Ex-spy’s apparent poisoning highlights dismal relations between Russia and the West

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The mystery surrounding the apparent poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, is still young.

British police haven't yet said what they think happened to the pair as they sat on a bench in the normally sleepy English town of Salisbury on Sunday. But diplomatic outrage is already beginning to mount, driven by British suspicions that the 66-year-old Mr. Skripal was targeted by the Russian intelligence service he worked for before he flipped sides and sold information to MI-6.

Only one thing is obvious through this early haze of facts and misinformation: there is zero trust right now between Russia and the West.

From the minute news first surfaced that an ex-Russian spy had fallen ill under suspicious circumstances, Britain's media immediately raised comparisons to the 2006 case of Alexander Litvinenko, another ex-KGB agent who was murdered on British soil. That time, the weapon of choice was tea spiked with radioactive polonium.

Nine years later, a British public inquiry concluded that Mr. Litvinenko was likely murdered by the Russian state, an action "probably" approved by President Vladimir Putin himself.

British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson didn't wait nearly as long this time before he made clear that he suspects Russian involvement in the poisoning of Mr. Skripal, too. "We don't know exactly what has taken place in Salisbury, but if it's as bad as it looks, it is another crime in the litany of crimes that we can lay at Russia's door," Mr. Johnson told the House of Commons on Tuesday.

Mr. Johnson said that Britain would "take whatever measures we deem necessary" if Russia is shown to have played a role. He hinted at fresh economic sanctions against Moscow, or perhaps a downgrading of England's delegation to the soccer World Cup, which Russia is hosting this summer.

Britain's suspicions about what happened to Mr. Skripal may prove correct; the fact that neighbouring buildings were cordoned off for fears of contamination suggests this was no ordinary poisoning. That, combined with a string of suspicious deaths of Russian exiles in the U.K. – including Mr. Litvinenko, oligarch Boris Berezovsky and banker Alexander Perepilichny, all of them opponents of Mr. Putin – meant that many here don't need to hear from the police before they blame the Kremlin for what happened to Mr. Skripal. But if this incident doesn't fit that pattern, Mr. Johnson's talk of reprisals will wind up looking foolish.

Or it would have, if such rhetoric wasn't par for the course in this reheated version of the Cold War, which began in earnest four years ago with the crisis in Ukraine, Russia's annexation of Crimea, and the resulting sanctions war between Moscow and the West.

After all, this is an era in which many Americans believe the Kremlin meddled in their presidential election, and many Brits see Moscow's hand in their country's vote to leave the European Union. Most Russians, for their part, think the CIA was behind the 2014 revolution in Ukraine that set the current hostilities in motion.

While there's some truth in each of those versions of events, what's most telling is that Russia and the West are back to a point where they instinctively believe the worst of each other.

Russia's embassy to the U.K. said on Tuesday that it was concerned about the tone of the speculation surrounding the poisoning of Mr. Skripal, especially since police had yet to reach any kind of conclusion. "The situation in the media space is rapidly morphing into a new round of the anti-Russia crusade, which is underway in Britain. Readers are presented with various theories, which boil down to ways of demonizing Russia," the embassy said in a statement.

But in Russia, the conspiracy theories flew just as fast as they did in Britain.

Dmitry Kovtun, one of the two men accused in Mr. Litvinenko's murder, said he believed the poisoning of Mr. Skripal might have been "a provocation by British intelligence," aimed at damaging Mr. Putin less than two weeks before he seeks another term in office via a March 18 presidential election.

"If [Mr. Skripal] dies, then they'll start tracing back the trail to those 'bloody Russians,' and if he lives thanks to British doctors, they'll still go looking for Russians' involvement in the murder attempt," Mr. Kovtun told Russia's Interfax news service.

The British police – specifically the counterterrorism unit that has now taken over the investigation – will eventually come to their own assessment of what happened to Mr. Skripal and his daughter.

It may take several more days, and their conclusion will undoubtedly confirm some theories – and likely launch some new ones.

In the meantime, suspicions will continue to rise on both sides, and this new Cold War will continue to get colder.