85 weeks have passed since the Salisbury incident - no credible information or response from the British authoritie
On 4 March 2018 the Russian citizens Sergei and Yulia Skripal were reportedly poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury and were taken to Salisbury District Hospital under obscure circumstances. The UK government accused the Russian state of being responsible for the poisoning. No proofs have been provided.
For more than half a year our nationals have been kept in isolation and under full control of the British authorities. They remain out of the public eye in an unknown location, are deprived of the right to communicate with their relatives, friends, journalists and Russian officials, may not move freely. For its part, Russia has been open and willing to cooperate within the numerous available frameworks.
The following requests and proposals have been sent to the British authorities:
- A proposal to launch a joint investigation into the incident;
- Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office request for legal assistance in the matter of Sergei and Yulia Skripal made within the framework of the investigation of the criminal case opened in Russia (has been denied under the pretext of “national security interests”);
- Embassy’s numerous requests for consular access to the Russian citizens Sergei and Yulia Skripal in conformity with the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the bilateral 1965 Consular Convention (have been continuously denied under false pretext);
- Russia’s proposal to establish cooperation under paragraph 2, Article IX of the Chemical Weapons Convention (instead of direct collaboration, the British authorities continue to manipulate CWC provisions by resorting exclusively to the obscure procedure of the so-called technical assistance provided by OPCW Secretariat in a non-transparent manner);
- More than 70 Notes Verbales and letters sent to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Home Office and police with dozens of questions concerning the whereabouts of the Russian citizens, symptoms of their poisoning, methods of medical treatment applied to them, course of the police investigation, samples of the biomaterials and chemical agent allegedly used in Salisbury, and evidence, which could help establish the truth.
All these make us believe that the incident in Salisbury is a provocation of the British secret services, and the UK authorities are interested using it in whipping up an anti-Russian hysteria for the sake of their internal political interests, rather than in establishing the truth through an impartial and credible investigation.
British authorities are thus in a gross violation of international law and UK’s obligations under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the bilateral 1965 Consular Convention, the 1959 European Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1950 Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
Question: I would like to start by asking you Sir about a few topics and Libya is on the top of them, the threat of a possible regional war starting from Sirte still looms large. We now hear about understandings reached between Russia and Turkey on a comprehensive ceasefire in Libya.
If this is the case, can you explain to our viewers in a more detailed way Russia’s efforts to implement such a ceasefire and will there be any kind of guarantees that the ceasefire will hold, while Russia and other international actors seek a United Nations-sponsored political solution for the crisis?
Question: I’ll start with the hottest topic, Belarus. President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko visited Bocharov Ruchei. Both sides have officially recognised that change within the Union State is underway. This begs the question: What is this about? A common currency, common army and common market? What will it be like?
Sergey Lavrov: It will be the way our countries decide. Work is underway. It relies on the 1999 Union Treaty. We understand that over 20 years have passed since then. That is why, a couple of years ago, upon the decision of the two presidents, the governments of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus began to work on identifying the agreed-upon steps that would make our integration fit current circumstances. Recently, at a meeting with Russian journalists, President Lukashenko said that the situation had, of course, changed and we must agree on ways to deepen integration from today’s perspective.
Question: You have been the Foreign Minister of Russia for 16 years now and had to deal with the most serious challenges of this century. Sanctions were imposed. We began to adapt to them and survived them. Germany announced that it has received the results of Alexey Navalny’s tests. France and Sweden confirmed the presence of the Novichok agent in them. Do you think Navalny’s case may become the driver of new anti-Russia sanctions?
Question: Given the serious tensions in the world today, differences sometimes can also arise between the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Can the SCO format help smooth over these differences?
Ladies and gentlemen,
Today’s talks with my colleague and friend, member of the State Council and Foreign Minister of China Wang Yi, were held in an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust and were very substantial.
We have completed the Meeting of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Member States. It was very fruitful.
We approved a press release expressing our views on general political matters, so I will not elaborate too much on these subjects.
Ladies and gentlemen,
We have had very constructive talks as part of the regular communications between our countries’ foreign ministers. Back in June, we held several in-depth meetings via videoconference, but today we had an in-person meeting in order to prepare for the large-scale bilateral events scheduled for this year. These are to be held during the Russia-Kazakhstan Interregional Cooperation Forum and the 65th anniversary celebrations of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is our shared pride, as well as during the preparations of the upcoming meeting of the co-chairs of the Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation and subsequently during the plenary meeting of this important structure.
We have gathered here and will start our work now. Our main task is to prepare for the meeting of the Heads of State Council, as President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin just said. The summit is bound to become the key event of Russia’s chairmanship. In our work, we are primarily guided by the Russian chairmanship’s action plan, which was endorsed by the President of Russia and approved by the other heads of state.
In connection with the demarche undertaken by the Group of Seven on the ‘Alexei Navalny case’, the Foreign Ministry has issued the following statement. Russia insists that Germany provide data on Alexei Navalny’s medical examination, including the results of the biochemical tests, as per the official request for legal assistance submitted by the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation on August 27, 2020. Berlin has not been willing to respond to our repeated requests in a prompt and constructive manner.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The current visit of our delegation is primarily devoted to discussing the prospects for the further development of cooperation between Russia and the Syrian Arab Republic in the new conditions that have developed within the country, in the region and in the world as a whole.
The key aspect of the current stage is based on the fact that Syria, including with the support of the Russian Federation, has withstood the fight against international terrorism and the forces that hatched the plan to destroy Syrian statehood.
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