MOSCOW, January 11. /TASS/. Yelena Skripal, the mother of former Russian military intelligence Colonel Sergei Skripal, has given up the idea of travelling to Great Britain due to health issues, her granddaughter and Sergei Skripal’s niece Viktoria told TASS on Friday.
According to earlier reports, Sergei Srkipal’s mother and niece planned to apply for British visas in late 2018. Viktoria had been denied a British visa before.
"Granny definitely won’t go there though she wants to, but her health doesn’t allow it. She is 91 years old and she has not been well recently, this week she will have an electrocardiogram… she can barely walk," Viktoria said.
"As for me, I don’t intend to go to Great Britain now, Yulia [Sergei Skripal’s daughter] has not called any member of the family, Sergei Viktorovich [Sripal] is probably dead. First, he hasn’t contacted his mother, and second, have you seen him after what happened? They didn’t even show us his photos," Viktoria Skripal pointed out.
According to London, former Russian military intelligence (GRU) Colonel Sergei Skripal, 66, who had been convicted in Russia of spying for Great Britain and later swapped for Russian intelligence officers, and his daughter Yulia, 33, suffered the effects of an alleged nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury on March 4, 2018. 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 neither the Soviet Union nor Russia ever had any program aimed at developing such a substance.
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.