Ex-spy’s improving condition raises prospect he will be able to give vital clues to poison attack

Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, have become caught up at the centre of an international tussle between the UK and Russia following an announcement by doctors that the former Russian spy was getting better and was “no longer in a critical condition”.



One month after the pair were found collapsed on a park bench in Salisbury in Wiltshire, having been poisoned with a deadly nerve agent, the hospital treating them said on Friday that they were both recovering.

Amid reports that Viktoria Skripal, Sergei Skripal’s niece, had been denied a visa to visit the UK, news of the improvement in his condition raises the prospect that he will be able to give police vital clues as to who might have poisoned him and why.

The testimony of the Skripals would be crucial in establishing the credibility of the government’s claim that it was “highly likely” the Russian state targeted them with the nerve agent novichok. Moscow has waged a furious media battle in an attempt to discredit this account and will probably want to bring Yulia Skripal back to Russia.

Play Video 0:59 Sergei Skripal responding well to treatment, says Salisbury hospital – video

Dr Christine Blanshard, the medical director at Salisbury district hospital, revealed the Skripals’ improving condition on Friday afternoon.

In a statement that she said was made in response to intense media coverage, Blanshard said Yulia Skripal’s strength was improving daily and she would be leaving hospital soon.



She added: “I also want to update you on the condition of her father, Sergei Skripal. He is responding well to treatment, improving rapidly and is no longer in a critical condition.”

A Foreign Office spokesman said the government was pleased that the Skripals were in better health but added: “Let us be clear, this was attempted murder using an illegal chemical weapon that we know Russia possesses.”

The Russian embassy to the UK tweeted: “Good news!”

According to the BBC, the government has refused to give a visa to Viktoria Skripal, who has made repeated appearances on Russian state TV in recent days and has sought to travel to Britain. She has suggested that her relatives may have been the victims of food poisoning.



“It appears the Russian state is trying to use Victoria as a pawn,” a government source told the BBC, adding: “If she is being influenced or coerced by the Kremlin, she has become another victim.”

In a telephone conversation apparently recorded by Viktoria Skripal in Moscow on Thursday, Yulia Skripal was asked about her father’s condition. She said: “Everything’s OK, he’s resting now, he’s sleeping. Everyone’s health is OK. No one has had any irreversible [harm].” She appeared to decline her cousin’s offer of a visit.



It is unclear if detectives have yet had the opportunity to interview Sergei Skripal about events leading up to his poisoning. On Thursday, his daughter released a statement through the Metropolitan police in which she said she was getting stronger by the day.

Russian diplomats have been insisting they gain access to Yulia Skripal, who is a Russian citizen. Her father has a British passport following his arrival in the UK in 2010, as part of a spy swap. On Thursday, Yulia Skripal described waking up to find herself at the centre of a global incident as “extremely disorientating”.

The Kremlin’s strategy has been to exploit weaknesses and inconsistencies in the UK’s case. It seized on a blunder by the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, who claimed, wrongly, that the government science facility at Porton Down had attributed the nerve agent to Russia. In fact, the attribution was based on intelligence and analysis of previous Russian state hits.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, accused the UK government of engaging in “frantic and convulsive efforts to find arguments to support their indefensible position”. Photograph: Alexander Shcherbak/TASS

On Friday, Russia’s foreign ministry opened a new and surreal front in its information war. Sergei Skripal’s two guinea pigs died after the nerve agent attack from dehydration after his home was sealed off, the UK government said. The ex-spy’s cat was found in a “distressed” state and had to be put down.

“What happened to these animals? Why doesn’t anyone mention them? Their condition is also an important piece of evidence,” the foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Facebook, adding: “The more we know, the worse the picture looks.”

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, accused the UK government of engaging in “frantic and convulsive efforts to find arguments to support their indefensible position” instead of producing evidence. Lavrov’s comments echoed those of Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, who on Thursday likened the UK’s claims to Alice and Wonderland and the TV series Midsomer Murders.

The Skripal case bears comparison with the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko, who was killed by two Russian spy agency assassins with a radioactive cup of tea. Before he died, Litvinenko had given nine hours of evidence to detectives. This proved invaluable to Scotland Yard’s investigation and shaped a public inquiry, which ruled that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, “probably approved” the operation.

Litvinenko’s father, Walter, blamed Putin for his son’s death. After living in exile in Italy, where he was broke and unhappy, he returned in 2012 to Russia, seemingly having struck a deal with the state.

Last week, he appeared on Russian TV talk shows. He blamed the CIA for his son’s death and even shared a sofa with the alleged killer Andrei Lugovoi, a deputy in Russia’s Duma, who has been commenting on the Skripal case. At one point, Walter Litvinenko clasped Lugovoi warmly by the hand.

The international alliance that has expelled 342 diplomats in solidarity with Britain is holding firm. The UK’s stand against Moscow was boosted on Friday when members of the US Congress introduced a legislative initiative to target Russian financial institutions and to reinforce US support for the UK government.



Mike Turner, a Republican, and Joaquin Castro, a Democrat, said that they were introducing the bipartisan stand with UK against Russia violations bill in response to the attack on the Skripals.

“The Russian government-sanctioned attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal and Officer Nick Bailey last month on British soil violated international law and indicates Putin’s growing aggression and disregard for international standards of conduct,” said the two members of the House intelligence committee.



What will happen now Sergei Skripal is no longer critically ill? Read more

“It’s imperative that the United States stands with the United Kingdom and our international partners in signalling resolve with a strong response.”

They said the bill would target Russian financial institutions until Russia ceased the practice of assassinating expatriates and dissidents outside of Russia.

Meanwhile, British and American authorities have been given several chemical analyses of a substance believed to be the nerve agent novichok produced in Russia’s closed Shikhany military facility.

Boris Kuznetsov, a lawyer who fled Russia in 2007, said he had handed British diplomats the police case files from the 1995 murder of a Russian banker and his secretary with a toxic substance. Scientists have identified it as a product of the Soviet-designed Foliant programme.

Among the documents are the results of a mass spectrometry and an infrared spectroscopy of the poisonous substance. It was scraped off a telephone receiver used by the businessman Ivan Kivelidi and his secretary. Both died in agony.