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Russian Foreign Ministry has been trying to contact Yulia Skripal every day — diplomat

On May 23, Yulia Skripal made first public statement after Salisbury incident

© Aleksandr Shcherbak/TASS

MOSCOW, May 23. /TASS/. Russia’s Foreign Ministry has been trying every single day to get in touch with Yulia Skripal in order to make sure that she was not held against her will, the ministry’s Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told TASS on Wednesday.

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Yulia Skripal makes first public statement after Salisbury incident

"Every single day, both Russia’s Foreign Ministry and Russia’s Embassy to London have been making attempts to organize a contact with her [Yulia Skripal] with the main aim to make sure that she was not held by force, that she was not replaced with another person and to get first-hand information about her health and her father’s health," she said.

Yulia Skripal said in a video address released earlier in the day that she does not "wish to avail myself of their [Russia’s embassy to the UK] services," she said.

According to London, former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, 66, who had been sentenced in Russia for spying for the UK, and his daughter Yulia, 33, suffered the effects of an alleged nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury on March 4. Claiming that the substance used in the attack had been a Novichok-class nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union, London rushed to accuse Russia of being involved in the incident. Moscow rejected all of the United Kingdom’s accusations, saying that a program aimed at developing such a substance had existed neither in the Soviet Union nor in Russia.

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