Britain Blames Russia for Nerve Agent Attack on Former Spy

LONDON — British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday it was “highly likely” that Moscow was to blame for the poisoning of a former Russian spy who was attacked with a nerve agent near his home in southern England.

Mrs. May’s remarks, delivered in an address to Parliament, were an unusually direct condemnation of a country that Britain has, in the past, been loath to blame for attacks on its soil. British authorities took what critics said were only modest countermeasures after a similar incident in 2006, when Russian agents poisoned a former MI6 informant with a rare and toxic isotope, polonium 210.

The prime minister, who resisted an open inquiry into Russia’s role in that case, was under pressure to show more resolve this time. The March 4 nerve agent attack on Sergei V. Skripal, who was an informant for Britain’s foreign intelligence service, and his daughter, Yulia, occurred in and around public spaces in the city of Salisbury, and risked exposing hundreds of bystanders to lethal chemicals.

“It is now clear that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia,” Mrs. May said in the House of Commons. “The government has concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the act against Sergei and Yulia Skripal.”

She said that either the poisoning was a “direct act of the Russian state against our country” or that Moscow had lost control of its nerve agent and had allowed it to get into the hands of others. The prime minister said the government had summoned the Russian ambassador to London to ask which of those two possibilities had occurred, and that Britain expected a response from Russia by the end of the day on Tuesday.

“Should there be no credible response, we will conclude that this action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom, and I will come back to this House and set out the full range of measures we will take in response,” Mrs. May added.

“We shall not tolerate such a brazen act to murder innocent civilians on our soil.”

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei V. Lavrov, last week offered assistance in the investigation and denied that his government was involved. But an anchor on Russia’s state-controlled news broadcast struck a different note, warning Russians not to betray their country, and that, if they did, “Don’t choose Britain as a place to live.”

Mrs. May said the nerve agent was part of a group known as “Novichok.” The term — Russian for “newcomer” — was produced by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, and, at the time, was believed to be far more lethal than anything in the United States arsenal.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Vil Mirzayanov, a chemist who helped develop the agent, said that Soviet laboratories had developed enough of the substance to kill several hundred thousand people.

Dispersed in a powder, Novichok agents blocked the breakdown of a neurotransmitter controlling muscular contractions, leading to respiratory and cardiac arrest, Mr. Mirzayanov told investigators at the time.

Over the last week, chemical weapons experts fanned out through the sleepy cathedral city of Salisbury, and residents who may have been near Mr. Skripal and his daughter were told to wash their clothing and carefully wipe off other articles. Politicians have urged the government to respond.

“What it says to Russians living in the U.K. or those thinking of leaving the country is: disloyalty is always punishable, you will never be free of us and you will never be safe, wherever you live,” John Lough and James Sherr, Russia specialists at the British think-tank Chatham House, wrote. “What it says to the British government is: We believe you are weak, we have no respect for you.”

Mr. Skripal is one of several opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin’s government, in Britain and elsewhere, who have been the victims of murder or attempted murder. Western intelligence officials say that the Kremlin has frequently had its foes killed. The most notorious case involved another former Russian agent, Alexander Litvinenko, who was fatally poisoned in London in 2006 with a radioactive element, an assassination that a British inquiry later concluded was probably approved personally by Mr. Putin.

The British government has, however, been accused of dragging its feet in investigating previous suspicious deaths, for fear of losing its own intelligence flow from Moscow and sacrificing the Russian wealth that has flowed into London.

On Tuesday, Yvette Cooper, a lawmaker with the opposition Labour Party submitted a letter to Britain’s home secretary, demanding a review of 14 deaths which “have not been treated as suspicious by the U.K. police but have — reportedly — been identified by United States intelligence sources as potentially connected to the Russian state.”

But with the intense attention focused on the poisoning of Mr. Skripal, 66, and his daughter, 33, the government response has been swifter.

Officials from across the British political spectrum have called for a wide range of retaliatory measures against Russia, including the expulsion of diplomats, new economic sanctions, tighter controls on wealthy Russians entering Britain, and the revocation of the broadcast license of RT, the Kremlin-controlled broadcaster.

Britain had to ensure that Russia’s oligarchs “realize that they can’t spend their wealth in London, that they can’t enjoy the luxuries of Harrods and whatever else, and that we’re absolutely firm in making sure that they feel the pain of being denied entry into the West,” Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Commons, told BBC Radio on Monday.

But expelling Russian intelligence agents would mean Britain would lose some of its own agents in Moscow, which would have steep costs for London, according to John Bayliss, who retired in 2010 from the Government Communications Headquarters, Britain’s electronic intelligence agency.

“It will cut off a flow of intelligence you have had for years,” he said. “That will stop you gaining intelligence in future years, which would be critical.”

Mr. Skripal and his daughter remained in critical condition on Monday, more than a week after being poisoned in Salisbury, where Mr. Skripal had lived quietly for years. The pair were found incoherent on a park bench, and a police officer who made contact with the nerve agent when he tried to help the Skripals, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, was also hospitalized in serious condition.

While working for Russian military intelligence, Mr. Skripal became a double agent, selling secrets to Britain. He was found out, convicted and sent to a Russian prison in 2006. In 2010, he was freed and sent to Britain in a spy swap with the West.

On Sunday, British authorities warned that hundreds of people might have been exposed, particularly in an Italian restaurant and a pub that the Skripals had visited. Officials advised nearby residents to carefully wash any items — clothes, eyeglasses, cellphones — that might have minute traces of the toxin on them, and to bag those that could not be cleaned easily. That prompted angry responses from Salisbury residents, who asked why it had taken a week to issue the warning.

The restaurant, pub and surrounding parts of the shopping district known as the Maltings remained cordoned off as emergency workers in protective suits combed through it for evidence and sought to remove all traces of the nerve agent.

Follow Ellen Barry and Richard Pérez-Peña on Twitter: @EllenBarryNYT and @PerezPena.

Stephen Castle contributed reporting from London.

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