Poison victim still wants to go home

YULIA Skripal has revealed she feels lucky to have survived a shocking poison attack on British soil but still wants to return home to Russia.

According to The Sun ,Ms Skripal, who was poisoned in March in the British city of Salisbury – along with her father Sergei – said: “We are so lucky to have both survived this attempted assassination. Our recovery has been slow and extremely painful.”

In an exclusive statement to Reuters, she said: “The fact

that a nerve agent was used to do this is shocking. My life has been turned upside down.”

Ms Skripal and her father, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who betrayed dozens of agents to Britain’s MI6 foreign spy service, were found unconscious on a public bench in the British city of Salisbury on March 4. Ms Skripal, 33, was in a coma for 20 days.

“I woke to the news that we had both been poisoned,”

Ms Skripal said in her first media appearance since the poisoning. She contacted Reuters through the British police.

Ms Skripal was speaking from a secret location in London as she is under the protection of the British state. She was discharged from Salisbury District Hospital about five weeks after the poisoning and has not been seen by the media until now.

“As I try to come to terms with the devastating changes thrust upon me both physically

and emotionally, I take one day at a time and want to help care for my dad ‘til his full recovery,” she said in her written English statement. “In the longer term I hope to return home to my country.”

Ms Skripal spoke in Russian and supplied a statement that she said she had written herself in both Russian and English. She signed both documents after making her statement.

She declined to answer questions after speaking to camera.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said the Skripals were poisoned with Novichok, a deadly group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet military in the 1970s and 1980s. Mrs May blames Russia for the poisoning. Allies in Europe and the US sided with Mrs May’s view and ordered the biggest expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War.

It was the first known use of a military-grade nerve agent on European soil since World War II.

Picture: GETTY Yulia Skripal during her exclusive media appearance, the first since she and her father Sergei were poisoned. The circle shows a scar believed to be caused by a tracheotomy to help her breathe following the attack. INSET: Yulia, pictured with her father.