Britain, Russia trade blame over poisoning

› We actually have evidence within the last 10 years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination but has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok

BORIS JOHNSON, British foreign minister

LONDON: Britain’s foreign secretary on Sunday said that the trail of blame for the poisoning of a former spy “leads inexorably to the Kremlin,” after a Russian envoy suggested the nerve agent involved could have come from a UK lab.

Boris Johnson said Britain has evidence that Russia has been stockpiling nerve agents like the one used against Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Britain says it is Novichok, a class of powerful nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union toward the end of the Cold War.

Vladimir Chizhov, Moscow’s EU ambassador, said Russia has no chemical weapons stockpiles and was not behind the poisoning.

“Russia had nothing to do with it,” Chizhov told the BBC. Chizhov pointed out that the UK chemical weapons research facility, Porton Down, is close to Salisbury, where Skripal — a former Russian intelligence officer convicted in his home country of spying for Britain — and Yulia were found on March 4. They remain in critical condition.

Investigators from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will arrive in London on Monday to investigate the nerve agent.

The Foreign Office said the OPCW team from The Hague will meet officials from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the police to discuss the process for collecting samples, including environmental ones.