International pressure on Russia following the Salisbury nerve agent attack has been strongly ratcheted up, with Britain, the US, France and Germany jointly condemning an “assault on UK sovereignty”, as Washington boosted its own sanctions on Moscow.
With Russia still promising retaliation to the expulsion of 23 of its diplomats from the UK, Theresa May’s frantic telephone diplomacy in the wake of the attack seemed to have coalesced the UK’s allies into a united response.
The joint statement from May, Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel dispensed with any earlier equivocation to say there was “no plausible alternative explanation” for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, other than Russian action.
It said the Salisbury attack came amid “a pattern of earlier irresponsible Russian behaviour”. This message was reinforced hours later as the US increased sanctions over Russian interference in the 2016 elections, and accused Russia of a cyber-attack against its energy grid and other infrastructure.
US officials said malware had been found in the operating systems of several organisations and companies in the US energy, nuclear, water and “critical manufacturing” sectors, with the attacks allegedly traced to Moscow.
The statement – described by Downing Street as the first time the leaders of the four nations had spoken together in such a way – marked a toughening of the rhetoric against Moscow, which continued to insist it had nothing to do with the attack.
The leaders said they “abhorred” the Salisbury incident, and the involvement of the Russian-made novichok “constitutes the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since the second world war”.
“It is an assault on UK sovereignty and any such use by a state party is a clear violation of the chemical weapons convention and a breach of international law,” their statement said.
After the statement was released, Trump told reporters: “It certainly looks like the Russians were behind it. Something that should never, ever happen, and we’re taking it very seriously, as I think are many others.”
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