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Updated at 4.10pm
UK POISONING VICTIM Yulia Skripal has said her “strength is growing daily”, as she released her first statement since the Salisbury nerve agent attack.
Yulia Skripal and her father, ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal, have been in hospital since last month after being found unconscious on a bench in the English town of Salisbury. The Skripals were poisoned by a nerve agent.
In a statement issued by London’s Met Police this afternoon, Yulia Skripal said: “I woke up over a week ago now and am glad to see my strength is growing daily.”
She said she is grateful for the interest in her wellbeing and for the messages of goodwill that she has 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 when my father and I were incapacitated,” Skripal said.
“Further than that, I would like to thank the staff at Salisbury District Hospital for their care and professionalism,” she added.
I am sure you appreciate that the entire episode is somewhat disorientating, and I hope that you’ll respect my privacy and that of my friends during this period of my convalescence.
Yulia Skripal did not comment on the current condition of her father.
Tit-for-tat expulsions
The UK has blamed Russia for the poisoning, expelling diplomats in retaliation. Allies of the UK, Ireland among them, have followed suit in expelling Russian diplomats.
In response, the Kremlin has said it would be expelling an equal number of British diplomats.
It has persistently denied involvement in the poisoning.
Russia today demanded an “objective” probe into the case ahead of UN Security Council talks.
Russian state television earlier aired an unverified recording of a phone conversation between Yulia Skripal and her cousin who lives in Moscow.
In the call, a woman introducing herself as Yulia Skripal said she was expecting to be discharged from hospital soon and that her father Sergei was “fine”.
The hospital where the pair are being treated said in their latest update last week that Sergei remained in a critical condition.
‘Legitimate questions’
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov today complained that Britain had failed to provide “coherent answers” to Moscow’s questions over the nerve agent attack.
“It will not be possible to ignore the legitimate questions we are asking,” he warned hours before the UN meeting.
The Security Council “should look at this problem in every aspect and, I hope, objectively”, Lavrov said.
Early this morning some 60 US diplomats who were ordered out of Russia left their embassy compound in Moscow.
Russia called a meeting of the global chemical watchdog yesterday over the Salisbury incident, bt failed in its bid to join the probe by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
Russia then requested the Security Council meeting today at 7pm in New York.
Speaking in Moscow, Lavrov called for a “substantial and responsible” probe, while alleging the Skripal case was used by Britain as “a pretext, either made up or staged, for the groundless expulsions of Russian diplomats”.
President Vladimir Putin said on a visit to Ankara yesterday that “common sense” must prevail to avoid “this damage in international relations”.
Moscow was unable to get the required two-thirds of votes from members to approve a joint investigation at Wednesday’s OPCW meeting.
Russia’s UN ambassador Vasily Nebenzia said the meeting in New York would focus on a letter sent by British Prime Minister Theresa May which accused Moscow of carrying out the attempted assassination.
Facing off in The Hague
Yesterday’s bid to secure a joint probe saw a day of bitter rhetoric between Moscow and Britain and its western allies.
London slammed the joint probe idea as “perverse”.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson hailed the defeat of Russia’s bid.
“The purpose of Russia’s ludicrous proposal at The Hague was clear – to undermine the independent, impartial work of the international chemical weapons watchdog,” he said, adding that Moscow’s main goal was “to obscure the truth and confuse the public”.
Britain is carrying out its own probe, with independent technical assistance from OPCW experts.
Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence, warned yesterday that both sides must avoid tensions escalating to the dangerous levels of the Cold War.
He called the affair a “grotesque provocation … crudely concocted by the British and American security services”.
Kremlin demands apology
OPCW experts have already taken on-site samples which are being analysed in The Hague, as well as in four other certified laboratories. The watchdog said it expected the results by early next week.
But in a move hailed as a vindication by Moscow, the British defence laboratory analysing the nerve agent revealed on Tuesday that it could not say whether the substance came from Russia.
The Kremlin immediately demanded an apology from May and her government for implicating Putin in the nerve agent attack, saying this “idiocy has gone too far”.
With reporting by © – AFP, 2018
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Why does the article leave out the pertinent point that there is still no proof the nerve agent came from Russia and the UK Home Office is busy scrubbing old tweets claiming otherwise.
@Rodney Pickering: I think my favourite conspiracy of all on this one, that the UK did this deliberately to have a reason to blame Russia and introduce sanctions on Russians… completely ignoring that the British have saved these people’s lives… I keep seeing this nonsense in comment sections, buy, buy, buy tin foil folks. Now is the time, before the price sky rockets.
