Russia opens probes into Skripal daughter's poisoning, Russian's death

Russia on Friday opened a probe into the "attempted premeditated murder" of Yulia Skripal, who along with her father was poisoned by a nerve agent in Britain.

The Investigative Committee has also begun a separate probe into the suspected murder of a Russian living in London, Nikolai Glushkov, even though British police were still treating the death as "unexplained."

The committee, which reports directly to President Vladimir Putin, opened a case based "on the fact of attempted premeditated murder of Russian national Yulia Skripal," it said in a statement.

The statement did not mention Yulia Skripal's father Sergei, who is also in a critical condition in hospital after being poisoned with a Soviet-designed nerve agent called Novichok.

Russian investigators said they were "ready for joint work with the relevant British authorities."

The Investigative Committee said in the same statement that it had opened a murder probe into the death of Glushkov, a former deputy general director at the Aeroflot airline and associate of the late Kremlin opponent Boris Berezovsky.

TRT World was joined by Lucy Taylor who is in Moscow with the latest.

Glushkov was found dead at his home in London on March 12, days after the poisoning of the Skripals.

London's Metropolitan Police have so far been treating the death as "unexplained".

A spokesman told AFP Friday that the police were awaiting the results of a post-mortem expected later in the day.

The Russian embassy in London said this week that it had asked British authorities for details about Glushkov's death in the London suburb of New Malden.

Glushkov was an associate of Berezovsky, a one-time Putin supporter who then turned against him and was found hanged in a bathroom at his home outside London in 2013.

Glushkov had received political asylum in Britain after being held in pre-trial detention and convicted in Russia for money laundering and fraud.

British police are revisiting a number of other unexplained deaths following the Skripal case.

TRT World's Sarah Morice has more from London.

UK blames Russia for attack

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Friday that it was overwhelmingly likely that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself made the decision to use a military-grade nerve toxin to strike down Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on English soil.

"We have nothing against the Russians themselves. There is to be no Russophobia as a result of what is happening," Johnson told reporters at the Battle of Britain bunker from which World War Two fighter operations were controlled.

"Our quarrel is with Putin's Kremlin, and with his decision – and we think it overwhelmingly likely that it was his decision – to direct the use of a nerve agent on the streets of the UK, on the streets of Europe for the first time since the Second World War," Johnson said.

Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday that the Russian state was culpable for the attempted murder.

May said it was tragic that Putin had chosen to act in such a way.

Soon after Johnson's comments were reported, the Kremlin said accusations that President Putin was involved in the nerve agent attack were shocking, TASS news agency reported.

"Any reference or mention of our president in this regard is a shocking and unforgivable breach of diplomatic rules of decent behaviour," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the agency.