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UK fails to provide OPCW with information about Skripal case suspects, Russian envoy says

According to The Sun, British police are believed to have identified the suspected perpetrators of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury
OPCW headquarters  AP Photo/Peter Dejong
OPCW headquarters
© AP Photo/Peter Dejong

MOSCOW, July 19. /TASS/. Great Britain has not provided the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) with specific information about suspects in the Salisbury incident, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin said on the sidelines of a meeting of Russian ambassadors and envoys.

"The British provided no specific information to the OPCW," he said when asked if London had handed information about suspects in the Salisbury incident over to the organization.

According to The Sun newspaper, British police are believed to have identified the suspected perpetrators of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.

Skripal incident

According to London, former Russian military intelligence (GRU) Colonel Sergei Skripal, who had been convicted in Russia of spying for Great Britain and later swapped for Russian intelligence officers, and his daughter Yulia 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.

Chief Executive of the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down Gary Aitkenhead said later that British experts had been unable to identify the origin of the nerve agent used in the attack on the Skripals.