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British intelligence believes that they have found the Russian lab that made the nerve agent used to poison the former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter.
They say that it was made at the Shikhany facility in Saratov region in southwest Russia.
This was reported by The Times.
British intelligence briefed representatives of its allies to persuade them that Moscow was behind the murder attempt. They also said that tests were conducted at the facility during the last decade, to determine whether Novichok is effective for committing an assassination abroad.
According to them, the stockpiles found in Shikhany, were much smaller than those that could be used as a battlefield weapon, which supposedly implies their use for targeted killings.
“The intelligence Britain has clearly points to Russia and Shikhany. No doubt the Russians are scrubbing it down as we speak,” said former commander of Britain’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, Hamish de Bretton Gordon.
Gordon said that there was nothing to support claims that Novichok could have come from elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, such as Ukraine or Uzbekistan.
On March 4, 2018, Skripal and his daughter were found unconscious on a bench, at the Salisbury shopping mall in England. Investigators found that they were poisoned by the neuroparalytic substance, Novichok, which was developed in Russia.
Britain blamed Russia and convened the U.N. Security Council. Britain later expelled 23 Russian diplomats from the country. On March 26, more than 20 countries announced the expulsion of Russian diplomats in response to the attack and as a sign of solidarity with Britain. Russia expelled diplomats from around 23 countries as a tit-for-tat response.
Moscow’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Alexander Yakovenko, said on Thursday that Russia had never made Novichok.
