TEHRAN, April 06 - Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal is no longer in a critical condition and his health is improving rapidly, more than a month after he was poisoned with a nerve agent in England, the hospital treating him said on Friday.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Skripal, 66, who as a colonel in Russian military intelligence betrayed dozens of agents to Britain's foreign spy service, was found slumped unconscious on a bench in the city of Salisbury along with his daughter Yulia on March 4.
Britain blamed Russia for the poisoning, the first known offensive use of such a nerve agent on European soil since World War Two. Moscow denied any involvement and suggested Britain had carried out the attack to stoke anti-Russian hysteria.
After weeks of no reported change in his condition, the hospital confirmed that Skripal, who had been treated under heavy sedation, was now making fast progress.
"He is responding well to treatment, improving rapidly and is no longer in a critical condition," Christine Blanshard, Medical Director at Salisbury District Hospital, said in a statement.
Prime Minister Theresa May said the Skripals were poisoned with Novichok, a deadly group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet military in the 1970s and 1980s.
Russia has said it does not have such nerve agents and President Vladimir Putin dismissed as nonsense the notion that Moscow would have poisoned Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter.
The attack prompted the biggest Western expulsion of Russian diplomats since the Cold War as allies in Europe and the United States sided with May's view that Moscow was either responsible or had lost control of the nerve agent.
Moscow has hit back by expelling Western diplomats, questioning how Britain knows that Russia was responsible and offering its rival interpretations, including that it amounted to a plot by British secret services.
Source: Reuters