Russian spy Sergei Skripal's poisoning bears haunting similarities to murder of KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko

THE apparent poisoning of exiled Russian spy Sergei Skripal has chilling echoes of the murder of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.

He was an outspoken critic of the Kremlin before he was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 at a Mayfair hotel in 2006 – allegedly in a hit approved by Vladimir Putin.

Police are urgently trying to establish what substance may have caused Skripal and his daughter Yulia to collapse on a bench in Salisbury, Wilts, on Sunday.

Dust, pollen and other samples from the two latest victims are thought to be being examined at the MoD’s Porton Down bio-warfare labs.

Already Kremlin watchers have said it has all the hallmarks of an assassination attempt by Russian security forces or thugs acting on their behalf.

Putin-linked spooks Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi have been named as the prime suspects in the Litvinenko murder.

Kovtun and Lugovoi both deny they killed him. They are being shielded by the Kremlin which refuses to send them here for trial.

Last night Litvinenko's widow Marina told the Daily Telegraph: "It looks similar to what happened to my husband but we need more information. We need to know the substance. Was it radioactive?"

Poisoned in a restaurant

Cops have sealed off a Zizzi restaurant where it is believed Skripal and his Yulia ate before they suddenly fell critically ill.

If that was the scene of an attempted murder, it would be the same method used by Litvinenko's assassins – although probably not the same poison.

Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi tried three times to poison the KGB dissident by slipping polonium-210 into his drink at meetings they arranged in London.

The first was at a private intelligence firm in Mayfair – but Litvinenko did not touch the tea on the meeting table.

Nuclear scientists later found the table was "heaving" with contamination.

Polonium was also found in a branch of Itsu in nearby Piccadilly where Litvinenko ate with Kovtun and Lugovoi.

Litvinenko vomited later that evening – perhaps from being exposed to the radiation – but survived, an inquiry heard.

The bungling assassins are said to have finally succeeded in slipping the poison into the victim's tea when they met at the Millennium Hotel, yards from the US embassy in Grosevenor Square.

Litvinenko died in agony three weeks later.

Doctors were initially baffled by his symptoms but eventually discovered the presence of the rare toxin – which is only made in nuclear reactors.

Exiled in Britain

Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal was jailed in 2006 after he was convicted of spying for the United Kingdom.

Skripal – nicknamed "the Spy with the Louis Vuitton bag" – was accused of passing secrets to MI6 using a James Bond-style spy rock in a park in Moscow.

He moved to England after he was released as part of a prisoner swap in return for Russian agents booted out of the US including sexy spy Anna Chapman.

He kept a low profile, starting a quiet new life in Wiltshire, but some reports claim he was giving speeches and doing "consultancy" work for MI6.

Litvinenko had been an officer with KGB and its successor organisation the FSB – but he fled to Britain after criticising the Russian president.

On landing at Heathrow Airport, he approached a police officer and said: "I'm a KGB officer and I'm asking for political asylum."

In a 1998 press conference he revealed he had been asked to assassinate exiled Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky – who died in mysterious circumstances in 2013.

Alexander, known to his family as Sasha, lived in North London with his wife Marina and their children.

After his death, Marina revealed MI6 were paying him £2,000 a month to work as a consultant.

He had also received money from Berezovsky, who became his friend in the UK, while he spoke out against the Russian government and wrote for Chechen websites.

Fears for his safety

Recent reports said Skripal feared for his life after his wife died in a car crash shortly after arriving in the UK.

His son was also reportedly killed in a road accident in Russia.

Skripal was given a formal pardon in Russia before the prisoner swap.

But Putin has made menacing public warnings that intelligence officers who betray their colleagues will "pay the price".

Litvinenko had told his wife he believed he would soon be killed or arrested before they decided to flee Russia.

In England he was a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin, which he knew made him a target.

He was friends with the campaigning journalist Anna Politkovskaya, another Putin enemy who told him she was "very afraid".

She was shot dead in the stairwell of her Moscow apartment building in October 2006.

Litvinenko publicly accused Putin of having her killed – and weeks later was poisoned by goons acting for the FSB.

As he lay slowly dying in hospital, Litvinenko helped detectives trace the poison to his former FSB colleague Lugovoi.

He also said on his deathbed he had been assassinated on the orders of Vladimir Putin.

A barrister representing the Litvinenko family later claimed at an inquiry he was murdered for attempting to "expose the corruption" at the heart of Putin's "mafia state".

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