Niece of Novichok: British intelligence agencies did not try to contact her

Neither the British police nor intelligence agencies have tried to contact Viktoria Skripal, the niece of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, as she herself said at a press conference in Moscow on Thursday.

"No, they didn’t," Viktoria said when asked if British law enforcement or intelligence agencies had contacted her.

She added that she was ready to give testimony to the British police if she got a visa and had a chance to visit her uncle Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Great Britain.

Viktoria earlier mentioned three phone calls from Yulia. The latest phone conversation between the two took place on July 24, when Yulia told her cousin she planned to return to Russia once her father recovered.
British poisonings

According to London, 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. Chief Executive of the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down Gary Aitkenhead said later that British experts had been unable to identify the origin of the nerve agent used in the attack on the Skripals.

On June 30, 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess and 45-year-old Charles Rowley were hospitalized in critical condition in the British town of Amesbury. The Metropolitan Police went on to claim that the two had been exposed to Novichok, the same nerve agent that was allegedly used in the Skripal poisoning. After being mysteriously exposed to a nerve agent and falling into a coma, Sturgess died on July 8 while Rowley managed to recover.

On September 5, the United Kingdom’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it was ready to charge two Russian nationals, named Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, with conspiracy to murder the Skripals. The Metropolitan police, in turn, issued a statement saying that it would link the investigations into the Salisbury and Amesbury poisonings.