Now we can PROVE which Russian lab made poison, says May’s security chief
BRITAIN last night pointed the finger directly at Moscow over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter.
In a surprise move, Theresa May’s national security adviser Mark Sedwill released a bombshell dossier that identified a Kremlin lab as the source of the nerve agent used in Salisbury.
The dossier – in a letter to Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg – revealed how Britain had identified a laboratory in southwest Russia where the Novichok agents were made.
It said Russia had been snooping on the emails of Sergei Skripal’s daughter Yulia for five years and that it had been testing the effectiveness of Novichok smeared on door handles. The Skripals are thought to have come into contact with the nerve agent on their front door. In his letter, Mr Sedwill also said there was evidence showing that Vladimir Putin was closely involved in an undeclared chemical weapons programme in the mid-2000s.
Mr Sedwill said Russia had been spying on ex-spy Mr Skripal and Yulia for five years – and that the Kremlin had trained special units in how to administer the poison. He said a combination of credible open-source reporting and intelligence showed that in the 1980s the Soviet Union developed a new class of ‘fourth generation’ nerve agents.
These Novichoks were developed under an operation under the codename FOLIANT. The key institute responsible for this work was a branch of the State Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology at Shikhany defence laboratory, near Volgograd in southwest Russia.
The letter revealed that Russia’s chemical weapons programme continued after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
‘It is unlikely that Novichoks could be made and deployed by non-state actors (eg, a criminal or terrorist group), especially at the level of purity confirmed by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,’ it reads.
Russia’s ambassador to London yesterday denied any Russian responsibility for the attack.