The nerve agent attack on a former KGB spy in the UK was "a sign" from President Putin that "no one could escape the long arm of Russian revenge", British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said today.
Sergei Skripal, a former Russian officer who sold secrets to Britain and moved to the country in a 2010 spy swap, remains in a coma along with his daughter after they were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury city.
Johnson told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that Russia wanted defectors to know what would happen to them if they supported another country.
He also claimed they chose the UK for the attack because it has "called out" Russian abuses "time and again".
Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia were exposed to an "unknown substance" while out in Salisbury on March 5.
Johnson told the committee: "[The attack] was a sign that President Putin or the Russian state wanted to give to potential defectors in their own agencies: 'This is what happens to you if you decide to support a country with a different set of values, such as our own. You can expect to be assassinated'."
"It is Britain that has been most forthright and most obstinate in sticking up for our values and I think that is the reason it was decided to make that gesture in this country."
"Things are going to be very difficult politically for a whole time to come, but that doesn't mean all contact must be stopped or engagement stopped."