of the Skripal assassination on the election was to refocus the attention of the Russian people on a sense of emnity with the West rather than their own domestic politics, and in that sense it was probably helpful for Putin in winning the election.

[Annette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chilling because the spying between East and West never ended. Written cleanly and clearly. Excellent.

[Dmitry · Rating 4 out of 5]

(The English review is placed beneath Russian one)

Довольно интересная, хоть и в большей мере развлекательная нехудожественная литература, которая будет популярна, скорее всего, лишь короткий период времени. Можно даже сказать, что это расширенная газетная статья. Однако это не идёт в минус книге. Нет, просто нужно ожидать не историческую, а именно журналистскую работу. Правда, могло ли быть иначе, учитывая саму тему и то, что история ещё не закончилась. Тем не менее, книга интересна.
Мне понравилась книга в качестве лёгкого чтива, что-то типа газетной статьи и триллера. В любом случаи, автор умеет хорошо писать и имее�� довольно глубокие знания (относительно глубокие, конечно) по рассматриваемой теме. Плюс, книга как бы суммирует все статьи на эту тему и все, что известно на сегодняшний день по делу Скрипалей, благодаря чему можно не тратить время на чтение газет, журналов и интернет статей, что для многих людей является крайне удобным, ибо, ознакомление с новостями отнимает очень много времени, чаще всего по причине их повторяемости в различных изданиях, т.е. когда одна тема повторяется помногу раз, ничего нового не добавляя к уже сказанному и делается это разными изданиями, которые используют один и тот же источник. В общем, эту книгу можно рассматривать как биографию Скрипалей и как суммирование всего того, что известно на сегодняшний день, без какого-либо повторения. Плюс, автор действительно добавляет новую информацию, которую он получил благодаря собственным исследованиям и интервью.
В принципе книгу можно разделить на три части, где третья, это фон. Во-первых, как я сказал выше, это биография Скрипалей, которой автор посвятит первую часть книги, т.е. как поднимался Скрипаль по карьерной лестнице, где служил и чем там занимался. К счастью, всё коротко и по делу. Я бы не сказал, что это была самая интересная часть книги, но и откровенно скучной её тоже назвать нельзя, ибо всё же нужно отдать должное автору, писать он умеет даже на относительно скучные темы (редко когда мне интересно читать биографии). Второй момент, это фон о котором я чуть выше упомянул. Я имею в виду, автор довольно точно опишет политический ландшафт того времени вплоть до начала правления Путина и его рокировку с Медведевым. Это крайне важное замечание, т.к. чтобы понять суть книги, необходимо понять, как менялся политический ландшафт, т.е. именно политические изменения стали фатальны для Скрипалей. Возможно, если бы политика демократизации продолжалась, всё было бы иначе и никаких отравлений не было бы, т.к. ни США, ни Великобритания, ни ЕС своих бывших шпионов не травят, ибо смысла нет, а издержки большие.
В-третьих, действующие лица. Тут участниками, помимо Скрипалей, будут: человек, с кем работал Скрипаль и кто был убит после ареста; человек, который выдал Скрипаля и второго агента (того самого, о котором я только что упомянул и который был убит); Борис Березовский (и история покушения на него в Восточной Европе). Конечно, можно было бы упомянуть и Анну Чапман и Ко, на которых поменяли Скрипаля и ещё четверых шпионов работавших на западные разведки, но автор упоминает об этом мельком.
В итоге мы имеем начало карьеры главного героя, решение переметнуться на другую сторону, разоблачение и тюрьма, и попытка отравления. Последняя часть книги – отравление – практически полностью состоит из газетных вырезок, поэтому самый большой интерес будет представлять главы до попытки отравления.

