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Yulia Skripal Isn’t Asking for Russia’s Help, U.K. Says Skripal Cousin Says She Doesn’t Trust Britain on Chemical Attack
(about 4 hours later)
LONDON — The Russian woman poisoned by a nerve agent in Britain knows that Russian officials have offered to help her, but she has not yet accepted their assistance, the British government said on Thursday. YAROSLAVL, Russia — A 45-year-old Russian accountant and relative of the two Russians poisoned in a nerve agent attack in Britain last month said in an interview late Thursday that she was “scared” for them, calling the British authorities untrustworthy and casting doubt on their version of events.
Russian officials have accused Britain of denying them access to the woman, Yulia Skripal, who is at the center of an escalating international confrontation. But the British government — which contends that Moscow was most likely behind the attack on Ms. Skripal and her father, a former spy — says that the choice not to meet with the Russians, at least not yet, has been hers. In the interview in Yaroslavl, Russia, where she lives with her husband and her two children, the accountant, Viktoria Skripal, who has been thrust into an escalating confrontation between Russia and the West, also said that she doubted Britain would grant her a visa that would allow her to see her relatives.
The relatives, Sergei V. Skripal, a former Russian spy, and his daughter, Yulia, have been hospitalized in Salisbury, England, since the attack on March 4. Ms. Skripal’s suspicions, which echo the accusations of Russian officials, have become the country’s latest riposte to British assertions that Moscow was responsible for the attack carried out with a rare class of miltary-grade nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union called novichoks.
“Wouldn’t you be scared?” she said. “While I don’t know the whole situation, they ask me to voice my opinion,” she said of the British authorities, who she said wanted her to denounce Russia. “If they tell me, ‘We’ll return Yulia to you if you say ‘Russia is filth,’ then I’ll stand up and say ‘Russia is filth’ and take Yulia back to that filth.”
Mr. Skripal’s condition was raised to stable from critical on Friday, and he “is responding well to treatment, improving rapidly,” said Dr. Christine Blanshard, medical director of Salisbury District Hospital, in a statement. Officials did not say whether he had regained consciousness, as Yulia Skripal did last week.
Russian officials have accused Britain of denying them access to Yulia Skripal. The British government — which contends that Moscow was most likely behind the attack on Ms. Skripal and her father, a former spy — said that the choice not to meet with Russian officials, at least not yet, was hers.
“We have conveyed to Ms. Skripal the Russian Embassy’s offer of consular assistance,” the British Foreign Office said in a statement released Thursday night. “Ms. Skripal is now able to choose if and when to take up this offer, but to date she has not done so.”“We have conveyed to Ms. Skripal the Russian Embassy’s offer of consular assistance,” the British Foreign Office said in a statement released Thursday night. “Ms. Skripal is now able to choose if and when to take up this offer, but to date she has not done so.”
Ms. Skripal and her father, Sergei V. Skripal, were poisoned on March 4 at his home in Salisbury, England, and have remained hospitalized since then. He is still unconscious and in critical condition; she regained consciousness last week. The British police have released a statement on Ms. Skripal’s behalf, in which she said that she “woke up over a week ago now” and that her “strength is growing daily.” Viktoria Skripal recorded what she said was a brief call this week from her cousin and turned the recording over to Russian state television, which broadcast it repeatedly. The veracity of the recording could not be confirmed, but Ms. Skripal suggested it was British officials, not Russians, who manipulated the conversation.
British officials have said that the Skripals were sickened by a class of nerve agents known as novichoks and developed by the Soviet Union — apparently the first use of a chemical weapon on British soil since World War II. Britain has said that Russia was almost certainly to blame for the attack, and after making its case behind closed doors, London has orchestrated a coordinated international response to the poisoning with its allies on both sides of the Atlantic. “You heard her — the phone she’s using is temporary, and at the end the line strangely cuts out,” she said. “I think they’ve asked her to call me and give a specific statement.”
That has led to retaliatory expulsions of hundreds of government representatives, angry denunciations, and promises by Britain and its allies to inflict economic pain on Kremlin officials and their associates; the United States is expected on Friday to name dozens of wealthy Russians who will face financial sanctions. Ms. Skripal also raised doubts about why Moscow would stage such an attack. “What’s Russia’s gain from this?” she said. “Getting the World Cup boycotted? Earning new sanctions? And with elections two weeks away? Russia gains nothing from this politically.”
And, citing the case of Yevgeny Chichvarkin, a tycoon who fled to London in 2009, she said she does not take seriously repeated warnings from President Vladimir V. Putin that traitors could never feel safe.
“Look, there’s Chichvarkin there with plenty of money,” she said. “All those businessmen who have fled to France with huge sums. Why can’t he just kill them all and get all the money back to Russia? Why don’t they kill anyone in America? There’s even more of them there than in England.”
