This is how British officials now describe Skripal, a Russian intelligence officer they recruited as a spy in the mid-1990s. Oleg Penkovsky was a colonel in the GRU who had spied for the CIA and British intelligence during the 1950s and 1960s. Such assignments may be devised as a way to keep a former spy busy, said Nigel West, a British intelligence historian. The key change was a tiny room Yulia wanted redecorated so it could be used as a nursery, according to Diana Petik, whom Yulia Skripal hired to oversee the renovations. A day earlier, according to British authorities, two Russian intelligence officers arrived in London aboard a different Aeroflot flight.

Source: thestar September 10, 2018 16:52 UTC