© RuptlyThe United Nations Security Council
The use of chemical weapons by anyone anywhere is "inadmissible and must be investigated and punished," Russia's ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya wrote to the UNSC president, according to TASS. The council is currently chaired by Peru.
Nebenzya sent the request after the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office deleted the March 22 tweet in which it claimed experts at the chemical weapons laboratory at Porton Down confirmed the substance that allegedly poisoned Skripal and his daughter Yulia was "military-grade Novichok nerve agent produced in Russia."
While Porton Down was able to identify the substance as Novichok, the scientists there could not link the samples to Russia, executive Gary Aitkenhead told Sky News on Monday.
"We have not identified the precise source, but we have provided the scientific info to government who have then used a number of other sources to piece together the conclusions you have come to," Aitkenhead said.
The UK has refused to release any evidence tying Russia to the incident. Moscow has maintained that Russia had nothing to do with the alleged poisoning of the Skripals.
Sergei is a former Russian intelligence operative who was convicted of spying for the British in 2006 and sent to the UK in 2010 as part of a spy swap. His daughter Yulia is a Russian citizen, who came to visit him in Salisbury last month. Russian diplomats have been barred from visiting her in the hospital, in violation of diplomatic conventions. May's government expelled 23 Russian diplomats in March. The US, Canada, Australia and a number of NATO countries followed suit, expelling over 150 Russian diplomats that they accused of being spies.
Moscow has responded by expelling an equal number of diplomats from the countries involved, shutting down the British Council operations in Russia, and closing the US consulate in St. Petersburg to match the US closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle, Washington.
Russia has every right to call an emergency meeting before this is dragged out into a worldwide escalation, on dubious and false claims, now being revealed as lies and obfuscation for certain parties with and obvious agenda.
We have already heard from Austria, the coercive attempts, because they are a NATO aligned country to force them to expel diplomats. Thank god for there words of sanity.
It will be interesting to see how the world responds after the recent revelations,
We are talking about the world here, not just some ideologues from the Western world that seek, because of there hubris and inflated exceptionalism (in there own minds) to influence the rest of the world for there own ends.
Will we really see a balanced decision and argument from the West or will it be filled with more infantile rhetoric from the likes of Nikki Haley, who it appears, has never left the classroom, teaching young and vulnerable minds, the world of black and white thinking.
I wait with baited breath for the outcome.