Ex-spy's daughter could have been pressured to make video: Kremlin
The Kremlin on Thursday said Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned with her ex-spy father in Britain in March, could have been pressured into making a video saying she was not ready to return to Russia. On Wednesday, Yulia Skripal said she one day hoped to return to her home country but first needed to get better, and turned down the offer of assistance from Russian diplomats in the UK.
The statement -- her first media appearance since the March 4 poisoning -- was recorded by Reuters and broadcast on national television in Russia. "We have no reason to trust or believe in this," Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the video.
"As before, we don't know what sort of condition Yulia Skripal is in, we don't know whether she made this statement of her own free will or whether she was pressured," Peskov told journalists.
Russian ambassador to London Alexander Yakovenko has repeatedly demanded access to Yulia Skripal. After her video statement, the Russian embassy in London said Wednesday it was happy to see that Skripal was "in good health".
But the diplomatic mission suggested she might be held in Britain against her will and insisted that Russian diplomats needed to see her.
Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found slumped on a bench in the English city of Salisbury in March, sparking a bitter diplomatic crisis between Moscow and London, which says a Soviet-made nerve agent dubbed novichok was used on the pair.