As well as staging an interview on RT (which may lead to RT losing its UK broadcasting licence), it seems Putin’s men tried to interfer with the international investigation of their nerve agent attack.
Two Russian men, not those interviewed by RT, were arrested by Dutch security services earlier this year. The Dutch believed they were on their way to the Spiez Laboratory in Switzerland, then testing the samples given to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) by the UK. These were later confirmed by the OPCW to be Novichok nerve agent. Other samples being tested were from Syria where the Russians or their ally are believed to have dropped banned chemical weapons.
The laboratory has also confirmed that there were attempted cyber attacks.
A spokesperson for the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service (NDB) told The Independent that authorities “are aware of the case of Russian spies discovered in the Hague and expelled from the same place”.
“The Swiss Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) participated actively in this operation together with its Dutch and British partners,” she added. ”The FIS has thus contributed to the prevention of illegal actions against a critical [part of] Swiss infrastructure.”
Officials at the Spiez Laboratory said it had also been targeted with cyber attacks, including a fake conference invitation that contained malicious software.
The spies, who were allegedly found with espionage equipment that could be used to spy on the laboratory, were sent back to Russia and have not been prosecuted.
The English language version of RT is available on all platforms in the UK. These also act as “portals” to the Russian language version delivered over the web by, in the case of terrestrial TV, pressing the Red Button on the remote control. They are already under investigation by the regulator Ofcom. A withdrawal of their licence may play into their ”martyr” position when challenged about biased reporting.
Prof Stephen Hutchings, of the University of Manchester, who is leading a research project into RT, said this month that the broadcaster’s future could lie in its successful and unregulated online operation.
“They would love for Ofcom to ban them,” he claimed.
On the other hand it would free up bandwidth on a DVB-T2 mux to allow another broadcaster to provide an HD terrestrial channel. Currently 16 HD channels are broadcast terrestrially although some of these “time share” with sister channels.