Russia conducted tests with the application of nerve agents to the door handles before the attempted poisoning of Sergei Skripal in the British Salisbury, reports The Guardian referring to the British intelligence, released on Friday, April 13.
In addition, according to this information, Russian special services tracked the email of Skripal and his daughter Julia from at least 2013.
Such intelligence is contained in a letter of the British government's national security adviser Mark Sedwil to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. "Such documents in the UK are extremely rare in the public domain," notes The Guardian.
In this letter, Sedwil, who owns information about the activities of all the intelligence services of the United Kingdom, cites some intelligence that British Prime Minister Theresa May implied in her speech in Parliament. Soon after the attempt at the Violins, May said that Russia "is more likely" to be responsible for poisoning, and subsequently repeatedly repeated this thesis.
"We have information on the interest of Russian intelligence with Violins, starting at least from 2013, when the email accounts owned by Julia Skripal, have become the goal of the GRU cyber specialists," Sedwil writes.
He also notes that during the 2000s, Russia implemented a program that included testing methods for delivering chemical warfare agents and training representatives of special forces to use such weapons.
"In the future, the program included a study of methods for the use of nerve agents, including the application of the door handles," emphasizes Sedwil. - During the last decade, Russia produced and stored small quantities of substances of the Novy series ".
Earlier, experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed the UK's findings on the substance that was poisoned by ex-agent Sergei Skripal.
The violinist and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a nerve agent in March 2018. Both of them have already emerged from the unconscious state and are on the mend. Julia Skripal was discharged from the hospital, but her father is still under the supervision of doctors.
Russia denies any of its involvement in a loud assassination attempt.
Source: HB.