@Ciaran Ó Fallúin:
It’s hilarious – first of all if the British were responsible why would they choose to do it right on the doorstep of their own chemical weapons facility? Even a fox is smart enough not to kill lambs right beside it’s den to avoid drawing attention to itself!
Secondly, why would they want to deter a whole generation of potential future spies from leaking sensitive information about Russia?
And thirdly why would they try and save the lives of the people they wanted to kill?
@Walt Jabsco: Afraid I missed the hilarious part of this terrible attempted murder. What’s not funny either is the disregard for fair play and natural justice, to convict without any evidence except ‘ highly likely’, everything points to, etc, coming from one side.
Jumping to conclusions and going off half cock to justify prejudices, without any regard to the consequences.
@Rodney Pickering: cue the new accounts and bots saying the same thing
@Michael farrelly: And cue a ‘spontaneous’ display of supporting upticks Ceaușescu himself would have been proud of.
@Jointheclubtoo:
The attempted murders certainly weren’t funny – the predictable rash of online conspiracy theories is (all without a shred of proof, and mostly coming from the very same commenters demanding to see proof of Russian involvement).
@Michael farrelly: troll
@Walt Jabsco: “Why then, asked somebody, had Putin spoken so strongly against it? Here Squealer looked very sly. That, he said, was Comrade Putin’s cunning. He had seemed to want to assassinate traitors hiding abroad, simply as a maneuver to get the British themselves to kill Skripal, who was a dangerous character and a bad influence. Now that Skripal was out of the way, the plan to defend Russia could go forward without his interference. This, said Squealer, was something called tactics. He repeated a number of times, ‘Tactics, comrades, tactics!’ skipping round and whisking his tail with a merry laugh.”
“The animals were not certain what the word meant, but Squealer spoke so persuasively, and the three dogs who happened to be with him growled so threateningly, that they accepted his explanation without further questions”
@Rodney Pickering: probably because the author assumes you and your colleagues will here in the comments section
This is very interesting,
Last week Yulia was reported to be in a stable condition after falling into a coma following the chemical attack. Moscow-based relative Viktoria Skripal told the Guardian that she had spoken to Yulia and that a statement would soon be released by Russian news agencies – “even in English.”
“She said everything is fine and she is doing OK,” Viktoria told the Guardian over the telephone. “That’s all I’m going to say.”
Viktoria also recorded the phone conversation with Yulia which was later played on a talk show on TV network Russia-1. Yulia can be heard telling her relative that she is calling from a phone that is “just temporary”. The 33-year-old also said that neither she nor her father had health problem that could not be fixed.
In the recording, Viktoria can be heard telling her cousin “If I get my visa tomorrow, on Monday I will fly to you”, to which Yulia responded, “nobody will give you a visa.”
At one point in the conversation, Yulia cut off Viktoria from going into depth about what happened, insisting “later, let’s talk later. In short, everything is OK.”
When asked about her father Sergei Skripal, who is still understood to be in a critical condition, Yulia can be heard replying that “Everything’s OK. He’s resting now, he’s sleeping. Everyone’s health is OK. No one has had any irreversible [harm].
“I’m being discharged soon,” she added.
Seems the “Lethal nerve agent” wasn`t so “Lethal” after all…
@Pearse Mc Mullen: You can fully recover from nerve agent poisoning. You can also be permanently damaged due to the destruction of nerve tissue.
It depends on many factors. The fact that she has recovered does not mean that this was not a nerve agent attack, nor does it mean the nerve agent wasn’t lethal.
Lethality is dose-dependent. If we assume her father was the target of the attack, it makes sense that she hasn’t suffered as much as him, because he was exposed to a higher dose of the agent.
@Pearse Mc Mullen:
I’m not sure what conclusions you’re trying to insinuate from her not wanting to go into details of the poisoning.
Obviously she’s not going to want anyone to overhear if she thought the British were responsible, but equally
if she thought the Kremlin were responsible she’d hardly want to just come out and say so knowing that they were probably listening in to the call.
It’s also possible that on a human level she just didn’t think it was the right time and place to talk about it – maybe she just wanted to concentrate on her recovery.
@ihcalaM: The emergency services have been issued with antidotes to nerve agents for the last few years, if they have the combo pens, then I would expect that they would have received instruction on how to identify the symptoms of an attack.
@Walt Jabsco: wow, conclusions i am trying to insinuate….., calm down mate, all i said was i found it interesting, and giving a whole different perspective on the issue, according to her, they are both going to make a full recovery.
