The UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Boris Johnson, said Russia has been creating and stockpiling the deadly nerve agent Novichok within the last decade.

“We actually have evidence within the last 10 years that Russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purpose of assassination, but has also been creating and stockpiling Novichok,” he noted.

Johnson sais Russia has stockpiled chemical weapons over the past decades.

Also, he criticized Moscow for attempting to avoid accountability for the poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, in England. 

The British foreign secretary added that scientists from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will arrive in the UK on Monday to analyze samples of the agent used to poison them, and which also left a police officer seriously ill.

On March 4, 66-year-old Sergei Skripal and his daughter, 33-year-old Yulia, who was visiting from Moscow, were poisoned with a nerve agent in Great Britain. They were found unconscious in Salisbury town. They remain in a critical condition at hospital.