On 4 March 2018, former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury, England, with a “military-grade” nerve agent of the Novichok type. UK authorities treated the incident as an attempted murder using a chemical weapon on British soil.
The UK government set out a package of diplomatic, law‑enforcement and security measures in response, and prosecutors later authorised charges against named suspects. The case is widely treated as a landmark example of hostile state-linked activity in Europe involving chemical agents, with spillover harm to the public (including a later fatality from secondary exposure).