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Daughter of poisoned spy says she's getting stronger daily
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DANICA KIRKA and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Associated Press
Published: Apr 5, 2018, 5:54 PM

LONDON (AP) — In her first public comment since she and her father, a former Russian spy, were poisoned by a nerve agent, Yulia Skripal said Thursday from a hospital that she's recovering quickly, but the whole ordeal has been "somewhat disorientating."

Britain has blamed Russia for the March 4 poisoning of Yulia and Sergei Skripal in the city of Salisbury, and more than two dozen Western allies have expelled over 150 Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity. Moscow has fiercely denied the accusations and sent home an equal number of envoys in an all-out diplomatic war unseen even at the height of the Cold War.

Yulia Skripal said in a statement released by British police that her "strength is growing daily" and expressed gratitude to those who came to her aid.

"I am sure you appreciate that the entire episode is somewhat disorientating, and I hope that you'll respect my privacy and that of my family during the period of my convalescence," the 33-year-old said.

The hospital treating the Skripals confirmed that Yulia's health has improved, while her 66-year-old father remains in critical condition.

Russian state Rossiya TV on Thursday released a recording of a purported phone call between Yulia Skripal and her cousin in Russia, although the broadcaster said it could not verify its authenticity. In the call, Yulia Skripal allegedly says she and her father are both recovering and in normal health, and that her father's health has not been irreparably damaged.

Rossiya TV said Skripal's niece, Viktoria, who lives in Moscow, gave it the purported recording.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described the British accusations against Moscow as a mockery of international law. At a news conference Thursday, Lavrov insisted the poisoning case was fabricated by Britain to "demonize" Russia.

"The so-called Skripal case has been used as a fictitious, orchestrated pretext for the unfounded massive expulsions of Russian diplomats not only from the U.S. and Britain but also from a number of other countries who simply had their arms twisted," Lavrov said in Moscow. "We have never seen such an open mockery of the international law, diplomatic ethics and elementary decorum."

As part of the diplomatic row, Russia last week ordered 60 U.S. diplomats to leave the country by Thursday in retaliation for Washington's expulsion of the same number of Russians.

Three buses believed to be carrying expelled American diplomats left the U.S. Embassy in Moscow early Thursday after loading their luggage on trucks. Some toted pet carriers.

Lavrov noted that Russia will respond in kind to any further hostile moves, but added that "we also want to establish the truth."

He sarcastically likened the British accusations to the queen from Alice in Wonderland urging "sentence first — verdict afterward."

On Wednesday, Russia called a meeting of the international chemical weapons watchdog to demand a joint investigation with Britain into the poisoning — a demand that London has rejected.

The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons voted against the Russian proposal, but Moscow said the number of countries that abstained from the vote suggested many have doubts about Britain's accusations.

"It's unacceptable to make unfounded accusations instead of conducting a fair investigation and providing concrete facts," Lavrov said. "Yesterday's debate in The Hague showed that self-respecting adults don't believe in fairy tales."

Asked if Russia would accept the OPCW's conclusions, Lavrov said Moscow must be part of the inquiry and see the evidence.

"We can't give an advance approval to results of the investigation, in which we aren't taking part and which is kept secret," he said. "We would accept the results of any investigation that would be fair, not the one organized in a fraudulent way."

Moscow has called a meeting of the U.N. Security Council for later Thursday to press its case.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Wednesday "the purpose of Russia's ludicrous proposal at The Hague was clear — to undermine the independent, impartial work of the international chemical weapons watchdog."

The head of Britain's defense research facility, the Porton Down laboratory, acknowledged Tuesday it has not been able to pinpoint the precise source of the nerve agent.

Gary Aitkenhead said scientists there identified the substance used on the Skripals as a Soviet-developed nerve agent known as Novichok. But he added "it's not our job to say where that was actually manufactured."

Russia said that it never produced Novichok and completed the destruction of its chemical arsenals under international control last year.
Lavrov noted that Aitkenhead's statement indicated Porton Down had samples of Novichok to use it as a marker to determine the type of the nerve agent used in the attack. He added that Britain has failed to acknowledge yet that it possesses Novichok.

Russian officials mocked British claims that Moscow wanted to punish Skripal, a Russian military intelligence officer who was convicted of spying for Britain before being released from prison in a 2010 swap. The Russian ambassador to London, Alexander Yakovenko, said Moscow has no grudge against Skripal and would welcome him if he wants to return home.

The British government says it relied on a combination of scientific analysis and other intelligence to conclude that the nerve agent came from Russia, but the Foreign Office on Wednesday deleted a tweet from last month that said Porton Down scientists had identified the substance as "made in Russia."

President Vladimir Putin's envoy for cybersecurity, Alexander Krutskikh, mocked the contradictory statements, saying that "the latest developments around the Skripal case indicate the days of this British Cabinet are numbered."

Yakovenko, who has been vocal in demanding evidence from Britain of Russia's involvement, has even used some wry humor in the case.
Last month, a tweet from the Russian Embassy featured a photo of actor David Suchet as Hercule Poirot, the intrepid sleuth from Agatha Christie novels. It said: "In absence of evidence, we definitely need Poirot in Salisbury!"

