Poisoned - The Russian Spies

In March 2018 Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia collapsed onto a public bench in the English town of Salisbury. They were weaving in and out of consciousness and behaving like junkies experiencing an opioid overdose. 24 hours later they were hospitalised and placed under deep sedation in critical condition. Skripal was a Russian double agent who had been recruited to work for MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service. He had been poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union for use in their chemical weapons program. More than a decade before Skripal’s poisoning, Alexander Litvinenko, another Russian intelligence officer working for MI6 had been poisoned with a rare radioactive isotope called Polonium. Skripal and Litvinenko’s stories are eerily similar and yet diverge on a single fact; while Skripal survived, Litvinenko did not. Join us this week as we explore the fascinating story behind two Russian defectors.