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Russian UN envoy asks Security Council to back Russia’s cooperation offer to UK

Nebenzya also asked his UK counterpart Karen Pierce to "stop misinforming the global community"

UN, September 6. /TASS/. Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya asked UN Security Council to back Russia’s offer on cooperation with the UK in relation to the Skripal case.

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Russian UN envoy says London’s ‘evidence’ in Skripal case is full of holes

"We are calling for all states to support the appeal to the British government to start consultations with the Russian Federation under the Convention for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons," he said on Thursday during the UN Security Council session.

Nebenzya also asked his UK counterpart Karen Pierce to "stop misinforming the global community."

"No request on cooperation with the Russian side in investigating this case has ever come from the British side," he said. "On the contrary, Russia filed numerous requests to the British side, both within the OPCW framework and through other channels, to carry out a joint investigation. The Russian side had also confirmed its readiness to join it [an investigation into the matter]."

New findings in Skripal affair

On Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Theresa May briefed the parliament about the secret services’ conclusions regarding investigation of the March 4, 2018, alleged poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury. The conclusion is they had become targets of a special operation by agents of the Russian military intelligence service GRU.

May claimed the operation "was almost certainly also approved outside […] at a senior level of the Russian state".

Scotland Yard released photos supposedly showing the two Russians who had poisoned the Skripals. The official story made public by the British authorities suggests the two men entered the country 48 hours before the poisoning. They held official Russian passports issued in the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.

The UK government claims Sergei and Yulia Skripal survived exposure to a nerve agent from the class of agents tentatively codenamed Novichok [a novice or a new arrival, depending on the context]. The incident occurred in Salisbury on March 4, 2018.

The British authorities immediately came up with the allegations that Russia ‘highly likely’ stood behind the poisoning. Moscow strongly denies any assertions regarding the development and production of Novichok-class agents in the former USSR or in the Russian Federation.

Experts from the UK defense science and technology laboratory at Porton Down have been unable to identify the origins of the substance Sergei and Yulia Skripal were exposed to.

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