Spy mystery: Chemical weapons troops join investigation - Times of London

Spy mystery: Chemical weapons troops join investigation

Deborah Haynes, Defence Editor | Tom Parfitt, Moscow | Fiona Hamilton, Crime Editor

March 9 2018, 12:00pm,

The Times

British troops trained in chemical warfare today joined the police investigation into a nerve agent attack against a former Russian double agent and his daughter in Salisbury.

Some 100 military personnel, including chemical warfare specialists, Royal Marines and members of the RAF Regiment, will help to move vehicles and other contaminated objects from the crime scene.

This is thought to include the house of Sergei Skripal, 66, the former spy, and a car recovery yard in Salisbury. Police yesterday sealed off the yard having impounded a red BMW believed to belong to Mr Skripal.

Amber Rudd was in Salisbury this morning to visit the scene where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found

Amber Rudd was in Salisbury this morning to visit the scene where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found

PETER NICHOLLS/REUTERS

Detectives are understood to be considering the possibility that the pair were poisoned at the house. A source said that a nerve agent would result in a slower reaction if ingested, as opposed to being sprayed on a victim.

Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said speculation that Moscow carried out the assassination attempt was “pure propaganda” and a “whipping-up of hysteria”. The comments were the highest-level reaction from Russia. Theresa May is expected within days to name Moscow as the chief suspect in the attempted assassination of the Skripals.

Amber Rudd, the home secretary, visited Salisbury this morning and said that the Skripals remained in a “very serious” condition after the “outrageous” attack.

Mrs Rudd visited the scene where Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal, 33, were found incapacitated on a park bench on Sunday afternoon after being exposed to a nerve agent, which has yet to be named.

She said that the condition of the pair, who are understood to be in a coma at Salisbury hospital, remained “very serious”. Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, 38, remains in a serious condition but “he’s still conversing and engaging”. Mrs Rudd said.

The home secretary declined to give further details on the investigation, as hundreds of police and intelligence officers work to establish how the father and daughter were attacked, where and by whom. “I understand people’s curiosity about all those questions, wanting to have answers, and there will be a time to have those answers,” she said. “But the best way to get to them is to give the police the space they need to really go through the area carefully, to do their investigation and to make sure that they have all the support that they need.”

She signalled yesterday that tougher legislation to sanction dubious Russians could be introduced by the government if a state-sponsored attack is proven.

Mr Lavrov said that the nerve-agent attack bore no comparison with the murder of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.

“We have not heard a single fact, we only see reports on television where your colleagues, with serious faces, say pompously that if it’s Russia then the response will be such that Russia remembers it forever,” the foreign minister said. “This is not serious, this is pure propaganda and the whipping-up of hysteria.”

Mr Litvinenko died after radioactive polonium was added to his tea during a meeting at a Mayfair hotel. An inquiry into the 2006 atrocity found it to be a state-sponsored killing that was probably sanctioned by President Putin.

“I have been watching TV,” Mr Lavrov said. “There is no way to escape that. But here parallels have already started to be drawn with Litvinenko’s death also in the United Kingdom. I would like to issue a reminder that the investigation into Litvinenko’s death, the blame for which was also placed on the Russian Federation, has not been brought to a conclusion thus far.”

A prominent presenter on Russian state television warned on Wednesday that “traitors” should not settle in England because of the risk of death or illness. “Whatever the reasons, whether you’re a professional traitor to the motherland or you just hate your country in your free time, I repeat,” Kirill Kleymenov said. “No matter — don’t go to England. Something is not right there. Maybe the climate.”

Britain is in talks with the United States and Nato about a co-ordinated response to Russia if Mr Putin’s government is found to be behind the poisoning. This could include a review of participation by dignitaries of Nato states at the football World Cup this summer, sources said. We “must consider a range of options and with the World Cup approaching this invariably involves looking at this”, the source said.

It has already been confirmed that the Duke of Cambridge will not attend the tournament, which is due to kick off in stadiums across Russia on June 14. The event is regarded by Mr Putin as a moment of national and international pride. Any international snub is likely to bring a response from the Kremlin.