Moscow: An investigative group in Britain said Wednesday that it has identified one of the two suspects in the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in the UK as a highly decorated colonel in the Russian military intelligence agency GRU (Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation).The group, Bellingcat, said the suspect, whose passport name was Ruslan Boshirov, is in fact Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, who in 2014 was awarded Russia's highest medal, the Hero of Russia. Play Video 1:24 Men claiming to be Salisbury novichok attack suspects speak to Russian state TV – video

Russian television had presented the two suspects, naming them as Boshirov and Petrov, as tourists who travelled twice to Salisbury because they were determined to see the city’s cathedral. Britain has said the attack received approval "at a senior level of the Russian state," an accusation Moscow has fiercely denied. Earlier this month, the two Russian men appeared on the state-funded RT channel, saying they visited Salisbury as tourists and had nothing to do with the Skripal poisoning. In a description of its investigation, Bellingcat said it found Chepiga by identifying military academies in Russia’s far east where the two men were likely to have studied and then matching a picture of the suspect to a man in camouflage gear. The British investigative group, Bellingcat, said Wednesday Sept. 26, 2018, that it has identified one of the two suspects in the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in the U.K. as a highly decorated colonel in the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, saying that he graduated from the academy in Blagoveshchensk. Now, Ruslan Boshirov has been fully unmasked as a highly decorated officer in the Russian military's special forces according to investigative website Bellingcat, which named him as Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga. The group said that Chepiga's military school listed him among graduates bestowed with the Hero of Russia award in December 2014, adding that the data signaled that he likely received the medal for his actions in eastern Ukraine.
Investigative website Bellingcat releases information identifying one of the suspects involved in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal as Anatoliy Chepiga, a decorated Colonel of the Main Intelligence Directorate.