Asked Thursday about the tweets, Yakovenko said that, "We are using in this situation a sense of human humor because some statements are really not friendly."

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Isachenkov reported from Moscow. Associated Press writers Jim Heintz and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow also contributed.
Putin raises tension on Ukraine, suspends START nuclear pact
Putin
Putin
Associated Press
Published: Feb 21, 2023, 4:50 PM

Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended Moscow's participation in the last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the United States, announcing the move Tuesday in a bitter speech where he made clear he would not change his strategy in the war in Ukraine.

In his long-delayed state-of-the-nation address, Putin cast his country — and Ukraine — as victims of Western double-dealing and said it was Russia, not Ukraine, fighting for its very existence.

"We aren't fighting the Ukrainian people," Putin said ahead of the war's first anniversary Friday. "The Ukrainian people have become hostages of the Kyiv regime and its Western masters, which have effectively occupied the country."

The speech reiterated a litany of grievances he has frequently offered as justification for the widely condemned military campaign while vowing no military letup in a conflict that has reawakened Cold War fears.

On top of that, Putin sharply upped the ante by declaring Moscow would suspend its participation in the New START Treaty. The pact, signed in 2010 by the U.S. and Russia, caps the number of long-range nuclear warheads the two sides can deploy and limits the use of missiles that can carry atomic weapons.

Putin also said Russia should stand ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the U.S. does so, a move that would end a global ban on such tests in place since the Cold War era.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described Moscow's decision as "really unfortunate and very irresponsible."

"We'll be watching carefully to see what Russia actually does," he said while visiting Greece.

It was the second time in recent days the Ukraine war showed it could spread into perilous new terrain, after Blinken told China at the weekend that it would be a "serious problem" if Beijing provided arms and ammunition to Russia.

China and Russia have aligned their foreign policies to oppose Washington. Beijing has refused to condemn Russia's invasion or atrocities against civilians in Ukraine while strongly criticizing Western economic sanctions on Moscow. At the end of last year, Russia and China held joint naval drills in the East China Sea.

The deputy head of Ukraine's intelligence service, Vadym Skibitskyi, told The Associated Press that his agency hasn't so far seen any signs that China is providing weapons to Moscow.

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and made a dash toward Kyiv, apparently expecting to overrun the capital quickly. But stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces — supported by Western weapons — turned back Moscow's troops. While Ukraine has reclaimed many areas initially seized by Russia, the sides have become bogged down elsewhere.

The war has revived the divide between Russia and the West, reinvigorated the NATO alliance, and created the biggest threat to Putin's rule of more than two-decades. U.S. President Joe Biden, fresh off a surprise visit to Kyiv, was in Poland on Tuesday to solidify that Western unity.

While Russia's Constitution mandates that the president deliver the speech annually, Putin never gave one in 2022, as his troops rolled into Ukraine and suffered repeated setbacks. Much of it covered old ground, as Putin offered his own version of recent history, discounting Ukraine's arguments that it needed Western help to thwart a Russian military takeover.

"Western elites aren't trying to conceal their goals, to inflict a 'strategic defeat' to Russia," Putin said in the speech broadcast on all state TV channels. "They intend to transform the local conflict into a global confrontation."

He added that Russia was prepared to respond since "it will be a matter of our country's existence." He has repeatedly depicted NATO's expansion to include countries close to Russia as an existential threat to his country.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, who was in Ukraine on Tuesday, said she hoped Putin had taken a different approach.

"What we heard this morning was propaganda that we already know," Meloni said in English. "He says (Russia) worked on diplomacy to avoid the conflict, but the truth is that there is somebody who is the invader and somebody who is defending itself."

Putin denied any wrongdoing in Ukraine, even after Kremlin forces struck civilian targets, including hospitals, and are widely accused of war crimes. Ukraine's military reported Tuesday that Russian forces shelled the southern cities of Kherson and Ochakiv while Putin spoke, killing six.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lamented that Russian forces were "again mercilessly killing the civilian population."

Putin began his speech with strong words for those countries that provided Kyiv with crucial military support and warned them against supplying any longer-range weapons.

"It's they who have started the war. And we are using force to end it," Putin said before an audience of lawmakers, state officials and soldiers.

Putin also accused the West of taking aim at Russian culture, religion and values because it is aware that "it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield."

Likewise, he said Western sanctions hadn't "achieved anything and will not achieve anything."

Reflecting the Kremlin's clampdown on free speech and press, it barred coverage of the address by media from "unfriendly" countries, including the U.S., the U.K. and those in the European Union, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying their journalists could watch the broadcast.

He previously told reporters that the speech's delay had to do with Putin's "work schedule," but Russian media reports linked it to the setbacks by Russian forces. The Russian president also postponed the state-of-the-nation address in 2017. Last year, the Kremlin also canceled two other big annual events — Putin's news conference and a highly scripted phone-in marathon taking questions from the public.

Analysts expected Putin's speech would be tough in the wake of Biden's visit to Kyiv on Monday, which he did not mention. In his his own speech later Tuesday, Biden is expected to highlight the commitment of the central European country and other allies to Ukraine over the past year.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that Biden's address would not be "some kind of head to head" with Putin's.

"This is not a rhetorical contest with anyone else," said.