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Sergei and Yulia Skripal move to New Zealand, report says

Sunday Times earlier reported that the British intelligence was in talks with the CIA on sending the Skripals to the US

LONDON, June 7. /TASS/. Russian former military intelligence officer-turned-British-mole Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia have moved to New Zealand, Sunday Times newspaper reported citing a high-ranking source in the UK government.

The pair, who were allegedly poisoned in March 2018 in the English city of Salisbury, were given new identities and support to start a new life in New Zealand.

Last year, British mass media reported that the father and daughter could move to one of countries part of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance - the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US.

They will likely stay under the radar for the rest of their lives, the report said.

Sunday Times earlier reported that the British intelligence was in talks with the CIA on sending the Skripals to the US.

Earlier, Ross Cassidy, a former neighbor of Sergei Skripal, said that he had received a Christmas letter in the mail from him in December. Cassidy and his wife took Skripal to Heathrow Airport in London to meet Yulia a day before the Russians were allegedly poisoned. The couple had been friends of Skripals for more than ten years and were the only persons allowed to visit Yulia in hospital after the alleged Novichok attack.

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.

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