The niece of the poisoned former Russian spy Sergei Skripal has said he and his daughter Yulia have only a slim chance of surviving.

Viktoria Skripal said the prognosis for both “really isn’t good” following the novichok nerve agent attack in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on 4 March.

She told the BBC: “Out of 99% I have maybe 1% of hope. Whatever it was has given them a very small chance of survival. But they’re going to be invalids for the rest of their lives.”



She also revealed that Skripal’s mother had not been told of the incident, adding: “The first priority was to protect our granny so that she wouldn’t hear or find out anything.”

Countries across the world have joined the UK in taking diplomatic action against Russia, which has been blamed for the attack.

Theresa May said the “unprecedented series of expulsions” of Russian diplomats sent a strong message to Moscow that it could not ignore international law.

Briefing the cabinet on Tuesday, the prime minister reported that 23 countries had expelled more than 115 Russian intelligence diplomats. She told her colleagues this demonstrated to the Kremlin “that we will not tolerate their attempts to flout international law, undermine our values or threaten our security”.

The Russian embassy in the UK said the prime minister had still not presented evidence that the country was responsible for the poisonings, adding that “no one in the wider world would take British words for granted”.

On Wednesday, Ireland became the 24th country to join the the UK in taking diplomatic action against the Kremlin.

Nato announced it was cutting the size of its Russian mission by a third, removing accreditation from seven Russian staff and rejecting three other pending applications. Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, said the permanent size of the Russian mission would be cut from 30 to 20 people, adding that the gesture was “a clear and very strong message that there was a cost to Russia’s reckless actions”.