[14][15] Charlie Rowley found a perfume bottle, later discovered to contain the agent, in a litter bin somewhere in Salisbury and gave it to Dawn Sturgess who sprayed it on her wrist.

[57] On 5 April, British authorities said that inside Skripal's house, which had been sealed by the police, two guinea pigs were found dead by vets, when they were allowed in, along with a cat in a distressed state, which had to be put down.

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, head of Counter Terrorism Policing, appealed for witnesses to the incident following a COBR meeting chaired by Home Secretary Amber Rudd.

[78][79] Ahmet Üzümcü, Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said on 20 March that it will take "another two to three weeks to finalise the analysis" of samples taken from the poisoning of Skripal.

[84][85][86] A declassified letter from the UK's national security adviser, Sir Mark Sedwill, to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, stated Russian military intelligence hacked Yulia Skripal's email account since at least 2013 and tested methods for delivering nerve agents including on door handles.

[88][89] The Skripals' survival was possibly due to the weather – there had been heavy fog and high humidity, and according to its inventor and other scientists, moisture weakens the potency of this type of toxin.

[94] On 3 May 2018, the head of the OPCW, Ahmet Üzümcü, informed the New York Times that he had been told that about 50–100 grams of the nerve agent was thought to have been used in the attack, which indicated it was likely created for use as a weapon and was enough to kill a large number of people.

[98] On 6 August 2018, it was reported that the British government was "poised to submit an extradition request to Moscow for two Russians suspected of carrying out the Salisbury nerve agent attack".

[needs update] The Metropolitan Police used two super recognisers to identify the suspects after trawling through up to 5,000 hours of CCTV footage from Salisbury and numerous airports across the country.

[109][110] On 26 September 2018, the real identity of the suspect named by police as Ruslan Boshirov was revealed as Colonel Anatoliy Vladimirovich Chepiga by The Daily Telegraph, citing reporting by itself and Bellingcat, with Petrov having a more junior rank in the GRU.

[130] Prime Minister Theresa May said in the House of Commons on 12 March: It is now clear that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia.

[133] Jeremy Corbyn cast doubt in his parliamentary response to May's statement concerning blaming the attack on Russia prior to the results of an independent investigation, which provoked criticism from some MPs, including members of his own party.

[140] He supported the expulsion but argued that a crackdown on money laundering by UK financial firms on behalf of Russian oligarchs would be a more effective measure against "the Putin regime" than the Conservative government's plans.

"[157][158] Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on 9 March rejected Britain's claim of Russia's involvement in Skripal's poisoning and accused the United Kingdom of spreading propaganda.

[171][172][173][174] On 5 September 2018 Putin's Press Secretary, Dmitry Peskov, stated that Russia had not received any official request from Britain for assistance in identifying the two suspected Russian GRU military intelligence officers that Scotland Yard believes carried out the Skripal attack.

[179][180] On 25 September, the FSB began searching for Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) officers who had provided journalists with foreign passport and flight information about the suspects[needs update].

[181] For a few days following the poisoning, the story was discussed by web sites, radio stations and newspapers, but Russian state-run main national TV channels largely ignored the incident.

[182][183] Eventually, on 7 March, anchor Kirill Kleimyonov of the state television station Channel One Russia's current affairs programme Vremya mentioned the incident by attributing the allegation to Boris Johnson.

[187] Dmitry Kiselyov, pro-Kremlin TV presenter, said on 11 March that the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, who was "completely wrung out and of little interest" as a source, was only advantageous to the British to "nourish their Russophobia" and organise the boycott of the FIFA World Cup scheduled for June 2018.

"[178] On 22 August 2022, the editor-in-chief of Kremlin-backed RT network, Margarita Simonyan, appeared to lend support to the suggestion that Russia had been involved in the poisoning, with her remark "I am sure we can find professionals willing to admire the famous spires in the vicinity of Tallinn" – seen as a reference to the agents' claims that they were sightseeing in Salisbury.

[196][155] Vil Mirzayanov, a former Soviet Union scientist who worked at the research institute that developed the Novichok class of nerve agents and lives in the United States, believes that hundreds of people could have been affected by residual contamination in Salisbury.

[218][219] The action was cast as being "in response to Russia's use of a military-grade chemical weapon on the soil of the United Kingdom, the latest in its ongoing pattern of destabilising activities around the world".

"[230] Norbert Röttgen, a former federal minister in Angela Merkel's government and current chairman of Germany's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said the incident demonstrated the need for Britain to review its open-door policy towards Russian capital of dubious origin.

[233] Albania, Australia, Canada, Georgia, North Macedonia, Moldova, Norway and Ukraine expelled a total of 27 Russian diplomats who were believed to have been intelligence officers.

[238][239] On 19 March, the European Union also issued a statement strongly condemning the attack and stating it "takes extremely seriously the UK Government's assessment that it is highly likely that the Russian Federation is responsible".

[276] On 13 September 2018, Chris Busby, a retired research scientist, who is regularly featured as an expert on the Russian government-controlled RT television network, was arrested after his home in Bideford was raided by police.

[281] Following his release, Busby told the BBC he believed that the fact that two of the officers who had raided his property had felt unwell was explained by "psychological problems associated with their knowledge of the Skripal poisoning".

[282] On 16 September, fears of Novichok contamination flared up again after two people fell ill at a Prezzo restaurant, 300 metres (980 ft) from the Zizzi location where the Skripals had eaten before collapsing.

[283] The next day, the police said there was "nothing to suggest that Novichok" was the cause of the two people falling ill.[284] However, on 19 September, one of the apparent victims, Anna Shapiro, claimed in The Sun newspaper that the incident had been an attempted assassination against her and her husband by Russia.

[287] In May 2021 Nick Bailey, who continued to feel the effects of his poisoning and had retired early as a result, began personal injury litigation against Wiltshire Police;[288] an undisclosed settlement was reached in April 2022.