Credit
via Reuters
LONDON — Yulia S. Skripal has been released from a hospital in southern England, officials said on Tuesday, five weeks after she and her father, a former Russian spy, were poisoned with a nerve agent that left them fighting for their lives and that raised tensions between Russia and the West.
The poisoning of Ms. Skripal and her father, Sergei V. Skripal, has had ramifications that rippled far beyond the cathedral city of Salisbury, England, where it took place. Russia has strenuously rejected Britain’s accusations that it was responsible for the poisonings, and the dispute precipitated a series of expulsions of diplomats between the two countries and beyond, as Britain’s allies rallied to its side.
Britain says the poisoning on March 4 involved a rare class of the military-grade nerve agent Novichok, which is widely believed to have been developed in a Soviet laboratory, leaving the Skripals fighting for their lives.
Ms. Skripal came out of critical condition almost two weeks ago, and her father’s condition was raised to stable from critical on Friday.
It was not immediately clear on Tuesday where Ms. Skripal might go; investigators have sealed off the house in Salisbury where she and her father lived, and investigators believe the nerve agent was applied to its front door.
The case has mixed high-stakes international diplomacy with elements of farce: Scores of diplomats around the world have been expelled, Britain has moved to crack down on the financial dealings of Russians in the country, and Moscow has offered a variety of alternative explanations for what happened and complained that the Skripals’ pets — two guinea pigs and a cat — were killed by the British and then cremated to destroy evidence.
The investigation took another bizarre twist last week when Viktoria Skripal, a 45-year-old Russian accountant and relative of the two Russians, questioned the accounts of the British authorities and said that she was “scared” for the pair.
She made her comments in an interview, conducted after she recorded what she said was a phone call with Yulia Skripal. She then gave the recording to Russian state television, which broadcast it.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international body, is examining evidence in the case and is expected to announce the results of its tests this week. The findings of its investigation are expected to be limited, however, to identifying the poison but not its source.
Source : Nytimes
