Vladimir Putin is the kind of chap you don’t want to cross, which is something that Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia know firsthand.

The pair were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on Sunday at 4PM, and suspicion immediately fell on Russia and its leader.

Fair enough, given that Vladimir Putin has previously vowed to kill the Russian double agent, who was convicted of working for MI6 and sent to the UK in a spy exchange back in 2010.

Putin didn’t mince his words at the time – the Telegraph reports:

“Traitors will kick the bucket. Trust me. These people betrayed their friends, their brothers in arms.

“Whatever they got in exchange for it, those 30 pieces of silver they were given, they will choke on them.”

Tell us how you really feel.

More on the attack:

Colonel Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia Skripal, 33, remain in intensive care fighting for their lives after they were exposed to an “unknown substance” as they sat on a bench outside a shopping centre in Salisbury in Wiltshire.

On Tuesday night it emerged Yulia [above] had previously expressed contempt for Mr Putin in posts on social media, commenting on a letter shared on Facebook in which she accused him of being “the worst president in the world”. She also remarked “nice” when a friend said he hoped to see the Russian president jailed.

As tensions between Russia and the UK escalate, with the Russian embassy in London issuing a statement accusing the British authorities of the “demonisation of Russia”, the nature of the attack leads to an obvious conclusion:

…one senior intelligence source told The Telegraph that the assassination attempt bore all the hallmarks of the Russian state intelligence agency the FSB. “This looks very much like an FSB hit,” said the source, adding: “For Putin, revenge is a dish served cold. This man betrayed the Russian security service and they do very nasty things to such people.”

The woman who found the duo, Freya Church, describes what she saw:

…she left work  at 4pm on Sunday and saw Mr Skripal and a younger woman on the bench just a few yards away.

“I was particularly worried about her,” she said.

“She was slumped over on the man’s shoulder. To be honest, I thought they might be homeless but they were perhaps better dressed.

“I just thought this is weird, especially as she was clearly quite a bit younger than him.

“She had a red bag at her feet. He was gesturing at the sky, doing some kind of movements with his hands.

“He was looking up and his eyes were glazed.

“There was no one else there near them at this point. No one was helping them.”

Scientists are now analysing the substance used in the attack, and fear it might have been the same nerve agent, VX, used in the murder of Kim Jong-nam last year.

Here’s a little more about the nerve agent:

VX, which is the most deadly of all nerve agents, was first developed in the 1950s and is a tasteless and odorless liquid, which can be fatal for humans on skin contact.

It penetrates the skin and disrupts the transmission of nerve impulses, leading to a loss of consciousness, paralysis and eventually fatal respiratory failure.

Spare a thought for that guy going full Breaking Bad above, who is part of the investigative unit.

Oh, and if you’ve been slagging Vladimir off, and you live in the UK, you might want to bust out a quick social media purge.

[sources:telegraph&telegraph]