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MOSCOW, Mar. 6 - RIA Novosti. On Monday evening, ex-colonel GRU Sergei Skripal was taken to the hospital of the British Salisbury with suspicion of poisoning, the edition of The Scottish Sun reported. According to the newspaper The Telegraph, Skripal recently appealed to the police and said that he feared for his life.

He and the young woman who was with him became ill on the bench near the shopping center. They both lost consciousness.

According to the media, Skripal was sent to the intensive care unit. His 33-year-old companion is also in critical condition.

A witness, Georgia Pridham, told The Telegraph, how she discovered them. According to her, the man lifted his palms to the sky and looked at the building opposite him, while the woman fell heavily on his shoulder.

"He was conscious, but looked as if he had been frozen, and he was rocking back and forth," Pridham noted.

She decided that the couple was under the influence of some substances, but explained that the man did not look like a person who uses drugs.

Work of criminalists

On the scene immediately left the forensic experts. There they found a packed object with an unknown substance.

As a source in the British law enforcement agencies told RIA Novosti, the toxicological analysis data may become known by the middle of the day of Tuesday.

"The police are studying records from security cameras," the agency interlocutor added, adding that investigative measures are also continuing in the victim's house.

The law enforcement agencies noted that since the investigation is at an early stage, it is not yet possible to talk about whether this was a crime.

Later, police reported the closure of the restaurant Zizzi, in which Skripal and his companion had dinner shortly before they became ill.

However, as a precautionary measure, the local residents were called in case of an ailment to seek medical help.

Scotland Yard joined the case

The counterterrorism unit of Scotland Yard joined the investigation into the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. This does not mean that we are talking about terrorism, the police stressed.

In turn, the head of the division of Scotland Yard, Mark Rowley called the incident in Salisbury "a very unusual case," and said that the main task now is to determine the source of poisoning the victims.

He also did not rule out that, if necessary, his unit will get involved in the investigation more thoroughly, but at the moment it helps, inter alia, in the interrogation of witnesses and in the conduct of toxicological expertise.

"The Hand of the Kremlin"

The Western media immediately stated that Russia was involved in the poisoning of Skripal. In the Kremlin, in turn, noted that these charges did not take long to wait.

Dmitry Peskov, the presidential press secretary, stressed that the Kremlin does not have any information about what the Skripal was doing and what the tragic situation might be related to.

"You know how it happened in the West, as a result of what actions and decisions, I will not repeat it," the press secretary added.

At the same time, he noted that Moscow is always ready for cooperation on investigation.

The Case of Skripal

In 2006, the Moscow District Military Court sentenced the colonel of the GRU reserve, Sergei Skripal, to 13 years in prison. During his service in the Armed Forces of Russia, since the mid-1990s, he was recruited by British intelligence, and he passed on to her information constituting state secrets.

The violin was in the UK after he was pardoned and, together with two convicts for espionage, exchanged for ten people detained in the United States.

"Propaganda duck"

Information on the poisoning of Skrypal is a propaganda duck, Andrei Lugovoy, a member of the State Duma's Committee for Security and Counteracting Corruption, believes.

"Given that in the UK there are always some stories with escaped from Russia gentlemen, there is little to be surprised," - said RIA Novosti MP.

Lugovoy emphasized that Skripal posed no danger to Russia.

"According to the laws of the genre the conflict is over, so Skripal was arrested, convicted, punished, then pardoned and extradited," he added.

Few facts

According to Vladimir Batyuk, head of the Center for Military and Political Studies of the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, there are not enough facts in the situation with Skripal to draw any conclusions.

In his opinion, Russian special services do not need to carry out any measures against Skripal after he was expelled from the country.

He recalled that the former GRU colonel was serving time for espionage in Russia, but he was exchanged for illegal residents of the foreign intelligence service detained in the US.

"It is necessary simply, I think, to wait for some new information on this issue. <...> There can be anything, including some personal problems of a person who, as far as one can judge, was in a difficult life situation" , - concluded Batyuk.

Link: https://ria.ru/world/20180306/1515848191.html