Moscow: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday Russia needed to study a report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain, the TASS news agency reported.
The global chemical weapons watchdog concluded on Thursday that the lethal poison that struck Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia last month in England was a highly pure type of Novichok nerve agent, backing Britain’s findings.
Ryabkov said Russia would not give its view on the report before being able to study it, TASS reported.
Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that no one except British authorities had seen poisoned former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia for over a month.
Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the foreign ministry, contrasted the situation with the case of Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-KGB agent who died in 2006 in London after drinking green tea laced with radioactive polonium.
Zakharova said that at least a photograph of Litvinenko had appeared after his poisoning.
Sergei Skripal was imprisoned in Russia for selling secrets to British intelligence in the 1990s but was exchanged in a spy swap in 2010. Yulia Skripal was visiting her father when the attack took place.
London blames Moscow for the attack, an accusation vehemently denied by the Russian government which has requested access to the Skripals as Russian citizens.
