Russia faces blowback over its goons’ actions across Europe

ANATOLIY CHEPIGA and Alexander Mishkin rose to fame when they appeared on Russian state television in September 2018 and insisted that they had visited the English city of Salisbury earlier that year not to assassinate Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, but to visit the city’s famous cathedral. In fact, the gormless pair were veterans of , Russia’s military intelligence service. And Salisbury, it turns out, was not their first adventure. Four years earlier, it seems, they were involved in blowing up ammunition depots in the Czech Republic.The revelation is the cause of yet another crisis in relations between Russia and the West, amid on Ukraine’s borders, and , a jailed Russian opposition leader who is on hunger strike.