The Kremlin has bizarrely requested a face-to-face meeting with Sergei and Yulia Skripal seven years after the botched Salisbury poisonings.
Andrei Kelin, the Russian ambassador to the UK, said he hopes the former spy and his daughter are ‘alive and well’ as he demanded information about the pair.
He also claimed that British authorities are doing everything they can to ‘conceal the truth’ about the March 2018 assassination attempt.
It is believed the Skripals were poisoned by members of the Russian military intelligence who smeared the nerve agent on their door handle.
While the pair survived, Dawn Sturgess, 44, died four months later after she was exposed to the Novichok, which was left in a discarded perfume bottle
‘Of course, we hope that Sergei and Yulia Skripal are alive, healthy and remain at large. But concern for them is only growing,’ Mr Kelin said in an interview with Russian news site aif.ru.
‘Unfortunately, the UK authorities are doing everything they can to conceal the truth about the fate of our citizens.’
The diplomat also called for ‘detailed information’ about his compatriots and a ‘personal meeting’ with Sergei and Yulia.
In November, an inquiry into the tragedy heard that the suspects in the poisonings visited Salisbury ‘for reconnaissance’ the day before the Skripals fell ill.
Police had tracked all three suspects – Sergey Fedotov, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov – through their phones in 2018.
The men – who the Kremlin deny were involved – were charged over the attack on Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia, but not the death of Ms Sturgess.
This is because she only came into contact with the deadly nerve agent four months later and died on July 8.
The suspects, however, claimed they visited Salisbury twice in one weekend to see both Stonehenge and the cathedral, which they referred to as ‘wonderful’ sights.
It is believed they flew into London on March 2, 2018, and left two days later, bringing the Novichok into the country with them disguised in a perfume bottle.
Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia were then discovered unconscious on a park bench on March 4.
Former police officer Nick Bailey rushed to their aid but then became severely poisoned himself.
Mr Skripal, then 66, previously acted as a double agent, selling Russian secrets to the west. He had been freed in a spy-swap eight years before to the attack, and felt safe enough in the UK to live under his own name.
The UK, the US and 22 other western governments retaliated by expelling more than 100 Russian diplomats and in the coming months, police and intelligence agencies combed through CCTV.
Father-of-two Mr Bailey spent a fortnight critically ill in hospital after being among the first on the scene, and suffered from ‘terrifying hallucinations’ which he compared to ‘a tsunami or pure heat and fire’.
The discarded perfume bottle containing the chemical was discovered several weeks later by member of the public Charlie Rowley, who gave it to his partner Ms Sturgess.
She subsequently died in hospital after spraying herself with the military-grade chemical, although Mr Rowley survived.
A hearing into the poisonings began on October 14 last year and then continued in London. The findings are due to be announced later in 2025.
