By Joseph Draper

A much-anticipated inquiry into the 2018 Salisbury poisonings finally published its findings – after a four-year process, costing £8 million in taxpayers’ money.

It sought to explain how British mother-of-three Dawn Sturgess died after becoming entangled in a Kremlin plot to murder former spy Sergei Skripal at his Salisbury home.

Ultimately, though, the report published by the chair Lord Hughes told us what we already knew: the order to assassinate Skripal came directly from Russia’s authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin, who branded him a traitor, and was meant as a display of prowess.

President Putin’s agents, sent to the UK in March 2018, bore moral responsibility for Ms Sturgess’ death four months later, after she sprayed herself with the lethal nerve agent, Novichok, which they........

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