Russia, U.K. Military Join Ex-Russian Spy Attack Inquiry

Russian officials offered assistance as about 180 British military joined Britain's investigation into the attempted murder of a former Russian spy and his daughter.

Former Russian military security colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found unconscious near a shopping center in Salisbury Sunday after exposure to a deadly nerve agent. Both remain unconscious and are in critical but stable condition, Amber Rudd, Britain’s home secretary, told lawmakers on Thursday.

While Rudd refused to speculate about Russia's involvement in the attack, other British authorities – including Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Boris Johnson – linked the attack to others in the past.

"If it is a nation which has done it, it is completely unacceptable. It's almost like an act of war," said security minister Lord West, according to BBC News. "To actually allow something like a nerve agent to be used in another country for some reason is outrageous."

Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was adamant that Moscow was not involved in the attack on Skripal and his daughter, and said that Russia has not yet been approached by UK authorities investigating the poisoning, but is willing to help. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, also denied any Russian connections to the attack, telling the Washington Post that they had "no information about its probable causes, what this man has been doing, and what this is about."

The suspicions of Russian foul-play on British soil are not completely unfounded, though: the former Soviet Union is suspected of having organized the killings of at least 14 other people in Britain over the past two decades, according to a BuzzFeed investigation.

And Russia considers Skripal a traitor: Skripal, 66, was convicted by the Russian government in 2006 of passing the names of undercover Russian intelligence agents working abroad to British foreign intelligence service, but given refuge in the United Kingdom in 2010 as part of a high-profile spy swap between the U.K., the United States and Russia.

On Tuesday, Labour MP Yvette Cooper asked the home secretary to review 14 other deaths on British soil that, though not suspected by UK police, have been connected to Russia by other intelligence officials, BBC News reports.

About 21 people have sought treatment in connection to the attack last weekend, but only three – Skripal, his daughter and a British police officer who attempted to help them – were hospitalized, according to British police, BBC News reports.