This action by Russian agents (the KGB or their successors, the FSB) is the suspected second prominent murder case on British soil, the first known about being the murder of Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov in 1978 with a ricin poisoned pellet shot from an umbrella. The latest in 2018 took place in the sleepy West Country cathedral city of Salisbury when Novichoc a nerve agent was smeared on the door handle of Sergei Skripal's house putting Mr Skripal, his daughter Yulia and a local policeman into hospital and killing another English woman whose partner found the perfume bottle containing the nerve agent.