Salisbury novichok ‘hitman’ at wedding of top Russian spy months before attack

One of the Russian operatives accused of the novichok attack in Salisbury was at a wedding hosted by a Moscow intelligence chief just nine months earlier.

Anatoly Chepiga posed for photographs in 2017 at the marriage ceremony of the daughter of Major General Andrei Averyanov just six months before the Salisbury attack.

Under the alias of Ruslan Boshirov he and fellow assassin Alexander Mishkin last year launched the attack against ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia.

But after the March attack – which resulted in the death of local woman ~Dawn Sturgess – the two members of the GRU spy agency went on TV denying any guilt.

The damning wedding picture nails Chepiga, 40, as one of Russia’s top operatives and firms up the accusation he was involved in the Novichok attack.

It also strongly links him to one of Russia’s most shadowy spy units which heads up Putin’s assassination squads, globally tracking down and killing targets.

Averyanov is the feared commander of Russian military intelligence agency the GRU’s 29155 unit, which launches deeply covert operations and has been behind major assassinations.

Averyanov’s unit oversaw a campaign to destabilize Moldova, an arms smuggler’s assassination attempt in Bulgaria, a thwarted coup in Montenegro and the Skripal poisoning.

British prosecutors last year accused they two Russians of trying to murder GRU defector Skripal and his daughter with the military-grade nerve agent Novichok.

Chepiga, using the alias Ruslan Boshirov, and second suspect, Alexander Mishkin, claimed they were innocent tourists visiting Salisbury to see its cathedral at the time of the Skripals’ poisoning.

The Bellingcat investigative news site published the photographs and videos Monday showing Chepiga at the wedding in July 2017.

Despite his denials and those of Moscow’s he is a highly-decorated Colonel in the GRU.

Russia’s revenge attack on Skripal, a former Russian GRU officer, on March 4 2018 and his daughter shocked the world.

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