UK accuses Russia of stockpiling toxin

Trail of blame in poisoning of ex-spy ‘leads to Kremlin.’

LONDON — Britain’s foreign minister said Sunday that he has evidence Russia has been stockpiling a nerve agent in violation of international law “very likely for the purposes of assassination.”

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the trail of blame for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury “leads inexorably to the Kremlin.”

His comment came after a Russian envoy suggested the toxin used to poison the Skripals could have come from a U.K. lab.

Johnson told reporters that Britain has information that within the last 10 years, “the Russian state has been engaged in investigating the delivery of such agents, Novichok agents ... very likely for the purposes of assassination.”

He said “they have been producing and stockpiling Novichok, contrary to what they have been saying.”

Johnson said he will brief European Union foreign ministers on the case today before meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

He also said officials from the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons would arrive today in Britain to take samples of the nerve agent used to poison the Skripals.

Britain says it is Novichok, a class of powerful nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union toward the end of the Cold War. Tests to independently verify the British findings are expected to take at least two weeks, Britain’s Foreign Office said.

Vladimir Chizhov, Moscow’s EU ambassador, said Russia has no chemical weapons stockpiles and was not behind the poisoning.

“Russia had nothing to do with it,” Chizhov told the BBC.

Chizhov pointed out that the U.K. chemical weapons research facility, Porton Down, is only eight miles from Salisbury, where Sergei Skripal — a former Russian intelligence officer convicted in his home country of spying for Britain — and his daughter were found on March 4. They remain in critical condition.

The British government dismissed the ambassador’s suggestion as “nonsense.”