Russia is manufacturing nerve agent in secret, UK says as inspectors arrive
Britain has accused Russia of breaching international law by secretly manufacturing and stockpiling the deadly nerve agent used in the Salisbury attack over the past decade, despite having claimed to have destroyed its arsenal.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said he had information demonstrating that Russia has not only continued to accrue chemical weapons, but is exploring how they can be used for targeted assassinations.
British officials are likely to share evidence with international chemical weapons experts who arrive in the UK today to assess samples from the Salisbury attack, which the UK says involved a Russian-made Novichok nerve agent.
If the Kremlin is found culpable for transporting the nerve agent to Salisbury, or to have lied about previously destroying chemical stockpiles, the experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) can impose penalties.
It comes as Vladimir Putin is on course to retain the presidency until 2024, following Russian elections characterised by rising anti-West sentiment.
Mr Johnson indicated yesterday that the UK has intelligence showing Russia lied when in declared to the OPCW last year that it had destroyed all of its 40,000 metric tons of chemical weapons.
He said: “We actually have evidence within the last 10 years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination, but has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok.”
The team of OPCW investigators from The Hague will meet experts from Porton Down’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the police to discuss the process for collecting samples linked to the Salisbury attack, which left former spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter and a British policeman in serious conditions.
The samples will then be dispatched to “highly reputable” international labs selected by the OPCW for testing with results expected to take a minimum of two weeks.
The Foreign Office said Ms May’s invite to the OPCW reflects the UK’s commitment to comply with obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which demands the independent assessment of scientific work.
But one well-placed government source told The Independent it was also about highlighting how Russia was violating the convention.
The source said: “The approach from the start has been to build the case in international law to maximise the possibility of multilateral action, and the strength of action that might be taken. If you want people in the EU or UN to stand up to Russia, you have to give them the ground on which to do it. That’s why she has focussed on Salisbury being an ‘unlawful use of force’, which speaks to the UN charter, and [the CWC] is another element to increase pressure.”
The convention is an international treaty that bans chemical weapons, requires their destruction within a specified period of time and is overseen by the OPCW. Both the UK and Russia are signatories, with Moscow having signed the convention in 1993 and declared all its stockpiles of chemical weapons destroyed under OPCW supervision in 2017.
If states are found by the OPCW to have engaged in “prohibited actions”, such as lying about what stockpiles they have, the organisation can find it in breach and impose penalties, including bars on trading certain chemical products. The OPCW can also bring the issue before the UN Security Council and General Assembly, where the UK has already begun a drive to isolate Moscow.
Russia’s ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizhov denied that his country had any nerve agents in its military arsenal, saying there are, “no stockpiles whatsoever”. In claims branded “nonsense” by British officials, he went on to suggest the nerve agent used in Salisbury may have come from the UK’s own
Porton Down laboratory.
He said: “When you have a nerve agent or whatever, you check it against certain samples that you retain in your laboratories. Porton Down, as we now all know, is the largest military facility in the United Kingdom that has been dealing with chemical weapons research. It’s actually only eight miles from Salisbury.”
Asked directly by the BBC whether Porton Down was “responsible” for the attack, Mr Chizhov said: “I don’t know. I don’t have any evidence of anything having been used.”
Yesterday Ms May had a call with the Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, with the pair agreeing on “a determined response from the European Union” towards Russia.
Mr Johnson travels to Brussels today to brief foreign ministers from across the bloc on the attempted assassinations in Salisbury before meeting with Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
The European Council is set to meet at the end of this week and is expected to offer further international support to Theresa May’s push to hold Russia to account.
Ms May joined forces with US President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron to issue an unprecedented joint statement last week pointing the finger of blame at Russia for Salisbury and demanding a halt to a “pattern” of unacceptable behaviour, while the Foreign Office says more than 20 countries have expressed their solidarity with the UK.