Novichok victim meets Russian ambassador
london — A British man poisoned along with his partner with a nerve agent, amid an assassination attempt on a Russian ex-spy in England blamed on Moscow, met its top UK envoy on Saturday, according to reports.
Charlie Rowley, 45, whose partner Dawn Sturgess died after exposure to the toxin, held a 90-minute meeting with Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko at Russia’s embassy in London, Britain’s Sunday Mirror said.
“I went along to ask them ‘why did your country kill my girlfriend?’” he told the tabloid newspaper.
“But I didn’t really get any answers. I just got Russian propaganda,” Rowley added, saying Yakovenko’s explanations of Russian innocence in the plot were “ridiculous”. Rowley and Sturgess, a 44-year-old mother of three children, who lived near the southwestern English city of Salisbury, fell ill on June 30 last year.
Authorities determined they had been exposed to Novichok, a military-grade nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union during the latter days of the Cold War.
The poison was contained in a perfume bottle that Rowley had found in Salisbury and given to Sturgess.
She died eight days later but after two weeks in an induced coma, he was discharged from hospital.
It followed former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia being left in critical condition after they were targeted
with Novichok in Salisbury three months earlier.
The pair survived and have made full recoveries, according to British authorities.
Western allies accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being ultimately responsible for the poisoning, which sparked dozens of
diplomatic expulsions by both sides. British prosecutors in September issued arrest warrants for two alleged officers of Russia’s military intelligence service, known as the GRU.
But the Kremlin has repeatedly denounced the accusations as “unacceptable.”—