Embassy Statement on the situation with the Russian citizens Sergei and Yulia Skripal
Today marks exactly six months since the Russian citizens Sergei and Yulia Skripal were taken to Salisbury District Hospital under obscure circumstances. Ever since, they have been kept in isolation and under full control of British authorities. They remain out of the public eye at an unknown location, unable to communicate freely with their relatives, friends, journalists or Russian officials, deprived of the freedom of movement. The British authorities have been continuously refusing the Embassy to establish direct contact with the Skripals in order to verify their actual health situation, the conditions in which they are held and, most importantly, to ascertain to which extent their isolation is voluntary.
Thus, the United Kingdom continues to blatantly violate Russia’s lawful right to communicate with its citizens in accordance with Article 36 of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and Article 36 of the 1965 bilateral Consular Convention. Moreover, the de-facto deprivation of liberty of the Skripals is highly questionable from the point of view of observance of their rights confirmed in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1950 Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
Days after the incident Russia, offered every kind of assistance to the United Kingdom. We suggested to launch a joint investigation of the incident, we submitted a request for legal assistance in the framework of the criminal case opened in Russia, and we expressed our willingness to cooperate under established OPCW procedures.
Over these months, the Embassy has sent more than 70 Notes Verbales and letters to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Home Office and the Police. We regularly raise the Skripals case during our meetings with FCO officials. We have put dozens of questions concerning the whereabouts of the Russian citizens, symptoms of their poisoning, methods of medical treatment, conduct of the police investigation. We asked to provide samples of the biomaterials and the chemical agent allegedly used, and to present the evidence which could help to establish the truth.
Nearly all of our questions, suggestions and queries have been ignored. Such attitude by the British authorities contradicts every principle of civilized relations between states and amounts to a blatant violation of basic diplomatic courtesy.
As before, Russia intends to vigorously pursue the efforts on establishing the truth on what happened in Salisbury and to demand that the British authorities present all information on the incident, provide access to the Russian citizens and launch a genuinely transparent investigation in cooperation with Russian experts.
Question: How would you comment on UK’s decision not to issue a visa to the Russian delegate who intended to participate in the Global Conference on Media Freedom? Answer: It is well-known that visas for official travel have become one of the problems of the current Russia-UK relations. But even in these conditions not issuing a visa to a representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry travelling to participate in the conference looks really weird. The UK side itself invited the Russian side to participate in the conference, accredited the Russian delegate, but then refused to issue him a visa, thus sabotaging the visit.
Question: What could you say about the refusal of the British authorities to accredit the Russian news agencies RT and Sputnik at the Global Conference for Media Freedom?
Maria Zakharova: One gets the impression that having announced an event with a flashy title, London decided to show the whole world an example of manipulating public opinion. Judge for yourself. One of the main declared goals of this forum is to unite diplomatic efforts to protect media freedom and discuss violations of the rights of media workers. So what do we have in reality?
We condemn the seizure of the super tanker sailing under the Panama flag on July 4, conducted by the Gibraltar authorities aided by Great Britain’s Royal Marine Commando unit. We view the seizure of the vessel and its cargo as a deliberate action aimed at aggravating the situation around Iran and Syria. Laudatory comments by top US and British officials immediately after the operation confirm this conclusion and prove that the action had been long in the making with the involvement of respective services and agencies of several countries.
As we have learned, British organisers of the Global Conference for Media Freedom, due to take place in London on 10-11 July, have refused to accredit journalists from the RT channel. The reason given was that the quota of journalists invited to the Conference had already been reached – and that despite the fact that RT had sent the request several weeks ago and has long been trying, unsuccessfully, to get a meaningful reply.
16 months have passed since the mysterious incident in Salisbury. The British side continuously ignores multiple appeals by Russia to clear up the circumstances surrounding the incident, provide transparency of the investigation, allow access to the affected Russian citizens and launch substantive cooperation to establish, what and how happened in Salisbury in reality. As before, more than 80 Notes Verbales sent to the Foreign Office and the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation for legal assistance over Russia’s own criminal case have been left unanswered. At the same time the British authorities continue to take an aggressive stance towards Russia, while claiming to have irrefutable evidence that our country was behind the incident. However, the British side does not bother to present the “evidence” either to Russia, or to their own allies, or to the public.
On 3 July Foreign and Commonwealth Office announced that during general debate in the UN Human Rights Council the British delegation called on Russia “to grant international human rights monitors access to illegally annexed Crimea”. Leaving aside the issue of “illegal annexation” (Russia’s stance on this subject is well-known), we would like to stress that the Republic of Crimea is open for visits of all international delegations and any foreign guests in general, on equal terms with all the other regions of our country. The FCO statement is therefore confusing. We consider it as yet another example of abuse of human rights issues by our British colleagues.
Question: How would you comment on the BBC’s publication of 28 June which contains new “information” on the supposed “coordinator” of the Salisbury poisoning? Answer: As previously, this publication is based on reports from the untrustworthy “investigative” group Bellingcat and information provided by anonymous sources to the journalist Mark Urban, which are impossible to verify. This, predictably, raises a number of questions.
Question: What was President Putin’s answer to Mrs May’s question on the Skripal case? He outlined his position in the «Financial Times» interview but what did he say directly to Mrs May? Was she satisfied? Answer: It’s hard to say whether she was. Mrs May had indeed raised the Skripals incident in a rather tough manner, while the Russian President gave a detailed explanation on everything worth explaining. We all know that the British side has so far provided no evidence to support its accusations on the case. Neither to us, nor to their European allies, nor to North American ones. Otherwise, the evidence would have already been somehow made public.
From 1 July 2019, electronic visas are introduced for visiting the Kaliningrad Region of Russia. E-visas may be obtained online at http://electronic-visa.kdmid.ru/klgd_home.html. Nationals of 53 states are eligible for an e-visa. These include all EU member states, except the United Kingdom.
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