MOSCOW, May 24. /TASS/. Viktoria Skripal, niece of former GRU officer Sergei Skripal, has handed over recordings of her uncle’s recent phone calls with her to the Russian Investigative Committee, she informed TASS on Friday.
"He has called twice, once in April and once he left a voicemail. <…> The phone number was identified, it’s a number registered in Great Britain, both times it has been different. <…> I have already handed over [the materials to the Russian Investigative Committee," she said.
She explained that it was her decision not to inform anyone of Sergei Skripal’s calls in the past. "It is my personal decision. <…> From the beginning, I decided that I wanted him to call and speak to the mother. He called," she noted.
The Russian Investigative Committee’s Directorate for the Yaroslavl Region informed TASS that they had not received any documents from Viktoria Skripal. "She may have sent them directly to the Central Administration of the Russian Investigative Committee," the source pointed out.
On March 4, 2018, 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. Claiming that the substance used in the attack had been a nerve agent allegedly developed in Russia, London rushed to accuse Moscow of being involved in the incident. The Russian side flatly 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.