Spy’s mother not told of nerve agent attack

THE mother of Sergei Skripal, the poisoned former Russian spy, has not been told of the nerve agent attack which left him and his daughter Yulia close to death, it emerged last night.

Elena Yakovlevna’s family have sheltered her from the news that her son was targeted by a would-be assassin in Salisbury earlier this month.

For more than three weeks since the pair collapsed into a coma following the attack, the 90-year-old’s family have managed to keep her away from one of the most widely reported stories in the world, fearful that news of her son’s fate would prove fatal to her health.

Victoria Skripal, a niece of Colonel Skripal – who remains in a critical condition with Yulia at Salisbury District Hospital following the attack on March 4 – said: “Our priority is to protect our grandmother so that she does not hear anything.

“She will not know until the very last moment.

“She will know when this situation is somehow resolved, that is, if there is a logical end. If the story ends badly, we will tell her that they fell ill.” Ms Skripal said her uncle, 66, would phone his mother on a regular basis, but that since the attack the family have told her he is away on business or that he rang while she was sleeping.

She also admitted her grandmother, who has hearing problems and suffers from cataracts in both eyes, has not been told that Col Skripal’s 43-year-old son Alexander had died in St Petersburg last year.

Ms Skripal said: “She does not know that her grandson died. She was told that he had gone to Moscow. We made this decision together.” .

Col Skripal, a Russian military intelligence officer, was jailed in 2006 for selling secrets to MI6, and moved to Salisbury in 2010 following a spy swap.

Ms Skripal added that her uncle had never expressed any fears for his safety and did not consider himself to have made any enemies.

For her part, she expressed scepticism that the attack was the work of the Russian state, saying: “Even if the special services did it – why is it so clumsy? I believe that it was beneficial to some third party to quarrel between the two countries. Someday we will get answers to all the questions.”