The nerve agent attack on the former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter looks like “state-sponsored attempted murder,” according to the chairman of the U.K.’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
Tom Tugendhat told BBC Radio 4 on Monday that he expected Russia to be blamed for the March 4 attack on the ex-spy and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England.
He said it was a “bit early to be absolutely certain of that” but added that the Russian government was “certainly behaving aggressively towards people in the U.K.”
“We’re expecting the prime minister to make an announcement soon and, frankly, I would be surprised if she did not point the finger at the Kremlin,” Tugendhat told the BBC.
U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May will chair a meeting of the National Security Council, which includes senior ministers and intelligence chiefs, on Monday. She could announce that Downing Street believes that Moscow was behind the poisoning, according to British media.
The government could also announce any retaliatory measures, such as expelling Russian diplomats. Last week, U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson called Russia a “malign and disruptive force.”
The nerve agent used has not been named but can usually only be produced in specialist government laboratories.
Skripal’s links to Russia’s security services, and his subsequent work as a double agent for the U.K., put Moscow firmly in the spotlight for being behind the attack, although Russia has so far denied any involvement.
Monday’s National Security Council meeting comes as specialist counter-terrorism police continue to search for the source of the nerve agent that was used to attack Skripal and his daughter. They were found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center in Salisbury, a small town in the rural county of Wiltshire in England. Both are in a critical condition in hospital. A policeman who attended to the pair was also hospitalized, although his condition is now stable.
Traces of the nerve agent used were found at a pub and restaurant where the Skripals had been on the day they were taken ill.
Hundreds of people who were also in those locations on March 4 and 5 have been told to wash their clothes and any personal items, in case they had come into contact with the nerve agent.