On Thursday, Ms. Skripal appeared as the star guest on “Let Them Talk,” a popular talk show on Russia’s First Channel, a state-owned outlet that revels in promoting officially sanctioned conspiracy theories. Joining her on the show were the two Russians who Britain accused of the 2006 poisoning in London of Aleksandr Litvinenko, a former Russian spy and bitter critic of Mr. Putin; and Walter Litvinenko, Aleksandr’s father, who blames his son’s murder on the C.I.A.
Turning to Mrs. Skripal during the broadcast, Walter Litvinenko delivered a blistering tirade against the British government.
“You have to go to England and demand to see that girl,” he said, referring to Yulia. “She will die there. They’ll simply poison her, just like they poisoned my son three times in hospital. It’s very dangerous to get involved with the British.” Ms. Skripal was shown nodding her head as she appeared to stare at the floor.
While not an enthusiastic promoter of various Russian theories, Ms. Skripal has nonetheless added her voice to claims that Britain is involved in a cover-up. That view gained more force earlier this week when the head of the Porton Down military laboratory in Britain acknowledged that his scientists had only identified the nerve agent, not pinpointed Russia as the place where it was made.
Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, added further grist to Russia’s conspiracy mill on Friday with a post on Facebook that suggested that the Skripals’ pets — two guinea pigs and a cat — had been killed by the British and then cremated to destroy evidence relating to the nerve agent used against Yulia and Sergei Skripal.
“Our sources indicate that BBC television company was aware that pets remained in the house, but for some reason, it concealed this information,” she wrote. “It would be nice to have a clarification. P.S. I’m not drawing any conclusions. This might be just a coincidence. But experiments with nerve agents in Porton Down were conducted specifically on guinea pigs.”
Britain’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said Friday that the house had been sealed after the police recognized that the Skripals had been poisoned with a nerve agent. Regrettably, “two guinea pigs had sadly died” by the time someone entered the home to see about the animals, the statement said, and “a cat was also found in a distressed state and a decision was taken by a veterinary surgeon to euthanize the animal to alleviate its suffering.”
Viktoria Skripal said she felt like a pawn in a great power standoff, hounded nonstop by Russian and foreign journalists. She said she had been interviewed recently by a Russian television crew that claimed to have been sent by Russia’s Foreign Ministry, but the ministry denied any involvement.
“I wake up every day at 7 a.m. to at least have time to cook breakfast and wash by 9 a.m., because from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day, the calls don’t stop,” she said.
One theory widely shared on Russian social media is that the Skripals were the victims of a vengeance attack by the mother of Yulia’s live-in boyfriend, who reportedly has ties to Russia’s security apparatus. Viktoria Skripal said she knew nothing about the boyfriend other than he lived with Yulia and that “he’s close to all those structures, you understand.”
The couple’s apartment in the town of Podolsk, just south of Moscow, seemed to have been vacated. Mail had piled up in the letter box and nobody answered the door. Neighbors said he had moved out to his dacha.
Britain has said that Russia was almost certainly to blame for the attack, and after making its case behind closed doors, London has orchestrated a coordinated international response to the poisoning with its allies on both sides of the Atlantic.
That has led to retaliatory expulsions of hundreds of government representatives, angry denunciations and promises by Britain and its allies to inflict economic pain on Kremlin officials and their associates; the United States is expected on Friday to name dozens of wealthy Russians who will face financial sanctions.
President Vladimir V. Putin’s government has insisted that Moscow had nothing to do with the poisoning, alternately questioning whether the Skripals were really poisoned, whether a nerve agent was involved, whether it was a novichok, whether another country might have supplied it, and whether Britain itself might have carried out the attack.President Vladimir V. Putin’s government has insisted that Moscow had nothing to do with the poisoning, alternately questioning whether the Skripals were really poisoned, whether a nerve agent was involved, whether it was a novichok, whether another country might have supplied it, and whether Britain itself might have carried out the attack.
The Kremlin has also seized on every apparent inconsistency in the accounts from the British government, particularly remarks by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who appeared to have gone too far in saying that Mr. Putin himself was probably involved, and that the chemical came from Russia.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international body, is examining evidence in the case. Russia has demanded that it be allowed to take part in the investigation — a suggestion that Britain has called perverse.The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international body, is examining evidence in the case. Russia has demanded that it be allowed to take part in the investigation — a suggestion that Britain has called perverse.
Russia called a meeting of the United Nations on Thursday to proclaim its innocence, and it has even accused Britain of mistreating Mr. Skripal’s pets, which were left alone for weeks in his house after investigators sealed it off. Britain’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said Friday that “two guinea pigs had sadly died” by the time someone entered the home to see about the animals, and that “a cat was also found in a distressed state and a decision was taken by a veterinary surgeon to euthanize the animal to alleviate its suffering.”
On Thursday, a Russian television station broadcast a recording of what it said was a brief phone call between Ms. Skripal and a cousin in Russia.
Mr. Skripal, once a colonel in Russian military intelligence, was convicted in 2006 of selling secrets to the British and imprisoned. He was sent to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap. His poisoning followed the suspicious deaths of a number of Kremlin foes in Britain over more than a decade, some of which the British government is investigating anew.