Vladimir Putin ­ordered ­novichok ­assassin Alexander Mishkin to murder the British spy who wrote the sensational Trump sex dossier, claims a former top Russian spy.
Mishkin, 39, used the alias Alexander Petrov for the failed hit on the double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in March.
Accomplice Ruslan Boshirov was unmasked as GRU colonel Anatolly Chepiga and Mishkin’s true identity as a doctor in Russia’s GRU military ­intelligence emerged last week.
He now faces allegations of plotting to use the same nerve agent on former MI6 officer Christopher Steele during a visit to Britain 12 months earlier.
KGB defector Boris Karphichkov, 59, claims Mishkin was part of a GRU special ops group that slipped into the country in late February 2017.
According to information a GRU source gave him on a recent trip to Europe, they were here to kill Steele, 54, on the direct orders of Putin.
Karpichkov said: “I was told Steele was to be liquidated using the same stuff as the Skripals. The ­assassins ­initially conducted surveillance both on Steele’s house in Farnham, Surrey, and at his London office.
“The operation was aborted when they realised the house was guarded with a lot of CCTV. As they also quickly established he was not appearing at his office, they concluded it was too risky to carry out the operation.”
The bid came after Steele was outed as the author of a 35-page dossier ­alleging Donald Trump romped with prostitutes during a 2013 trip to Moscow. The file also claimed Trump had co-operated with Russia for years and warned compromising ­material on him could lead to blackmail.
The US President has denied the claims in the “phony and corrupt ­dossier” and called Steele a “lowlife”.
And President Putin wanted Steele dead for souring his relations with Trump and jeopardising dodgy ­business
deals with people close to him.
Karpichkov said his source did not give him Mishkin’s real identity.
But the former major in the KGB and its FSB successor added: “He ­continually referred to him as ‘esculap’ – which is Russian for ‘clinician’. He said he was involved in some nerve agent research involving macaque monkeys.” This took place at the GRU’s secret labs in Kirov, known officially as the 48th Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defence.
Steele and Karpichkov were both targets on an eight-name Russian hit list revealed by the Sunday People earlier this year – which also included Skripal, 66.
Karpichkov’s source said the Skripal strike was ­originally to be carried out by the FSB but the GRU stepped in after winning a power struggle.He added: “The FSB have more field knowledge and expertise to carry out such sensitive missions. But the GRU convinced Putin its operatives should carry out the extermination of one of their own traitors.
“That shows Putin was definitely aware of the operation.”
The FSB transferred its hit squad to a second Russian exile living in Britain, former Aeroflot deputy director Nikolai Glushkov, 68. He was found strangled in his home in New Malden, Surrey, a week after the Salisbury ­attack. Glushkov had accused the Kremlin of murdering his friend, the Putin critic Boris Berezovsky.
He claimed political asylum here after Russia accused him and Berezovsky, who died in 2013, of a criminal ­conspiracy involving Aeroflot. But Karpichkov says Glushkov was really probing how Russian ­intelligence use Aeroflot as cover for overseas operations.
The GRU has been led by Colonel-General Igor Korobov, 62, since February 2016. But after its failure to kill Skripal in Salisbury and bungled operations elsewhere, he faces the sack.
Putin is so furious with the GRU bungling he has ordered all future operations to be supervised by the FSB.
Karpichkov said: “The most likely replacement (for Korobov) is Lieutenant-General Sergei Gizunov. He’s Putin’s most trusted man in Russian military intelligence.”
Gizunov was banned from the US by Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, as punishment for suspected cyber ­attacks in the 2016 election.
Steele’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence, was paid £125,000 to ­outline Russian financial and personal links to Trump’s election campaign.
The dossier stressed the allegations in it were “unverified”.
According to court papers Steele filed in the US, the dossier was handed over “on a confidential basis in hard copy form” to British intelligence services because it “had implications for the national security of the US and the UK”.
Last week Steele broke his silence with a swipe at Trump. He told Vanity Fair magazine: “In these strange times, it is hard to speak unpalatable truths to power but we all have a duty to do so.”