RUSSIA must “address urgently the questions raised” by the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, the EU has demanded.
In a strongly worded joint statement from all foreign ministers of the EU’s member states, Moscow was told it needs to come clean over novichok, the nerve agent believed to have been used in the attack on the former spy.
READ MORE: Mixed messages from Foreign Office over Russia's chemical weapons
Boris Johnson welcomed the statement from the Foreign Affairs Council, thanking the European ministers for their “unqualified solidarity and support”.
The Tory minister tweeted: “EU partners clear Russia must provide immediate, full, complete disclosure of its novichok programme.”
Russia has never officially acknowledged the existence of the novichok programme.
READ MORE: May’s election gamble cost the Tory Party £18.5m
Most of what is known about the series of nerve agents comes from Vil Mirzayanov, a Russian scientist turned whistleblower who worked on the Soviet chemical weapons programme in the 80s and 90s.
The European ministers said the EU took “extremely seriously the UK Government’s assessment that it is highly likely that the Russian Federation is responsible.”
They added that they were “shocked at the offensive use of any military-grade nerve agent, of a type developed by Russia, for the first time on European soil in over 70 years”.
“The use of chemical weapons by anyone under any circumstances is completely unacceptable and constitutes a security threat to us all. Any such use is a clear violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, a breach of international law and undermines the rules-based international order.”
The ministers said the Russian Government must now work with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
Johnson, speaking to press as he arrived for the Foreign Affairs Council meeting, said there were inconsistencies in Russia’s story: “At one time they say that they never made novichok, and at another time they say they did make novichok, but all the stocks have been destroyed ... but some of them have mysteriously escaped to Sweden, or the Czech Republic, or Slovakia, or the United States, or even the United Kingdom.
“I think what people can see is that this is a classic Russian strategy of trying to conceal the needle of truth in a haystack of lies and obfuscation.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the British still lacked proof: “Sooner or later they will have to be responsible for these allegations: they will either have to provide some evidence or apologise.”
The row came as Vladimir Putin romped home in the Russian presidential election, as expected, winning 74 per cent of the vote, ensuring another six years in office.
Under the Russian constitution this should be his last term in office, but yesterday there was a suggestion from supporters that he could follow the lead of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who recently abolished presidential term limits.
On a state television talk show on Sunday evening, ultra-nationalist supporter of Putin and presidential candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky said it was time for Russia to “get rid of elections”.
Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Kremlin-funded TV station RT, said Putin had united Russia “around your enemy”, and moved from being president to being vozhd – a word with medieval roots once used for Stalin.
“He used to simply be our president and he could be changed. But now he is our leader. And we will not allow him to be changed,” Simonyan wrote.
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