The Salisbury Poisonings | The Journalist Who Knew Too Much | 4

British Scandal

Wondery

Scandal, Alice Levine, Great Britain, Society & Culture, Exhibit C, British, England, History, Matt Forde, Documentary

4.5 • 6.5K Ratings

🗓️ 25 June 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Guardian journalist Luke Harding was thrown out of Russia for exposing uncomfortable truths. Now he takes Matt and Alice behind the headlines of the Skripal attack, exposing how Putin's spy machine really works, and the chilling lengths it went to to threaten his own family.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From Wondry, I'm Alice Levine.
0:09.2	And I'm Matt Ford.
0:10.5	And this is British Scandal.
0:26.6	Matt, this has been such a gripping series.
0:27.5	How have you found it?
0:29.4	So many parts of this have been really difficult because at the heart of it is the human cost.
0:33.1	Dawn Sturgis, an innocent member of the public, is murdered.
0:35.8	She had absolutely nothing to do with Russia
0:37.8	and there was no reason for her to die. Then you've got Sergei and Julius Scrippel. They didn't
0:42.6	deserve their fate either, this terrifying nerve agent attack that they're lucky to survive. It really is,
0:49.5	at its heart, absolutely chilling. Absolutely. I suppose the flip side to that from a British scandal perspective is that it's also
0:56.4	completely absurd. The goons appearing on TV, the fandom for the 123 metre spire, Vladimir Putin's
1:04.4	ludicrous accusations that this was some sort of false flag operation by the British.
1:09.0	It has all the elements that we love to get our teeth into.
1:13.2	It does. And of course, our relationship with Russia is still something that exercises us today.
1:18.1	It's more relevant than it's ever been. And this leaves us wondering whether the Salisbury
1:21.7	attacks were the turning point they should have been. Well, today I think is going to feel like
1:26.0	a bit of a full circle moment because I'm very
1:27.9	excited to say that our guest is our first ever guest on British scandal when we covered
1:33.2	the Lipvinenko story.
1:34.4	We are so pleased to welcome back.
1:36.8	Luke Harding, a journalist with first-hand experience of Putin's regime.
	...

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