LONDON, April 20. /TASS/. Moscow has every reason to qualify the situation concerning the poisoning of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter as an abduction, Russia’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom Alexander Yakovenko said at a London press conference on Friday.

"Considering all the facts now we have more reasons to qualify this situation as an abduction of two Russian nationals," he said, adding that the Russian embassy "sent a request to the British side to allow medical examination of Yulia Skripal to be conducted by Russian specialists."

 "So far we don’t have any answer," Yakovenko noted.

"We get the impression that the British government is deliberately pursuing the policy of destroying all possible evidence." he said.

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.

On April 12, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) released a report, which confirmed the information about the toxic agent in question but shed no light on its origin.