Russian intelligence service ‘may have hacked UK’s travel visa system’, investigation claims The claim follows an investigation by two websites, Bellingcat and The Insider

The Russian intelligence service may have hacked into the UK’s travel visa system to secure papers for agents to carry out assassinations on British soil, it has been claimed.

The allegation follows an investigation by two websites, Bellingcat and The Insider, to uncover how the two Russian men suspected of trying to poison the former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury obtained their visas.

An unnamed source – reportedly the former chief technical officer of a company that processes visa applications for several consulates in Moscow – was interviewed as part of the inquiry into the attempted murder of Mr Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer who passed information to Britain.

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Employee ‘applying for US asylum’

The man claimed that he was coerced into working with an agent by a threat to jail his mother. He reportedly fled from Russia last year and applied for asylum in the US.

He told investigators that officers of Moscow’s federal security service, the FSB, planned to send two people to Britain and needed help with visas.

He was told it was important that their passports were “approved directly by the consulate” without review or background checks.

The websites said the man told the FSB that there was no way he could influence the decision-making process on visa applications, so he was then asked to create a “back door” to the UK computer network.

In March, two operatives of Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, are alleged by Britain to have come to the UK to poison Mr Skripal with the Novichok nerve agent.

Query over links to Salisbury

It is unclear if the latest information is directly linked to the movements of the Skripals’ would-be assassins.

However, the timing points to the first reported trip to Britain of the two men in question, who travelled to Wiltshire under the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.

The two men are thought to have visited the UK at least four times between 2014 and 2018.

According to Bellingcat, the name “Boshirov” was linked to a Moscow-based “manufacturer of medical equipment” which was liquidated only months after he received his cover identity in 2009.