Russian ambassador to the UK: 'We have a lot of suspicions about Britain'

Moscow says news of Yulia Skripal’s remarkable recovery calls into question previous claims made by Britain about her and her father's poisoning

The discovery of what lay behind the first nerve agent attack in Europe since the Second World War has moved dramatically closer as Yulia Skripal begins a path towards recovery.

Ms Skripal is expected soon to be in a position to reveal to investigators the chain and time of events leading up to her poisoning and that of her father in Salisbury a month ago. In her first public statement, issued through the police, she said: “I woke up over a week ago and am glad to say my strength is growing daily.”

Thanking hospital staff as well as the people of Salisbury, she added that the “entire episode has been somewhat disorienting”, but she was now going through convalescence.

Separately, Russian TV broadcast a recorded call supposedly between Ms Skripal and her cousin Viktoria in Moscow in which Yulia said her father was also getting better. “There are no irreparable things. I will be discharged soon. He is resting now, having a sleep. Everything is OK ... Everything is fine, everything is solvable, everyone is recovering and is alive,” she said. The call has not been authenticated.

But the news of the improvement of Ms Skripal’s health immediately added to the accusations and recriminations between the UK and Moscow, with the British government accusing the Kremlin of being responsible for the attempted assassinations.

Moscow demanded to know how recovery was possible when the head of Britain’s defence research centre had said there was no known antidote to novichok, the nerve agent used. The Russian ambassador in London said: “We have asked the British government about this, but we have not received an answer.”

There have been repeated claims in Russia, from officials and some sectors of the media, that the UK could have its own stock of novichok – pointing out the proximity of the Porton Down research facility to Salisbury – and may have staged the attack. An alternative conspiracy theory is that some other substance may have been used instead of novichok by the British authorities.

Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that the attack may have been carried out by British “special services” [security and intelligence services] to hide Theresa May’s government having to make humiliating concessions to the EU on Brexit. The ambassador, Alexander Yakovenko, said his country was not directly blaming Britain, but “that is a conclusion one can come to because Britain is not showing any evidence for their accusations and keeping the investigation secret”.

However, he added: “We have a lot of suspicions about Britain. If we take the last 10 years, so many Russian citizens died here in the UK under very strange circumstances.

“The last one was [Nikolai] Glushkov. He was strangled – as it was said officially – on 12 March. He was a Russian businessman, a Russian citizen, not a British citizen and his case is also classified. We don’t have any access to the investigation, we don’t know anything. We want to know the truth; my question is ‘why is it happening here?’”

Mr Yakovenko wanted to point out that Ms Skripal is also a Russian citizen and “I am quite sure that one day Yulia will come back to Moscow where she has job, apartments, she is willing and she is a wealthy person and she is doing well”. He added that even Sergei Skripal, who had been imprisoned in Russia for spying for Britain, could also go and live in Russia. “As far as the father, that is his choice, he decided to live here in the UK, no problem,” he said. “But he has served his sentence.”

Viktoria Skripal is planning to come to England and meet her cousin Yulia. She said in Moscow: “If Yulia has regained consciousness and is improving rapidly, why shouldn’t she come home? I am here, her other cousin could come, we could provide things for her at home.” Viktoria said she has applied for a visa and has been promised urgent assistance in getting one by the British embassy in Moscow.

However, in the phone call broadcast on Russian TV, Yulia told her cousin: “Vika, nobody will give you a visa.” When Viktoria asked whether she could visit her in hospital, Yulia responded: “I think no, there is such a situation now, we’ll sort it out later, we will get it all sorted later, everything’s fine, we’ll see later.”

Mr Yakovenko said the Russian authorities were not sponsoring Viktoria Skripal’s visit and she was making her own travel arrangements. But he said he had invited her to stay at the embassy and offered to provide transport and a translator. The British government, he said, had provided neither Viktoria nor the Russian embassy with any information about a possible hospital visit despite several requests.

Mr Yakovenko said that his government would only accept the conclusions of an investigation being carried out by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) if Russia participated or other countries outside Nato and the European Union took part.

“We will accept the results, but these results should be confirmed by the international community,” he said. “For the time being, we don’t see who are experts. The last time, in Syria, the team was headed by the British. That was a real problem for us: we need an international team with members from India, China, Latin America...”

The ambassador also claimed that the majority of the international community backed Russia in the dispute with Britain, pointing to the voting figures at the OPCW meeting in The Hague on Wednesday. A Russian call for a joint investigation by Britain and Russia was defeated by 15 votes to six, but 17 other countries abstained. Almost all the 15 votes supporting the UK position, he said, came from the European Union and Nato states.