Last week the US imposed the second round of sanctions against Russia over its alleged involvement in poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
Statement by the US Department of State said that the sanctions were imposed for Russia’s “use of a ‘Novichok’ nerve agent in an attempt to assassinate Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal in the United Kingdom on March 4, 2018” under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act, adding that the poisoning “endangered thousand of lives.”
Dominic Raab, UK Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State, commented on the neew sanctions the next day they were imposed. “We welcome unwavering US support today,” he tweeted.
We welcome unwavering US support today, with the introduction of Chemical & Biological Weapons Sanctions in response to Russia’s use of a deadly nerve agent in Salisbury. Continued global response shows we will not stand & watch these horrific weapons be used without consequences
— Dominic Raab (@DominicRaab) August 3, 2019
Russia’s Embassy in Britain responded to Raab’s tweet and claimed the sanctions were “poor substitute for evidence.”
Sanctions and accusations are poor substitute for evidence. And the latter lacks utterly. https://t.co/4N7UNkFbTA
— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) August 4, 2019
Experts doubt that Russia was involved in the act. Leonid RInk, the chemist, told the reporters that any country could have developed the agent used in the poisoning of Skripals. Another chemist and former Head of of the Soviet Counter-Intelligence Department Vil Mirzayanov said in one of his interviews that “the British could easily have synthesized Novichok on the basis of the formulas that I published in my book in 2008.”
Natalia Veselnitskaya – official website
