Poisoned Russian agent recovering rapidly, hospital says
Former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal is no longer in critical condition and his health is improving rapidly, more than a month after he was poisoned with a nerve agent in England, the hospital treating him said on Friday.
Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center in Salisbury on March 4, after they were poisoned with what London says was a Russia-made nerve agent.
Moscow denied any involvement and suggested Britain had carried out the attack to stoke anti-russian hysteria, Reuters reported.
The Russian Embassy in London has sent a request for a meeting of its envoy, Alexander Yakovenko, with British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson to discuss the investigation of the ex-russian spy and his daughter, the RIA news agency reported on Saturday.
“We hope for a constructive response from the British side and are counting on such a meeting in the very nearest future,” the agency cited a Russian Embassy spokesman as saying, Reuters reported.
The British Foreign Office confirmed it had received the request. “We will be responding in due course,” a spokeswoman said.
After weeks of no reported change in his condition, the hospital confirmed that Skripal, who had been treated under heavy sedation, was now making fast progress.
“He is responding well to treatment, improving rapidly and is no longer in a critical condition,” Christine Blanshard, Medical Director at Salisbury District Hospital, said in a statement.
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.
Russia has said it does not have such nerve agents and President Vladimir Putin dismissed as nonsense the notion that Moscow would have poisoned Skripal and his daughter.
The attack prompted the biggest Western expulsion of Russian diplomats since the Cold War as allies in Europe and the United States sided with May’s view that Moscow was either responsible or had lost control of the nerve agent.
Moscow has hit back by expelling Western diplomats, questioning how Britain knows that Russia was responsible and offering its rival interpretations, including that it amounted to a plot by British secret services.
Doctors had initially feared that the Skripals might have suffered permanent brain damage. A British judge said last month that the attack might have left them with compromised mental capacity, with an unclear effect on their longterm health. The hospital did not say whether either Sergei or Yulia would suffer long-term effects. Britain’s Foreign Office welcomed the improvement in the Skripals but said they were “likely to have ongoing medical needs.”
Yulia’s health has also improved rapidly. On Thursday, she issued a statement through British police to thank hospital staff and people who came to her help when “when my father and I were incapacitated.”
Russian state television reported that Yulia had phoned her cousin in Russia and told her that she and her father were both recovering and that she expected to leave the hospital soon.
British authorities have denied the cousin, Viktoria Skripal, a visa to visit the patients, the Home Office (Interior Ministry) said on Friday. Victoria Skripal told Sky News that the “British must have something to hide.”