Russia UK row: Was Putin really sending THIS chilling message with spy attack on UK soil?

The nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal may have been a warning from the Kremlin for them to go home or face similar consequences, and to stop others sending their families to so-called Londongrad, says prominent Britain-based Russian journalist Tonia Samsonova. 

She posted on Facebook: “Why should Russia kill former spies and intelligence officers in the UK, and why exactly to kill them here? 

“If we suppose that it was Russia behind the assassination attempt on [Sergei] Skripal and his daughter Yulia, then I see quite a clear logic behind it.”

Evidently referring to other suspicious deaths of her compatriots, she said: “By consistently killing people who acted in this way, Russian special services are giving a message to their current employees: you will follow the same destiny, don’t even dream of retiring abroad. 

“As for why do murders happen in London, this is because former officers come here most of all. 

“Just like ordinary Russians, or ordinary vice prime ministers, or ordinary oligarchs who decided to emigrate, ordinary intelligence officers more often choose London – because it’s good to live here.”

She wrote that senior spies and counter-intelligence operatives from the SVR and FSB are flocking to London in defiance of rules which ban them from travelling abroad except on government business. 

“Officers have children, education here is good – which is why they don’t go to France where the quality of life is higher ,” she said. 

“London is just a nice location to live. Intelligence officers understand it. 

“My observation is also built on the fact that I’ve been meeting people in London who – I thought – by their rank were not supposed to be allowed to travel outside Russia. 

“Yet they often spend weekends in the restaurants and clubs of Soho, and go back to their service by Monday. “

She believes the Skripal and Litvinenko poisonings are messages from the Kremlin to such exiles who prefer London to a Moscow under the grip of Putin.

This “explains the exotic way of murdering, when a chosen weapon leaves no chance to misunderstand that this was revenge and a weapon chosen by the state, not a person. 

“This is how enemies of the state are killed, not enemies of ordinary people. 

“It is very hard to explain to intelligent special services officers why bureaucrats are allowed to live in London and they are not. 

“Violent murders wipe away such questions.”

She wrote: “Just as understandably, Russian special services don’t want their officers to dream about leaving Russia at some point via potentially selling state secrets and exchanging the possibility of emigration and legalisation of [money] to co-operation with alien states.”

Samsonova is a London correspondent for Echo Moscow radio. 

A leading author offered a similar theory about such attacks .

Famous writer Boris Akunin – a Putin critic – said the purpose of the Salisbury attack was “to cause a sharp reaction from the British society and government”. 

The aim is to scare “big and mid-size Russian oligarchs” so that return with the families and fortunes to Moscow, he said. 

“Many, almost the majority, of ruling businessmen have one foot on foreign soil, primarily in England,” he said.

“The fact that they keep here families and capital, and that at any moment if they feel themselves under attack (at home), they are ready to run (to London) is one of the weakest and most vulnerable points of the regime. 

“So creating a situation that will force the whole group with their chests and households to move back to Kremlin-controlled territory is useful and beneficial for Putin.”