Crisis between UK, Russia deepens over spy poisoning

THE British delegation to the world’s chemical weapons watchdog yesterday said it is “highly likely” that Russia was involved in the attack last week on a former spy in Britain.

Addressing the governing council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, British Ambassador Peter Wilson described the attack as “the first offensive use of a nerve agent of any sort on European territory since World War II.”

Russia will only cooperate with Britain on the investigation into last week’s poisoning of an ex-Russian spy and his daughter if it receives samples of the nerve agent that is believed to have been used, Russia’s foreign minister said yesterday.

Sergey Lavrov spoke in response to the British government’s demand for an explanation of the use of a military-grade nerve agent produced in Russia in the attack in the English city of Salisbury, which left 66-yearold Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia in critical condition.

Lavrov told reporters Moscow’s requests to see samples of the nerve agent have been turned down, which he called a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which outlaws the production of chemical weapons. He insisted that Russia is “not to blame” for the poisoning, AP reported.

He said Moscow is willing to cooperate with the probe but suggested that London would be “better off ” complying with its international obligations “before putting forward ultimatums.”

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

Theresa May has said that her government was considering a British version of the U.S. “Magnitsky Act”, which was adopted in 2012 to punish Russian officials accused of human rights violations.

The United States, NATO and the European Union have all backed Britain in the deepening diplomatic crisis. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the incident was “of great concern”, as the The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that Britain was consulting NATO allies about possibly invoking its Article 5 principle of common defense.

Skripal, an ex-military intelligence officer who was jailed for selling Russian secrets to London, moved to Britain in a spy swap in 2010, settling in Salisbury. Police are investigating the attack with the assistance of Britain’s armed forces and its military research laboratory at Porton Down.

Pharmacology experts said Novichok, a broad category of more than 100 nerve agents developed by Russia during the late stages of the Cold War, was “more dangerous and sophisticated” than sarin or VX.

The BBC reported that investigators now believe the nerve agent may have been deployed in powder form through the ventilation system of Skripal’s car. Other reports in the British media hinted at growing pressure on May for England to boycott the World Cup in Russia. “How can we go to Putin’s World Cup now”, read the headline of the Daily Mail.