FYI
this story it total BS, but it’s the first to bring Christopher Steele into the story, and it’s in one of the big UK tabloids:
13 Oct: UK Mirror: Vladimir Putin ‘ordered novichok assassin to murder British spybehind Trump sex dossier’
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...
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...
KGB defector Boris Karphichkov, 59, claims Mishkin was part of a GRU special ops group that slipped into the country in late February 2017.
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.
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 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”.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/vladimir-putin-ordered-novichok-assassin-13412653