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UK PM won’t demand new anti-Russian sanctions at EU summit — source

According to a source, the UK prime minister is expected to ask the EU countries’ leaders to speed up the implementation of the June summit’s decisions
UK Prime Minister Theresa May AP Photo/Kerstin Joensson
UK Prime Minister Theresa May
© AP Photo/Kerstin Joensson

SALZBURG/Austria/, September 20. /TASS/. UK Prime Minister Theresa May won’t demand that the EU countries’ leaders slap new sanctions on Russia over the Skripal case at their summit in Salzburg as she understands that this is unrealistic, a source in the European Council told TASS.

"We do not expect that she [May] will ask to introduce new sanctions since she understands that this is unrealistic now, and there is no legal basis for this," the source said on the sidelines of the two-day informal high-level meeting on Thursday.

According to the source, the UK prime minister is expected to ask the EU countries’ leaders to speed up the implementation of the June summit’s decisions, which were made after the discussions on the situation around the Salisbury poisoning. In particular, the EU countries’ heads of state and government agreed to create a new mechanism of introducing sanctions to fight against the use of chemical weapons.

Britain claims that former Russian military intelligence officer convicted in Russia for spying for the UK Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were affected by a nerve gas of the Novichok class in Salisbury, England, on March 4. The British government claimed that Russia was highly likely involved in this incident. Moscow strongly dismissed all speculations on that score, saying that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia had ever had programs for making such agents.

On September 5, the UK prime minister told the British parliament about the secret services’ conclusions regarding the investigation of the March 4, 2018 Salisbury incident. The conclusion suggested that they had become targets of a special operation by agents of the Russian military intelligence service GRU.

Scotland Yard released a package of 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. In an interview with RT, the two men rejected the claims.