Quite interesting, though mostly entertaining non-fiction literature, which will be popular, most likely, only for a short period of time. We can even say that this is an extended newspaper article. However, this is not a negative characteristic. We just have to expect a journalistic work, not a historical one. But could it have been otherwise, given the topic and the fact that the story is not over yet. Nevertheless, the book is interesting.
I liked the book as a light reading, something like a newspaper article and a thriller. In any case, the author knows how to write well and has a rather deep knowledge (relatively deep, of course) on this topic. Plus, the book as if sums up all the articles on the subject and everything that is known today in the case of Skripals, so you cannot waste time reading newspapers, magazines and online articles, which is very convenient for many people, because the reading of news takes a lot of time, most often because of their repetition in different editions, i.e., when one theme is repeated many times, without adding anything new to what has already been said and doing it by different editions that use the same source. In general, this book can be viewed as a biography of Scripals and as a summary of all that is known today, without any repetition. Plus, the author does add new information that he has received through his own research and interviews.
The book can be divided into three parts, where the third is the background. First, as I said above, it is the biography of Skripal, to which the author will dedicate the first part of the book, i.e. how Skripal ascended the career ladder, where he served and what he did there. Fortunately, everything is short and focused. I wouldn't say that it was the most interesting part of the book, but I can't call it boring either, because it's necessary to admit that the author is able to turn relatively boring topics into rather interesting ones (rarely when I'm interested in reading biographies). The second point is the background that I mentioned a little bit above. I mean, the author will rather accurately describe the political landscape of that time up to the beginning of Putin's rule and his castling with Medvedev. This is an extremely important remark, because in order to understand the essence of the book, it is necessary to understand how the political landscape has changed, i.e. it is political changes that have become fatal for Skripals. Perhaps, if the policy of democratization continued, everything would be different and there would be no poisoning, because neither the U.S., nor Britain, nor the EU do not poison their former spies, because there is no sense, and the costs are high.
Third, the dramatis personae. The participants here, apart from Skripal, will be: the person with whom Skripal worked and who was murdered after his arrest; the person who extradited Skripal and the second agent (the one I just mentioned and who was murdered); Boris Berezovsky (the story of the attempt to assassinate him in Eastern Europe). Of course, we can also mention Anna Chapman and Co., who were exchanged for Skripal and four other spies working for Western intelligence, but the author mentions it briefly.
As a result, we have the beginning of the protagonist's career, the decision to move to the other side, exposure and prison, and an attempt at poisoning. The last part of the book - poisoning - consists almost entirely of newspaper clippings, so the greatest interest will be the chapters before the attempt of poisoning.

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

So hard to read with sentences the length of paragraphs. The 1st section was a struggle to get through. The second section was slightly better, but the book didn't really become interesting until section 3. It is clear that Urban started to write one book, then had to change directions after Skripal was poisoned. This book could have been so interesting and a real page turner, if it would have stayed more focused. Only reason I finished this book was because I nominated it for my book club group, otherwise I would have never made it past the first 3 chapters.

[Julie Hudson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit dull and skipped through the first part a bit - I got the gist but it seems the author was going to write a book originally about the prisoners that were exchanged between US & Russia and following that up which may have been quite dull. It got interesting for me once it talks about the poisoning in Salisbury (the second half of the book). Hope Mr Skripal and his daughter are now keeping well and hiding better.

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first half of this book was extremely hard to get through. Very slow read and so many abbreviations and names that got confusing. It is obvious that the book started out to be one thing, then Skripal was poisoned and it turned into something else. The second half of the book was more interesting but hard to justify suffering through the first half to get to it.

[Hilay Hopkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book. Great background material into and the Salisbury poisonings.. There were some other aspects that I think deserved greater discussion such as the policeman and the other two victims, but it was an interesting read and good to have a switch in genre.

[Sheri Maxey-Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high expectations but this book fell short of the mark. The content is mind numbingly boring. Extremely dry.

[Olena · Rating 4 out of 5]

There will be few spoilers in my review, so please consider it before reading.
The beginning of the book was very promising, lots of names (old and new), the sort of book that you would want to read again and again…
However!
Later on there was no description of Skripal’s new life in UK and very break descriptions of surroundings and people in general. It was really difficult to picture his life in UK. The whole book was revolving around his previous life and poisoning really.
What I really liked is some insightful information about poisonous agents and few stories of poisonings from the past.
What made my blood boil is mentioning about Putin and Ukraine. I found absolutely disgusting how Skripal described Ukrainians and, to be honest, it crossed my mind the that he got poisoned because of his bad karma.
What I disliked in the book is few very last chapters. The ending was quite dry and predictable.
That’s why this book gets 4 stars from me, which is very generous I think.

