Poisoned Russian Ex-Spy and Daughter Remain Critical, Police Say

(Bloomberg) -- The former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in a critical condition nine days after they were poisoned with a nerve agent in southern England, police said as they appealed for information from anyone who saw the pair in a red BMW.

Nick Bailey, the police officer who was among the first to assist when the Skripals were found slumped on a bench in Salisbury, remains “serious but stable,” Neil Basu, the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism coordinator, told reporters in London on Tuesday. He said officers aren’t currently publicly identifying any suspects in the case.

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday that the Skripals were poisoned with a “military grade” nerve agent known as “Novichok” that was developed in the Soviet Union. She gave Russia until midnight Tuesday to explain how the substance came to be used in Britain.

“If they can come up with a convincing explanation then obviously we will want to see full disclosure of that to the Organizations for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague,” Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told the BBC on Tuesday. “If not, then clearly we will want to be announcing the U.K. response, and that would come tomorrow.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow on Tuesday that “this is all nonsense, we’ve got nothing to do with this.”

Basu said a total of 38 people had been monitored for exposure to the nerve agent, with 34 of them discharged by the hospital. Aside from the Skripals and Bailey, one other person is being monitored as an outpatient, he said. While saying the police don’t yet know where the Skripals were poisoned, he called for information from anyone who had seen them in a red BMW in the Salisbury area between about 1 p.m. and 1:45 p.m. on March 4.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Thomas Penny

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