LONDON, June 16. /TASS/. BBC One’s series on the 2018 incident in the British city of Salisbury with former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia leaves unanswered numerous questions about the circumstances of what happened, a spokesperson for the Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom told TASS.
The three-part series, The Salisbury Poisonings, which premiered on Sunday, was announced back in October 2019. "Naturally, we expected a journalistic investigation that would finally uncover all the circumstances of poisoning Russian nationals Sergei and Yulia Skripal and the death of [Briton] Dawn Sturgess, but we saw an absolutely different picture. The authors of the series offer the spectators to share the emotions of the characters but unfortunately, leave unanswered numerous questions, which we still have as well as the public, which is not satisfied with the official British version of the incident," the diplomat said.
According to the diplomat, it is still unclear where the Skripals went in the morning of March 4 with their phones being switched off; why the records of the surveillance camera in Sergei Skripal’s house were not released; how it turned out that the Skripals lost consciousness simultaneously several hours after the poisoning and received first assistance from a chief nursing officer in the British Army; where the Skripals are at the moment and how is their health; are they independent in their contacts and actions? "Without the answers to these and many other questions any deliberations in the context of the official version on someone’s responsibility are senseless," the spokesperson said.
"Certainly, British journalists have the right to work in fiction genres on Salisbury. However, this does not help to establish the truth and the politicized version of the British authorities, which is not substantiated by evidence, is well-known. The new series brought no "added value" here," the diplomat said.
"We once again confirm our determination to search for the truth in these tragic incidents and that we are open for respective cooperation on an equal basis in the framework of the current international and legal mechanisms that were created to this aim. We still believe that the British authorities will sooner or later present full official information about the incident as well as the fate of our nationals Sergei and Yulia Skripals, which is still unknown. Unfortunately, we have to admit that London’s line on the Salisbury incident has brought Russian-British ties to a deadlock and dealt a serious blow to cooperation between our countries," the spokesperson said.
On March 4, 2018, former GRU (Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate) officer 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 the so-called Novichok 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 dismissed 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. Britain’s military chemical laboratory at Porton Down failed to pinpoint the origin of the substance that allegedly poisoned the Skripals.
On June 30, 2018, British citizen Dawn Sturgess, 44, and her partner Charlie Rowley, 45, were taken to a hospital in the city of Amesbury in critical condition. On the evening of July 8, the police reported that Sturgess had died, and the investigators launched a murder case. Rowley regained consciousness on July 10. The London police anti-terrorism department earlier stated that Sturgess and Rowley had come into contact with Novichok - the same nerve agent that had poisoned Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
In September 2018, then-Prime Minister of the UK 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. 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 Petrov and Boshirov refuted these allegations.