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Russian embassy files new protest with UK Foreign Office over Skripals’ disappearance

LONDON, August 2. /TASS/. The Russian Embassy in London has submitted another note of protest to the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office demanding answers on the whereabouts of former GRU Colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia who went missing after the Salisbury incident, the embassy said in a commentary sent to TASS on Friday.

"Russia is firmly determined to establish the truth about the Salisbury incident. The embassy keeps insisting on comprehensive information from the British authorities and on the implementation of their international legal commitments regarding consular access and legal assistance to our citizens in accordance with the existing legislation," the commentary says.

"In this context, we have again submitted a note to the Foreign Office demanding a response to previous requests from the Russian side," it says emphasizing that "more than 80 diplomatic notes submitted to the Foreign Office as well as a legal assistance request from the Prosecutor General’s Office have been left unanswered up to date."

"Once more, we are calling on the British authorities to return to the international legal field to answer key questions: What are the fate and health of Sergei Skripal and his daughter who went missing in the United Kingdom more than a year ago? Who is in fact behind their poisoning and disappearance? How was their treatment carried out? Are British law enforcement agencies determined to establish the truth and what are the official results of that investigation?" the Russian embassy stated.

Skripal saga

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.