Vladimir Putin bears ultimate responsibility for the actions of his spies in carrying out the Salisbury nerve agent attack. That was the verdict of Ben Wallace, the British security minister, this morning. The Tory frontbencher surmised: “He is president of the Russian Federation and it is his government that controls, funds and directs the military intelligence — that’s the GRU — via his minister of defence.”Theresa May’s revelation yesterday that Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, the perpetrators of the novichok attack in Wiltshire in March, are officers of the GRU has dragged the secretive body into the limelight and raised important questions about President Putin’s links to it. The GRU is one of three distinct, and competing, Russian intelligence services that are the result…

Source: The Times September 06, 2018 16:16 UTC