Russia is making the British people “targets” for a individualized chemical weapons attacks, a senior British official alleged following the second poisoning incident of the year.
“It is unacceptable for our people to be either deliberate or accidental targets, or for our streets, our parks, our towns to be dumping grounds for poison,” Sajid Javid, the United Kingdom’s home secretary, told Parliament.
“It is now time that the Russian state comes forward and explains exactly what has gone on,” he also said.
That demand follows reports that a British couple in Amesbury collapsed following exposure to a Novichok nerve agent. The town is just miles away from Salisbury, the scene of a March incident in which Sergey Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer who worked as a double agent for the United Kingdom, was stricken by “a military-grade nerve agent.” British Prime Minister Theresa May’s ensuing accusation led to a concerted expulsion of Russian diplomats from Western countries.
Russia has denied any involvement. “We call on Theresa May’s government to put an end to the intrigues with chemical agents and not to hamper the investigation into what happened to the Russian citizens in Britain,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharov said Thursday, per state-run media.
President Vladimir Putin’s team cast doubt on whether the Amesbury poisoning took place.
“Of course, it triggers profound concern in connection with the similar incidents in the UK,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “On the other hand, we have no information on what substances were actually used and how they were used, because here it is very difficult to rely on any media reports.”
British officials regarded Skripal’s attempted assassination as a state-sponsored act of revenge for treachery. The Amesbury couple, in contrast, “have been described as ordinary local residents with no ties to Russia,” according to CNN.
Javid said that investigators are still testing the substance found in the Amesbury incident.
“We cannot attribute this to the same batch at this point and scientists will be looking into that,” he said, per the BBC. “I’m also told that may not even be possible because of a number of factors, but we cannot rule out, of course, that it was from the same batch.”
