Russia is waiting for a reply from the other countries capable of making chemical warfare agents after the Czech Republic’s statement it produced Novichok, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday after Czech President Milos Zeman declared that his country’s military agencies produced and conducted research into the Novichok class agent, TASS reports.
Russia is waiting for a reply from the other countries capable of making chemical warfare agents after the Czech Republic’s statement it produced Novichok, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday after Czech President Milos Zeman declared that his country’s military agencies produced and conducted research into the Novichok class agent.
On May 3, Czech President Milos Zeman said on Prague’s Barrandov television channel that small amounts of the nerve gas Novichok had been produced and stored in the Czech Republic. He called for not being hypocritical and for telling no lies.
On March 4, former GRU Colonel Sergei Skripal, convicted in Russia of spying for Britain, and his daughter Yulia, were affected by a nerve agent in Salisbury, if the British version of the affair is to be believed. London claimed that the substance had been developed in Russia and for that reason alone it accused Moscow of complicity without presenting any proof.
Russia strongly dismissed all speculations on that score, saying that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia had ever had programs for creating such a substance. In a diplomatic row that followed a number of Western countries in a gesture of solidarity with Britain expelled a total of more than one hundred Russian diplomats. Moscow retaliated proportionately.