Daughter recovering as row worsens
BRITAIN: The daughter of a former Russian spy poisoned by a nerve agent in England has said in her first public comment that she is recovering, but the international furore over the attack has escalated, with Russia telling the United Nations that Moscow assumes ‘‘with a high degree of probability’’ that the intelligence services of other countries were behind it.
Britain’s UN Ambassador Karen Pierce shot back that Russia had come up with 24 theories about who bore responsibility for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, but the United Kingdom had only one – that it was highly likely Russia was responsible.
Yulia Skripal, 33, said in a statement released by British police yesterday that her ‘‘strength is growing daily’’. She expressed gratitude to those who came to her aid when she and her father were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury a month ago.
‘‘I am sure you appreciate that the entire episode is somewhat disorientating, and I hope that you’ll respect my privacy and that of my family during the period of my convalescence,’’ she said.
Her 66-year-old father remains in a critical condition in hospital.
At a meeting of the UN Security Council, the confrontation between Russia and Britain and more than two dozen Western allies – which have expelled over 150 Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity – intensified. Moscow has sent home an equal number of envoys in an all-out diplomatic war unseen even at the height of the Cold War.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia claimed that Russia was the victim of a hasty, sloppy and ill-intentioned defamation campaign by Britain and its allies.
Nebenzia did not name the intelligence services that Russia suspects of carrying out the attack, but said their goal was to accuse Moscow of using ‘‘a horrible, inhumane weapon, of concealing the arsenal of this substance’’, of violating the Chemical Weapons Convention, and putting in question Russia’s ‘‘role not only in finding a solution in Syria, but anywhere else’’.
He also warned: ‘‘We have told our British colleagues that you are playing with fire and you will be sorry.’’
Pierce said Russia’s 24 theories for the attack included blaming it on terrorists and saying Britain wanted a distraction from its departure from the European Union.
After trading barbs about Sherlock Holmes, Nebenzia and Pierce resorted to nonsensical fantasy, with the Russian ambassador reading a passage from Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, and the British ambassador responding with a witty passage from the book that says: ‘‘I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’’
Adding to the intrigue was a recording aired yesterday by Russian state Rossiya TV of a purported phone call between Yulia Skripal and a cousin in Russia. She allegedly said she and her father were both recovering and in normal health, and that her father’s health was not irreparably damaged.
Moscow has hammered away at Britain’s account of what befell the Skripals on March 4, especially the claim that their exposure to a Novichok nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union meant the attack was carried out by Russia.
During the security council meeting, Nebenzia questioned the British government’s claims of Russian responsibility by posing a series of questions. He asked why a British policeman was affected by the nerve agent immediately when it took four hours for Skripal and his daughter to be affected. He asked what antidotes for exposure to Novichok the Skripals were given, where the Skripals were for four hours without cellphones on the day of the attack, and what happened to cats and guinea pigs in Sergei Skripal’s house.
Russia has said it never produced Novichok, and that it completed the destruction of its chemical arsenals under international control last year.
Nebenzia insisted that Britain was required to allow Russia to cooperate in the investigation. ‘‘Great Britain refuses to cooperate with us on the pretext that the victim does not cooperate with the criminal,’’ he said. ‘‘A crime was committed on British territory, possibly a terrorist act, and it is our citizens who are the victims.’’
Ahead of the UN meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described the British accusations against Moscow as a mockery of international law.
The British government says it relied on a combination of scientific analysis and other intelligence to conclude that the nerve agent came from Russia. But the Foreign Office on Thursday deleted a tweet from last month that said scientists at Britain’s defence research facility, the Porton Down laboratory, had identified the substance as ‘‘made in Russia’’.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy for cybersecurity, Alexander Krutskikh, mocked the contradictory statements. – AP