MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's respected Kommersant daily has interviewed residents in a small village in the Far East who have identified one of the suspects in the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain as a senior Russian intelligence agent.

On Wednesday, an investigative group in Britain named Bellingcat said one of the two suspects in the March poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the U.K. is in fact Col. Anatoliy Chepiga with the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, who in 2014 was awarded Russia's highest medal.

Kommersant on Thursday interviewed several residents of the village where Chepiga's family used to live as saying that Chepiga is the man identified by the British as one of the poisoning suspects.

Russian officials have denied any role in the poisoning in the English city of Salisbury.