LONDON: The UK government today announced that it will set up a new 48-million-pound chemical weapons defence centre and vaccinate thousands of British soldiers against anthrax in the wake of the nerve agent poisoning of a former Russian spy.
UK defence secretary Gavin Williamson said the new facility will be located at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) in Porton Down, near Salisbury the city where former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found collapsed after being poisoned with a deadly Russian-made nerve agent.
The attack on the former Russian spy, a British citizen, has revived fears of a new era of Cold War with Russia, with Williamson admitting that relations with Russia were not good. “Some people say it might not be a cold war, but it is chilly,” he said.
His announcement came as Prime Minister Theresa May today paid a visit to the site of the poisoning in Salisbury today as a show of solidarity with the emergency and security services on the ground and to offer reassurance to the locals who have described the city centre as a “ghost town” since the chemical attack earlier this month.
In a Parliament statement yesterday, she had announced the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats identified as “undeclared intelligence officers” in the single biggest such expulsion in around 30 years.
Russia has said that it will retaliate with the expulsion of British diplomats from Moscow, describing the UK’s allegations of Russian culpability in the Skripals’ poisoning as insane and absolutely boorish.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who May declared would be barred from coming to the UK on a reciprocal visit planned for this year, claimed that the allegations were related to the UK’s “inability to fulfil Brexit obligations”.
In her Commons statement, Theresa May had said there was “no alternative conclusion” than to believe Russia was “culpable” for the attempted murder with a nerve agent from the Soviet-era Novichok group and announced a series of measures against Moscow, including freezing of Russian state assets and heightened monitoring of private flights, customs and freight linked with the country.
She told MPs that the Kremlin had failed to provide a credible explanation for how the nerve agent that it developed came to be used in the attack on the Skripals, who remain critically ill after being found slumped in Salisbury city centre on March 4.
She had confirmed that the UK’s key allies, including the US, France and Germany were all supportive of its stand against “Russian aggression”.
UK foreign secretary said that Russia had deliberately chosen the Soviet era nerve agent Novichok in the Salisbury attack as a warning to opponents of President Vladimir Putin.
