The HuffPost UK takes a look at Salisbury a year after former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found slumped on a bench.
A town that which is almost back on it feet after being rocked by relentless attention, and some panic, brought on by the Novichok poisonings of the Skripals on March 4. Two Russian GRU officers, Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, have been identified as suspects.
The advice from Public Health England remains the same – “if you didn’t drop it, then don’t pick it up”.
Sergei Skripal
The HuffPost reports that some 250 detectives have worked on the investigation, collecting over 11,000 hours of CCTV footage and more than 1,700 statements from the public as they still continue to piece together an incomplete picture.
The Skripals survived, but the story took an even more tragic turn when it emerged that two residents of a nearby town had been hit in separate poisoning 10 miles away in Amesbury.Dawn Sturgess died in July after her partner, Charlie Rowley, found a discarded fake Nina Ricci perfume bottle containing the toxic substance and unknowingly gave it to her. The bottle has still not been found, Scotland Yard said on Friday.
Rowley himself was put in hospital for several weeks. The council is in touch with most victims and their families, while the Skripals’ whereabouts remain unknown for security reasons.
The recovery process – both physical and economic – is very much an ongoing one as various stakeholders from the council to small business owners continue to work hard to get back completely on its feet.
In the meantime on an international level, what happened a year ago in Salisbury has kept relations between the West and Russia to their worst level since the end of the Cold War.
