Third Russian linked with Salisbury poisonings seen in UK and Catalonia before divisive referendums

New details have emerged about a third Russian linked to the 2018 Salisbury poisonings by the investigative website Bellingcat. According to travel records revealed yesterday by Bellingcat and seen by CNN, the same man appears to have flown in and out of the UK and Catalonia multiple times in the run up to their referendums.

Bellingcat claims that a man traveling under the alias Sergey Vyacheslavovich Fedotov—a name they claim was assigned to him by Russia’s GRU military intelligence unit—flew into Britain from Moscow on March 2, 2018.

Bellingcat says he travelled the same day as two other agents, whose real names were Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin. All three had return tickets to leave the UK on March 4, the day former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned. Fedotov skipped his flight, Bellingcat claims, and made his way back to Moscow via Rome instead.

Cross-checking multiple travel record databases provided by whistleblowers, including flight bookings and border crossings, Bellingcat’s information shows Fedotov spent six days in the UK at the end of March 2016. That’s just over three months before the country held its referendum on EU membership.

He appears to have returned to London for a four-day visit on July 14, says Bellingcat — less than a month after the Brexit vote.

The data, seen by CNN, also appear to show that Fedotov made two trips to Barcelona: One in November 2016 and another between September 29 and October 9, 2017, at the time of Catalonia’s referendum on independence from Spain.