British Scientists Can't Prove Russia Was Behind Sergei Skripal Poisoning

British chemical experts have been unable to identity the “precise source” of the nerve agent used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

Accusations and recriminations between Britain and Russia are set to escalate with the news that scientists at the Porton Down military research facility have been unable to establish exactly where the novichok nerve agent used to carry out the Skripal attack was manufactured.

The admission comes the day before Moscow convenes an emergency meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague in which it is expected to demand access to samples from the Salisbury poisoning for analysis by Russian scientists.

Russia’s embassy in London responded that Porton Down’s assessment “proves that all political declarations on the Russian origin of the crime are nothing but assumptions not stemming from objective facts or the course of the investigation”.

The development also comes after Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, suggested that British intelligence services carried out the attempted assassination of the former MI6 agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia and claimed that it had proved “beneficial” in distracting attention from Theresa May’s government having to make major concessions to the European Union on Brexit.

The OPCW is due to present its own conclusions on the nerve agent in the near future. It remains to be seen whether it will be able to provide definite proof that the novichok came from a Russian government facility or echo the Porton Down position.

Gary Aitkenhead, the chief executive of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down, Wiltshire, told Sky News that the substance required “extremely sophisticated methods to create something only in the capabilities of a state actor. We were able to identify it as novichok, to identify that it was military-grade nerve agent.”

Mr Aitkenhead went on to say: “We have not identified the precise source, but we have provided the scientific info to the government who have then used a number of other sources,” some of them intelligence-based.

The head of Porton Down denied claims that his research centre had been connected in any way with a “false flag” operation or that the novichok used may have come from it. “There is no way that anything like that would ever have come from us or leave the walls of our facilities,” he said. “We deal with a number of very toxic substances as part of the work that we do.”

There has been no immediate reaction from the Kremlin on the Porton Down assessment, but there is little doubt that it will be used to support its claims that UK has no real evidence to back up the accusation of Russian state culpability in the attack.

Speaking of the OPCW emergency meeting, Yury Filatov, the Russian ambassador to Ireland, said: “We hope to discuss the whole matter and call on Britain to provide every possible element of element of evidence they might have on their hands. Russia is interested in establishing the whole truth of the matter and we hope certainly that this meeting will help to return to at least the realm of normality within the realm of international law and decency in international matters.”