"We have thoroughly scrutinized the statements made by UK doctors who were providing medical treatment to the Skripals. Unfortunately, there are still many questions. The Embassy has to note another time that it finds out details of treatment of the two Russian nationals from media, rather than from UK authorities, to whom we have submitted multiple [relevant] requests; not to mention the fact that everything is happening after nearly three months since the incident took place," the spokesman said.
The spokesman stressed that the doctors had dodged the issue of the use of an antidote, only saying that they tried all their therapies and received assistance from experts from the Porton Down laboratory. He stressed that the real role of "international experts" from the lab remained unclear.
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"It would be interesting to find out at what stage they became involved in the treatment, and what ‘new approaches’ they suggested. At the same time, we are surprised by the statements of doctors who say that they did not expect the Skripals to survive after their exposure to a nerve agent, and were ‘surprised’ by their speedy recovery. It does not fit in with the [previous] statements that the Skripals were saved due to the timely medical treatment in the first hours and days after the poisoning," he argued.
He also noted that the account of the events by the doctors contradicted previous media reports which had claimed that doctors with expertise in chemical weapons attacks were "accidentally" on duty at Salisbury District Hospital that afternoon.
The embassy is also perplexed why doctors acted as representatives of the Skripals in court while asking permission to take their blood samples and hand them over to "international experts," while UK authorities were in the known that the Skripals had relatives in Russia, the spokesman pointed out.
To conclude, the spokesman recalled that the UK side continued denying Victoria, a niece of Sergei Skripal, a visa.
On Tuesday, the BBC broadcaster published an interview with the doctors of the hospital, who said that they had first thought that the Skripals were suffering from an opioid overdose. Then, the medics were briefed by the police on the circumstances of their sudden intoxication and concluded that the Skripals had been exposed to a nerve agent, which reduced their chances for recovery. In the end, the patients were saved with the help of experts from the Porton Down defense research laboratory, according to the doctors.
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The Skripals were found unconscious in March on a bench at a shopping center in Salisbury. The United Kingdom and its allies have accused Moscow of having orchestrated the attack with what UK experts claim was the A234 nerve agent, without presenting any proof. Russian authorities have strongly refuted the allegations as groundless.