[Sarah Ewald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty thorough book about the whole Sergei Skripal case. The author went into to great detail about his life in Russia, before and after the GRU. The poisoning that we saw on the news was only the last quarter of the book. Even though, information of what has happened to him and his daughter since is scarce. Probably keeping him safe from any reprisals from the Putin gang.

"On a shelf in the living room the little model cottage that Richard Bagnall (his MI6 contact) gave to Sergei back in 1996 still sits. Even after everything, it carries its promise of a better future, a happier one in that mythical place where a man's home is his castle. this English Eden is a vivid, imagined world, where an old colonel might wile away the days of his autumn, relishing happy memories of Kaliningrad, Fergana, or Malta, free from the ugly brutality of those who rule his mother country."

[Hazel Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

A frightening insight of the possible use of lethal poison for political control. Especially as it was so recent. Found the Rusiian names a little challenging, but sequent put in context by a competent journalistic writer. Started to lose interest towards the end as there could be no satisfactory conclusion in real life either. The solitary and secret life of the longterm spy was the saddest aspect, especially as adult children may have allegiances to other places. Family life was rarely possible.

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well-written and engaging book. It is split into three parts; one focusing on Skripal’s early life and his career, then his fall from grace, before finally focusing on the events of the poisoning and its immediate aftermath.

Some parts of it are truly fascinating; the author clearly had a good insight into a lot of Skripal’s life and his presentation of events is very matter-of-fact in a lot of places, without being clouded by opinion. The insight it gives into the world of espionage is very interesting and, as you would expect with a real story like this, there are lots of fascinating twists and turns.

However, I did think that some parts of the story lagged a bit and were quite dry, and the ending was very blunt. It just sorted of ended, with no real rounding off of events, which felt very jarring and disjointed. I did think it had a poignant note to it, but it felt like there was more to be said.

It’s not a bad book, though, just a bit slow in parts. It’s an interesting enough story and it’s very readable.

Content Notes:

Warnings: References throughout to death, murder, violence, torture, nerve agents and their affects, medical care.

[Lukasz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bardzo szczegółowa ksiązka opisująca historię Skripala. O próbie zamachu na jego życie wiedziałem już wcześniej. Ale nie wiedziałem jaka była jego historia życiowa, jak został zwerbowany przez brytyjczyków, że siedział nawet w więzieniu w Rosji i to że został wymieniony za innych szpiegów. No i wreszcie z książki dowiedziałem się jak odbył się zamach na jego życie i że nawet przypadkowe osoby ucierpiały.

[Llew Sadler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth the read

This is a very informative read.
It’s an eye opener for the reader into the Russian Intelligence Service.
As a layman I found it, at times, difficult to understand and to take everything in.
The book does keep your interest alive and your expectations alert.
The research that has gone into the writing of this book is a credit to the author.

[K. Isaure · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Skripal Files
The Skripal Files Lessons and Key Takeaways:

Do not trust anyone easily or quickly.
Power with man is nothing without the power to fight and to survive.

Biggest Takeaway:

Family is important. Treasure them.

Quote in Summary:

“Power with man and being careful in how you act and react is as important as the power to fight and the will to survive.”

[Shannon]

The blurb above may pitch this as a definitive account but is missing a lot of background info. Unless you're already well versed in the culture of Russian spying in the cold war it's a hard read. "rezidentura" wasn't even defined until several chapters in (thanks The Americans!)

[Sophia Rigby · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great background to the Skripal case - I knew a lot about the events in Salisbury and the political consequences, but this is a good look at the events that led to Salisbury and how this man ended up living quietly in the city.

[Greg Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fascinating, albeit perfunctory, account of the 2018 Skripal poisoning in Salisbury, England. It is loaded with facts from "official government" sources. It has been annotated and documented well. The account is poignant, sad and believable.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed and intriguing account

[Kevinjwoods · Rating 5 out of 5]

the book to read if you want to know who exactly this Skripal bloke is that all the cool journalists are talking about

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written with clear narrative & authoitative voice.