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Britain on Thursday urged Russia to provide details about the attack by a Novichok nerve agent on a former double agent and his daughter after two British citizens were hit with the same poison.
The two Britons, a 44-year-old woman and a 45-year-old man, were gravely ill after a seemingly chance encounter with poison near the site of the March attack on the ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
Britain accused Russia of poisoning the Skripals with Novichok – a nerve agent developed by the Soviet army during the Cold War – in what is the first known offensive use of the Skripals. such a chemical weapon on European soil since the Second World War.
Russia, which currently hosts the Football World Cup, denied any involvement in the March incident and suggested that the British security services had led the attack to stoke the crowd. anti-Moscow hysteria.
Reuters graphics
"The Russian state could put this" wrong "right, it could tell us what happened, what it has done and fill in some of the important gaps we are trying to pursue, "said UK Security Minister Ben Wallace.
"I'm waiting for the call of the Russian state."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that he did not know who Ben Wallace was, but said that Russia had offered its help to Britain to investigate the case. attacking neurotoxic agents and had been repulsed.
Prime Minister Theresa May, speaking with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany during a visit to Berlin, said that it was "deeply troubling" that two other people had been exposed to Novichok, adding that she thought of the inhabitants of the region.
MYSTERY
In the latest episode of one of the most mysterious poisonings of recent years, the two Britons, who became ill on Saturday, would have first been victims of heroin overdose or crack.
But tests at the Porton Down Military Research Center showed that they had been exposed to Novichok. Britain has notified the World Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) the global body for monitoring chemical weapons, about poisoning.
It is unclear how the two British, whose backgrounds have nothing to do with the world of espionage or the former Soviet Union, came into contact with poison which is slow to decompose.
"The working hypothesis would be that they were victims of the consequences of the previous attack or something else, but not that they were directly targeted," he said. Wallace.
Paramedics were called to a house in Amesbury on Saturday morning after the woman, named by the media as Dawn Sturgess, collapsed. They came back later in the day when the man, Charlie Rowley, also got sick.
Amesbury is located 11 km north of Salisbury, where Skripal – a former Russian military intelligence colonel who has betrayed dozens of agents of the British MI6 spy service – and his daughter were found unaware on a bench in March. 4.
CONTAMINATION
Chiefs of Health said the risk to the public was low, repeating their earlier advice that the public should wash their clothes and use cleaning wipes on personal items.
But the exposure of two British citizens to such a dangerous nerve agent will raise fears that Novichok may linger on sites around the ancient English city of Salisbury.
Andrea Sella, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at University College London, stated that Novichok's nerve agents were designed to be fairly persistent and did not decompose quickly.
"This means that if a container or surface was contaminated with this material, it would remain a danger for a long time," said Sella.
"It will be essential to follow the movements of this couple to identify where they may have been in contact with the source."
After the poisoning of Skripal, police investigators in protective gear against hazardous materials swept Salisbury. They can come back, said the police.
The March attack provoked the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats since the Cold War, with allies siding with May's view that Moscow was responsible or had lost control of the country. Nerve agent.
Moscow fought back by expelling Western diplomats, questioning how Britain could know that Russia was responsible and offering rival interpretations, including that it was of a conspiracy of the British secret services.
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