Ex-spy poisoning: UK, Russia continue to trade blame

Boris Johnson

Britain's foreign secretary said yesterday that the trail of blame for the poisoning of a former spy "leads inexorably to the Kremlin", after a Russian envoy suggested the nerve agent involved could have come from a UK lab. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Britain has evidence that Russia has been stockpiling nerve agents like the one used against Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Johnson told the BBC officials from the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons would arrive in Britain on Monday to take samples of the nerve agent used to poison the Skripals.

Britain says it is Novichok, a class of powerful nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union toward the end of the Cold War. "We have evidence within the last 10 years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination but has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok," Johnson said. Vladimir Chizhov, Moscow's EU ambassador, said Russia has no chemical weapons stockpiles and was not behind the poisoning. "Russia had nothing to do with it," Chizhov told the BBC.

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