@David Goodman: Not sure what your point is, though. It’s possible that the emergency services were quick in their response and correctly diagnosed the ongoing cholinergic crisis (the symptoms are pretty dramatic) and were able to limit the damage with an antimuscarinic antidote. None of that would mean a lethal nerve agent wasn’t used. It’s also possible that the dose wasn’t high enough, that the formulation was incorrect or that the delivery was insufficient.
Let’s see what the OPCW have to say when they finish their investigation.
@Pearse Mc Mullen:
So why post small random details unless you think they’re somehow significant??
@ihcalaM: Most of what has been so far reported in newspapers is spurious and concocted to fill the narrative, even the latest BBC reports go no further than to say that Skripal is ‘critical but stable’. It seems to me that whatever poison or agent that was used was counteracted quickly by the hospital using an antedote such as Antropine. The conclusion of the British government suggests that there was Russian involvement, but where is the proof and why accuse them without sufficient evidence of where the poison originated. We certainly don’t know anything about how the Skripals earn their money these days, but whatever it is with a nice house and BMW car must be paying quite well it seems to me.
@Chris Kirk:
Skripal was reported to be still working for MI6. Not sure how true that is, but if so it would be another reason for the Kremlin to want to whack him.
@Chris Kirk: Saying he’s “critical but stable” is neither spurious nor concocted, it’s exactly what they’ve been told by the medics.
Leo and simon are after making a pigs ear in rowing in with the UK on this.innocent until proven guilty.they jumped the gun and need to come out and make an apology to Russia
Leo and Simon after getting eggs on their faces big time and gave away our neutrality in a heart beat …. suppose they’ll have to double down on the efforts to avoid giving the public what they really want : an election !
@dick dastardly: I don’t think so
@dick dastardly: If they rowed in with anyone, it wasn’t just the UK. The US, EU, NATO, Canada, Australia etc.
Ah sure, they’re all up to no good.
Except the Russian trustworthy political and money folk.
@wattsed: Whoa, its not Russia being trustworthy or the others being no good, when you make accusations, instant ones in this case, the onus is on you to bring credible evidence to back them up,
@Jointheclubtoo: Isn’t that why the OPCW are investigating – an OPCW that lists Russia as a member ?
Guess we have to wait a week, personally I haven’t seen the evidence provided to other democratic nations. Must’ve been rather compulsive for them to execute their actions tho before waiting for OPCW findings.
Great to hear. I wonder when her family will be allowed visit.
@Cal Mooney: Depends on the British issuing a visa.
@Chris Kirk: Depends on her being eligible for one, or has she actually applied for one ?
This girl needs to keep her mouth closed until she gets home or she could end up like Dr David Kelly.
@Kieran Woods: gets home to where ? Russia ? You’re joking, right ?
@Kieran Woods: Yeah. Who’d want to end up like that poor man, with conspiracy theorists swarming your grave with placards and giving your family even more grief.
@ihcalaM: I wouldn’t call the the two paramedics who were called to the scene of Dr. Kelly’s death and questioned the ‘official’ cause of death conspiracy theorists.
@Kieran Woods:
Yeah she’d want to be careful in case they might kill her after just saving her life….
@JimmyMc: I’d call the people that desecrated his grave with their rubbish (to the extent that his family had to have his body exhumed and moved) conspiracy theorists.
In fact, that’s exactly what I just said, isn’t it?
As for the paramedics, they simply said that they were perplexed at the lack of blood as a cause of death based on their prior experience in the field. This, of course, wasn’t taking into account the fact that Dr. Kelly had taken a substantial number of painkillers (beyond the therapeutic dose) and had clinically silent coronary artery disease, which forensic experts have pointed to as major contributing factors.
It also didn’t take into account the fact that blood loss would be very difficult to estimate in an outdoor environment where blood seeps into the ground.
The Hutton inquiry was woefully inadequate, that’s something I’ll agree with. The peddling of conspiracy based on precisely zero evidence (which isn’t what those paramedics did, mind you), I won’t.
@Michael farrelly: Yep, that’s appears to be her wishes. She has lived safely there so far.
Great news that she appears to be recovering. Wish the same for her Father, and that their physical and mental health don’t have issues. Same to the policeman.
Food poisoning.
@Sebastian Wilson: Possible, but not in the time frame. Takes considerably longer. And the others that ate at the same place ?
Are there any photos of them not drinking pints?
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