Exactly one year after a former Russian double agent and his daughter were found poisoned in the British city of Salisbury, the Russian government is accusing U.K. authorities of violating an international treaty by not granting them access to the two.
Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were discovered collapsed on a park bench near a shopping mall on March 4, 2018. Lab tests showed they had been exposed to the Novichok nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Russia denies any involvement.
In a news conference Monday, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia's deputy ambassador to the U.N., questioned the British narrative that blames Russia for the attack. "We still don't know who did it, why and how, one year on," he said. "All our efforts to cooperate with the British side are being constantly rejected. They don't want to listen. They expect us only to tell them: either President Putin did this himself or he lost control of the people who did this."
Polyanskiy says that the Vienna Convention requires Britain to allow Russia access to their two citizens, to determine if they are alive and need help from their home country. If the U.K. doesn't grant Russian officials access, he said, it could count as "forced detention or even abduction of two Russian nationals."