Yulia Skripal may be given new identity to live in UK
THE daughter of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal is expected to be granted political asylum to live in Britain, The Mail on Sunday has learned.
High-level discussions about 33-year-old Yulia Skripal’s future were held last week ahead of her imminent discharge from hospital.
With Britain’s war of words with Russia growing increasingly rancorous, there are now concerns for Yulia’s safety should she return home.
A new life in Britain would see Yulia and her father given new identities and secretly resettled. The 66-year-old spy’s condition is also improving following last month’s nerve agent attack.
Salisbury MP and Treasury Minister John Glen said: ‘Given her appalling treatment at the hands of the Russian state, I would warmly welcome the offer of asylum to Yulia Skripal.’
Sources have also revealed Mr Skripal’s £400,000 house in Salisbury may be demolished to completely expunge traces of the Russian-made Novichok nerve agent.
Sergei Skripal, a Soviet-era military intelligence officer, was branded a traitor in Russia and jailed in 2006 for selling state secrets to MI6.
He came to Britain in 2010 after a deal was struck to release him in a spy swap which also saw Western powers send Russian spies to Moscow.
Britain has blamed the assassination attempt on Russia – which denies involvement – opening a diplomatic war of words that has seen tit-for-tat consular expulsions and volatile exchanges. Yulia has not responded to requests from Russia to send consular staff to visit her in hospital.
She also told her cousin last week that she did not want her to travel from Russia to see her.
If she remains in the UK, Yulia would leave behind her mysterious fiance – named for the first time yesterday as Stepan Vikeev, 30 – who has ‘gone into hiding’ and had no contact with her or her family after the attack on March 4.
She would also have to say goodbye to her beloved dog Noir.
Yulia owns a flat in Moscow and a Ford Kuga car but she has no other immediate family left in Russia.
Her brother Alexandr and mother Liudmila died from health problems in recent years.
Last week Yulia called her cousin Viktoria Skripal, who was trying to secure a visa to travel from Russia to visit her relatives in hospital.
UK officials assured her that they would fast track her application.
But she was turned down on Friday amid fears she was being used as a pawn by Russia. During the recorded telephone conversation, Viktoria said: ‘If I am given a visa I need you to say “Yes” when you are asked if you wish to see me.’
But Yulia responded: ‘I think no, here the situation is now… we’ll deal with it later.’
Last night, Viktoria told The Mail on Sunday : ‘I fear Yulia will now be pushed to disown us and get political asylum – and we will never be able to see her and Sergei again.’
The Foreign Office reacted angrily yesterday to a request from the Russian embassy for a meeting with Boris Johnson to discuss the poisonings.
In a statement on its website yesterday, the Russian embassy said ‘interaction’ between it and the Foreign Office had been ‘utterly unsatisfactory’.
But the Foreign Office said: ‘It’s Russia’s response that has been unsatisfactory.
‘It’s over three weeks since we asked Russia to engage constructively and answer a number of questions relating to the attempted assassinations of Mr Skripal and his daughter.
‘Now, after failing in their attempts in the UN and international chemical weapons watchdog this week and with the victims’ condition improving, they seem to be pursuing a different diversionary tactic’.
A source close to Mr Johnson added that the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had turned down the chance for discussions. The source said: ‘This is just the latest in a series of Russian disinformation attempts. This includes the Russian Government and stateowned media inventing 29 separate theories about the Salisbury poisonings.’
WHAT did he mean by that? Words ascribed to the 19th Century Austrian chancellor Metternich on hearing the news that his French counterpart, Charles Talleyrand, had died. What did he mean by that?
Sometimes we can overthink things in politics. Overanalyse.
Although in the case of the poisoning of Russian former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, what is happening is the opposite of analysis.
Analysis is when you look at the evidence and come to a conclusion. What conspiracy theorists do is start with a conclusion and then rearrange the evidence to fit.
So after Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s gaffe that he had been told by experts at Porton Down that the Novichok poison administered to the Skripals had been made in Russia – they clearly had not told him that – doubt apparently grows around the incident.
Happily, the Skripals appear to be recovering. Once upon a time we used to say that where there was life, there was hope. Now where there is life there is doubt.
So without trying to be a 21st Century St Francis of Assisi, where there is conspiracy let us bring consistency.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that he will pursue those who cross him. He has said it publicly.
Russia has a recent history of assassination – Alexander Litvinenko’s widow will testify to that.
Sergei Skripal was a Russian intelligence officer turned British spy who was convicted and then given safe haven in the UK in a spy exchange.
That the Russians would wish to publicly assassinate him seems consistent with what Mr Putin has said and what Russia has done. So far, so consistent. I first met Boris Johnson 30 years ago when we were both students at Oxford University.
He appeared to me then an arrogant man who was cavalier with the facts and full of himself.
Last week, a German TV interview emerged in which the Foreign Secretary appeared to sloppily overclaim that experts at Porton Down had told him the nerve agent used against the Skripals had been traced to Russia.
Boris Johnson is a buffoon shock. So far, so consistent.
There is an FBI investigation into alleged Russian interference in the US Presidential election. People are looking, too, at Russian involvement in the Brexit referendum.
Politicians in the UK – and people around the world – have warned about the Russian propaganda machine on television, social media and cyberspace. (It is alleged they have given a former Scottish first minister his own show, although I have yet to meet anyone who has seen the evidence.)
Russia has issued more than 200 statements mocking and questioning the circumstances around the Salisbury poisoning.
Experts at Porton Down have identified the nerve agent as Novichok, which Russia has produced.
YET the Russian campaign to sow doubt is enjoying success – helped by the so-called Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who seems to see this issue as an opportunity to divert attention from the antiSemitism crisis in his own cabal.
Let us imagine two conversations if there is a conspiracy and ask which is more credible.
First, someone in Mr Putin’s office said he needed to appear tough and one way to do so was to kill a freed double agent publicly on British soil using a nerve agent.
Second, someone in Theresa May’s office said that Brexit was going so badly she needed to deflect attention and the best way of doing so would be to kill a retired KGB agent in Salisbury with some sophisticated poison.
Mrs May may have been reckless in calling an early election but do you really think the vicar’s daughter, often ridiculed for her caution, would entertain that notion for a second? The murdering Russian mafia or the Prime Minister? Who to believe?
The Russians have a propaganda machine that would leave Lord Haw-Haw awestruck. We should not allow it to erode our confidence as the ocean does our coastline.
I do not believe that John F Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr were both killed by a lone gunman. The truth may never be known but truth did not die with them.
Sometimes things are just what they seem.
Former defence secretary George Robertson had a correspondent who consistently alleged many conspiratorial things and ridiculed him for wearing a wig.
Mr Robertson finally wrote back, reassuring them that they were entitled to their opinion – but that if he did need a wig, he was not so stupid that he would buy one with a hole in the back.
The Russians are relying on the idea our heads button up the back.
Boris Johnson’s might but we should not let the rest of us doubt that we need to stand up to the real enemy: Vladimir Putin.