MOSCOW, March 4. /TASS/. The Russian embassy in London has sent a note to the British Foreign office, requesting results of a year-long investigation into the Salisbury incident, which also included a report dedicated to the first anniversary of the poisoning of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom Alexander Yakovenko told the NTV channel.
The embassy had earlier published a 50-page report dubbed "Salisbury: Unanswered Questions" on its website. The document offers a detailed chronology of events, including the Salisbury incident, the global response to it, an overview of the UK’s investigation and diplomatic correspondence between Moscow and London.
"We sent this report to the Foreign Office and, naturally, asked them for comments. We also asked them to provide us with information about what the year-long investigation resulted in, what conclusions they drew," the Russian ambassador said. "We would certainly like to meet with the Skripals and we wrote about it in the note," Yakovenko added.
According to him, Russia published the report in order "to make British society understand what actually happened in Salisbury." The ambassador also said a lot of people had visited the embassy’s website to read the document. "We are pleased to see that these are the questions the British people want to have answers to and these are the questions they want to ask their government," Yakovenko concluded.
Skripal saga
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. 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.
On September 5, British Prime Minister Theresa May informed the country’s parliament about the conclusions that investigators looking into the Salisbury incident had come to, saying that two Russians, believed to be GRU agents, were suspected of conspiracy to murder the Skripals. According to May, the assassination attempt was approved at "a senior level of the Russian state." The Metropolitan Police published the suspects’ photos, saying their names were Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.
In an interview with Russia’s RT TV channel released on September 13, Petrov and Boshirov said they had visited Great Britain for tourist purposes. According to them, they are businessmen not linked to the GRU and have nothing to do with the Skripal case. The two men stressed they wanted the media and everyone else to leave them be.