Dawn Sturgess died after coming into contact with the Novichok nerve agent which was stored in a perfume bottle in an assassination attempt on double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is "morally responsible" for the death of a British woman who died after spraying herself with the Novichok nerve agent that had been smuggled into the UK by Russian agents sent to assassinate a former spy, an inquiry has concluded.
Inquiry chair Lord Hughes of Ombersley said on Thursday the assassination attempt on former agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in March 2018 "must have been authorised at the highest level" by Putin.
He called the assassination attempt an "astonishingly reckless act".
"The risk that others beyond the intended target might be killed or injured was entirely foreseeable. The risk was dramatically magnified by leaving in the city a bottle of novichok disguised as perfume," he concluded.
The British government sanctioned Russia's GRU intelligence agency and summoned Moscow's ambassador on Thursday after the inquiry's findings were made public.
The government said that GRU was being sanctioned in its entirety over the attack that targeted Skripal, a former Soviet agent who had defected to Britain.
On 4 March 2018, Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned by Novichok at his home. They were both seriously ill but survived the poisoning attempt.
Sturgess died on 8 July the same year after inadvertently spraying Novichok over herself a week before that had been stored in a fake perfume bottle at the home of her boyfriend Charlie Rowley in Amesbury, around 11 kilometres north of Salisbury.
The incident prompted the government, led by PM Theresa May, to announce in November 2018 that it would hold a public inquiry into the use of the nerve agent on British soil.
This is a developing story and our journalists are working on further updates.