Boris Johnson said of Putin's personal order to use the poison "Newbie"

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that the decision to attack using the "Novice" poison against former Colonel GRU Sergey Skripal was most likely taken personally by the Russian president, Reuters reports. Johnson also noted that London "has problems with Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin", but not with the Russian people.

According to the head of the British Foreign Ministry, "it is absolutely clear that this attack with the use of a nerve agent was organized by Russia." Johnson said that the decision was made by Putin "with high probability" (overwhelmingly likely). The Minister again repeated the accusations against Russia about the violation of international agreements on the prohibition of chemical weapons. Johnson said that Russia "illegally developed and stored" Novice. "

Accusations of Vladimir Putin's personal involvement in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal commented in the Kremlin. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov called such accusations "unpardonable."

The use of the substance "Novice" for the poisoning of Skrypal was first announced by British Prime Minister Teresa Mei. According to her, this fact was established by experts of the Ministry of Defense. May argued that Russia either directly applied the "Novice" to poison the former Colonel GRU, or "lost control" and allowed his disappearance from the arsenal.

The day before, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a refutation of the fact that the development of a substance with the name "Novice" was ever conducted in Russia or the Soviet Union. "I want to state with all possible certainty that there have not been any programs to develop an IA [poisoning agent] called" Novice "either in the USSR or in Russia," said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. However, Senator Igor Morozov previously indirectly recognized the existence of such a nerve agent. Speaking about the destruction of chemical weapons stockpiles in Russia, he mentioned that the substance under the name "Novice" was also destroyed in the framework of this program. "Russia not only stopped the release of nerve gases, including" Novik ", but completely destroyed all of their reserves," he said.

Later, Alexander Shulgin, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), stated that programs for the development of poisonous substances with this name existed in the United Kingdom and the United States. "In the Russian Federation, there has never been a research program on the" Newbie "program, but in the West, some countries have carried out appropriate developments, which for some reason they called it" Newbie ". You can talk about Britain and the United States, where such a substance was developed, and it may well be that this substance could be used from these arsenals, from these reserves, "Tass quotes him.

Russia's permanent representative to the UN Sergei Nebenzia also called the possible source of origin of such a poison to Britain itself. He included it in the number of countries where, according to him, "from the end of the 1990s to the present, intensive research is being conducted on these substances."

At the same time, the British newspaper The Telegraph on March 16 reported with reference to sources in the secret services that a toxic substance into the territory of the United Kingdom could have come with the baggage of daughter Violin Julia poisoned with her father. The day before the poisoning Julia Skripal flew to Britain from Russia. British investigators, according to the publication, are studying the possibility that the things or cosmetics of Julia Skripal were secretly soaked in poison. In a similar version, Russian experts on chemical weapons doubted. "The question is how they spent the whole day in good health? In this case, Skripal would have lost consciousness right at home, next to the suitcase. They also lost consciousness in a public place, "explained an expert in chemical weapons, former UN inspector in Iraq, Anton Utkin.

Ex-Colonel GRU Sergei Skripal was convicted in Russia in the case of state treason and cooperation with British intelligence. In 2010, as part of the spyware exchange program, he was exchanged with several other Russians for a group of Russian spies illegally detained in the United States. On March 4, Skripal and his daughter were found poisoned on a bench near a shopping center in the British Salisbury. They remain in critical condition.

Britain accused the Russian special services of the incident. The position of the British authorities was also joined by US President Donald Trump and the leadership of other NATO countries.

Link: https://www.rbc.ru/politics/16/03/20...794762de6fb60c