Russia denies poisoning former spy

MOSCOW yesterday denied it was behind the poisoning of a former double agent in Britain as a midnight deadline loomed to explain how a Russian-made nerve agent was used in the attack.

“Russia is not guilty,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said of the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter in an English city on March 4.

The United States, Nato and the European Union have all backed Britain in the deepening diplomatic crisis.

France’s foreign minister also expressed his solidarity with Britain, calling the attack totally unacceptable.

Lavrov said Russia was ready to cooperate, but that Britain had rejected its requests for access to the nerve agent samples.

British Prime Minister Theresa May told parliament it was highly likely Russia was behind the poisoning, giving Moscow until the end of yesterday to answer the accusations.

Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, remain in a critical condition in hospital after being found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping centre in the southwestern city of Salisbury.

May demanded Moscow disclose details of its development of the Novichok nerve agents programme to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The chemical weapons watchdog said it was extremely worrying that chemical agents were still being used.

Vil Mirzayanov, a chemist who worked on the Novichok programme and now lives in the United States, said the nerve agent’s effects were brutal.

“These people are gone – the man and his daughter. Even if they survive they will not recover,” he was quoted as saying.

Russian President Vladimir Putin brushed aside questions about Moscow’s involvement in the attack on Monday, telling the BBC: “Sort things out from your side and then we will discuss this with you.”

Moscow summoned the British ambassador yesterday over the accusations, having earlier called them a circus show to undermine its hosting of this years’s football World Cup.

Skripal, an ex-military intelligence officer who was jailed for selling Russian secrets to London, moved to Britain in a spy swap in 2010.

Other reports in the British media hinted at growing pressure on May for England to boycott the World Cup in Russia. – AFP, Reuters