The Salisbury Poisonings: How Britain traced, tracked and tested in 2018
Two years before the coronavirus pandemic forced governments to trace, track and test, a quaint and quiet town in Britain, Salisbury, was tracing, tracking, testing people and things those people may have touched.
It all started after two people, a man and his daughter, collapsed suffering what seemed like a seizure while they were sitting on a park bench on March 4, 2018. Their identification sent jitters down the spine of the authorities not just in Salisbury, but also the national government of Britain.
The man was identified as Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer, who worked as a double agent for UK’s intelligence services. Samples collected from him and his daughter made it clear that the duo had been poisoned with a nerve agent.
Two years later, the BBC series The Salisbury Poisonings (currently streaming on Netflix) revisits the horror that landed in Salisbury in the form of Russian agents out to take down Skripal and in the process, endangering the lives of about 50,000 residents of the town.
Skripal had been working as a double agent for UK’s Secret Intelligence Service since 1995. His lid was blown off, leading to his arrest by Russia in 2004. Two years later, Skripal was held guilty of high treason, which earned him a prison term of 13 years. But a prisoner swap deal got Skripal to UK in 2010. Since then, Skripal had been living in the UK with his daughter Yulia.
But Vladimir Putin had reportedly vowed to punish him Putin style – with a ‘newbie’. Novichok nerve agents were secretly developed by the USSR in the early 1970s. In Russian, Novichok means ‘newbie’.
The series however isn’t about the people or the process involved in making and administering Novichok to Skripal and his daughter. It is about those who had to deal with the scary spectre of the presence of the substance on British soil. It’s the story of the health response of the authorities in Salisbury who ensure no one dies – till one actually does, a full four months after the attack on Skripal. Any further detail would be a spoiler, so is being avoided.
Health and security officers begin shooting in the dark because there was no one to throw light on how the poison had come into the UK and was administered to Skripal. It could also have been a suicide attempt. Once the suicide angle is ruled out, authorities begin scrambling for those Skripal may have come in contact with. In an eerily similar way to how people have been tracked during this pandemic outbreak, Salisbury was tracking people who could have come into contact with the poison then. CCTVs are scanned and hundreds of calls made asking people, “How are you feeling?”
Since the source was unknown, nobody knew just where the poison could still be. The Novichok nerve agent can get into human body through the skin, inhalation or any liquid or food contaminated with it, or all three together. A police officer, involved in the investigation, got it on his skin and then spread it into his house simply by touching everyday objects like door knobs and wardrobe handles.
Cars in which traces were found had to be buried deep into the ground, as were the household objects. But how do you bury an entire town? That was the challenge Salisbury faced.
The Netflix series shows Tracy Daszkiewicz (played by Anne-Marie Duff), director of public health for Wiltshire, put into motion an elaborate plan to trace the poison in Salisbury and those it had reached. She juggles between the daunting task and the demands of a teenage son, who is upset over her continued absence from the house.
Businesses suffer as the town is brought virtually under lockdown with fear lurking in every corner. And just when everyone had begun to breathe easy and fearless, it strikes again.
The series touches upon the political response from Britain with then Prime Minister Theresa May not mincing words in calling out Vladimir Putin and Russia for putting at risk the lives of British people, leading to the death of one, Dawn Sturgess. As a mark of protest, the British royal family boycotted the FIFA World Cup that was held in Russia. Russia, on its part, put the onus of proof on Britain asking it to prove its own spies hadn’t poisoned Skripal.
The Salisbury Poisonings isn’t your usual spy thriller despite revolving around spies and intelligence agencies, but it makes the cut for an interesting watch because it introduces us to a horrid tale of the spy world, where treason has to be punished to set an example. Even if it involves risking thousands of lives.
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