Mark Urban - The Skripal Files

With conversations under way the police posted outside Yulia’s room on Radnor Ward became frustrated. They could hear talking inside, why couldn’t they interview Yulia? Sister Clark and her colleagues wanted to be sure that she was sufficiently aware and strong to have such an interview. ‘We had a duty of care to protect them and also we were acting as their advocates,’ she explained.

By 29 March, Yulia was formally taken off the critical list, the public announcement following on by a day or two the moment that detectives were able to begin talking to her. Although these long-awaited interviews did not provide them with a Litvinenko-style breakthrough, they were useful in talking through the hours leading up to the poisoning, eliminating the possibility that it was someone the Skripals might have met on the Sunday morning who could have harmed them.

While she had been under sedation an enormous amount had happened: Yulia and her father stood at the centre of a row between the country where their lives had been saved and Mother Russia, still so dear to them both. When sedation is being reduced, the intensive-care team on Radnor Ward normally put the radio or TV on for their patients. It is a way of bringing them back into the conscious world, and helping them adjust to the days or weeks they have missed. In the Skripals’ case, however, following consultations with the police, they did not do this.

Yulia, who dated her own return to consciousness from about 24 March, was picking up information fast once the interviews started, and she became able to switch on the TV for herself. Once the key initial interviews had taken place, she was able to communicate more widely, online, with friends and family.

Ross Cassidy and his wife Mo saw her several days later. Perhaps stung by his appearance on Sky, police called him, suggesting a time and day. The Cassidys’ visit was not detected by the press. When he told me about it later, ‘I was pleasantly surprised by her condition,’ he said, ‘she was a little thinner, with a plaster on her neck, but her spirits were good.’ They were not able to talk to Sergei that day, perhaps he was not feeling well enough, or maybe because the police had still not done their initial interviews with him.

Yulia had soon discovered that her country’s embassy in London was pressing for access (saying her Russian passport gave them the right to consular visits). A welter of theories had been circulating in the Russian press also, suggesting everything from that she had died soon after the poisoning to that she was being kept prisoner by British intelligence. These were, as we will see, just a small part of the information war unleashed in the wake of the poisoning.

There is no doubt that the Kremlin was hungry for information about the Skripals’ condition in order to adjust its information campaign and wider narrative. It was fascinating therefore that Yulia’s cousin Viktoria (the daughter of Sergei’s late brother Valery) should, after many days of being unresponsive to Facebook messages from one of my colleagues, Olga Ivshina of the BBC Russian Service, reply to her on 23 March. She was desperate to visit Yulia and Sergei in Salisbury Hospital, but said the British Embassy in Moscow had not responded to her calls. Could Olga help?

Here I must briefly reinsert myself into the story. Olga came to me and asked for my assistance. Could we get Viktoria into the hospital? Having closely read the court judgement (about the taking of blood samples by international inspectors) published on the 22nd, just the day before these conversations, I had been struck by its statement that no next of kin had been in touch with the hospital. It specifically mentioned Sergei’s mother and Yulia’s boyfriend in that regard. This saddened me. Knowing that Viktoria lived with Sergei’s mother, of his devotion to Yelena, and that Viktoria must be the closest alternative relative, I decided to help.

Contacting the hospital, I had a conversation where I was told repeatedly that Viktoria must go ‘through diplomatic channels’. But she had already tried, I replied, wasn’t there some way we could facilitate this, or simply enable her to get some information? There was no way that this exchange was going to be conducted via the BBC, came the answer. I understand that entirely, I reassured them, but if you could just give me a name and number of someone for her to talk to, an email address even, I will simply relay it, then remove myself entirely from the conversation. ‘She must go through the correct channels,’ came the answer again.

I told Olga it was no-go, explaining they were probably just being bureaucratic, wanting to do this in the prescribed way. But I confessed to her that it was also possible that the hospital had become conscripted in the information war, and were going to make it as hard as possible for Viktoria to get to her cousin and uncle. And this is how things turned out.

Olga flew to Moscow a couple of days later and on 26 March interviewed Viktoria Skripal. She told of her horror at the poisoning, and how Yelena was so old and frail that she daren’t tell her the truth. ‘I just wish that there could be some sympathy for us, for the fact that his mother is ill, diabetes, and that she’s ninety years old,’ Viktoria told Olga Ivshina. As for the long-term prognosis, ‘Out of ninety-nine per cent, I have maybe one per cent of hope,’ said Viktoria. ‘They say they’ve been given an antidote which has kept them alive, but if they survive it sounds like they’ll be invalids for the rest of their lives.’

The British Embassy said they had no record of Viktoria calling them when my BBC colleague asked, though she was able to show Olga the calls on her phone history. Soon afterwards, though, Viktoria did undoubtedly apply for a visa to visit Britain.

Knowing what Sergei had told me about his arrival in Britain in 2010, and how stressful it was, being unable to speak to his mother for one month, I felt deeply for Yelena’s situation. There were others though, in the intelligence services of each country, who could see all this in less sentimental terms. Suspicions were rising on the British side that Viktoria was being used to obtain information. Her statements, for example in her BBC interview, that she was assuming her relatives would die and there might be an antidote that could easily have been formulated to trigger disclosures from British officials or indeed Yulia herself. It is quite likely that the FSB or GRU had become aware, through monitoring communications, that Yulia was emerging from her coma, then, a little later, starting to communicate online, and this sharpened their interest in what was really going on.

After Olga’s interview with Viktoria, the Daily Mail followed suit, and then very swiftly after that she was signed up by Russian state TV, the First Channel. Her comments then assumed a more overtly political character.

Yulia’s minders from Counter-Terrorist Command were aware that she might also become anxious about her grandmother Yelena. The hospital staff were sensitive to her predicament too. The result was a phone call early in April when Yulia phoned Viktoria from Radnor Ward. This was the conversation recorded and broadcast by Russian TV:

Yulia: Hello.

Viktoria: Hello.

Yulia: Do you hear me?

Viktoria: I hear you.

Yulia: This is Yulka.

Viktoria: Oh, Yulka, I can tell by the voice that it’s you.

I didn’t understand. So this means they gave you a telephone?

Yulia: Yes, yes, yes.

Viktoria: Well thank God. Is everything OK with you?

Yulia: OK, everything is OK.

Viktoria: Look, if I get my visa tomorrow, on Monday I will fly to you.