Poisoned spy’s girl: I get stronger daily
Yulia tells of pair’s ‘disorientating’ ordeal
I woke up over a week ago now, I have many people to thank for my recovery YULIA SKRIPAL IN HER FIRST COMMENTS SINCE MARCH 4 ATTACK
YULIA Skripal says her strength is “growing daily” after she and dad Sergei were poisoned with novichok.
She yesterday called their ordeal “somewhat disorientating”.
Russian media claimed Yulia had also spoken to her cousin, saying she and ex-double agent Sergei, 66, were “OK”.
It came as Alexander Yakovenko, Russian ambassador to the UK, denied the Kremlin was behind the nerve agent attack in Salisbury.
In her first comments since the March 4 poisoning Yulia, 33, said in a statement issued by Scotland Yard: “I woke up over a week ago now and am glad to say my strength is growing daily.
“I am grateful for the many messages of goodwill I’ve received.
“I have many people to thank for my recovery and would especially like to mention the people of Salisbury that came to my aid.
“I would like to thank the staff at Salisbury District Hospital for their care. The entire episode is somewhat disorientating.” Yulia’s cousin Viktoria Skripal claimed to have spoken to her by telephone. According to Russia Today, Yulia said: “Everyone’s health is OK. No one’s had any irreversible [harm]. I’m being discharged soon.”
Moscow has offered consular assistance, but the Foreign Office said Yulia was yet to take it up.
Mr Yakovenko insisted Vladimir Putin’s Russia was not to blame for the attack and poison. He said: “We never produced it, we never had novichok.”
But Security Minister Ben Wallace told the BBC: “That nerve agent has been identified to being manufactured, we believe, in Russia.
“Then we add that to intelligence... and we can say we are beyond reasonable doubt of the view that the Russian state is behind this.”
He added Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had seen more intelligence “than the average backbench MP” via a Privy Council briefing but was denied some access, because “if you leak it, lives are put at risk”.
Labour hit back: “Ben Wallace should be acting in the national interest, not playing party politics with the country’s security.”
TORY ministers want to have their cake and eat it by refusing to show Jeremy Corbyn all their supposed evidence linking Russia to the Salisbury poisoning – then demanding he back them anyway.
He is a privy counsellor so the ban whiffs of illegitimacy. Could it be the head of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition is unusually locked out of their secret little circle because the full intelligence does not endorse everything bungler Boris Johnson and others claim?