Financial Times: Ukraine hopes Salisbury poisoning serves as `wake-up call` for West

Published March 14, 2018 at 4:10 pm

Members of the fire brigade in green biohazard suits work to re-attach the tent over the bench where a man and a woman were found in critical condition sparking a major incident on March 4 at The Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury, southern England, on March 8, 2018 after the tent became detached. British detectives on March 8 scrambled to find the source of the nerve agent used in the "brazen and reckless" attempted murder of a Russian former double-agent and his daughter. Sergei Skripal, 66, who moved to Britain in a 2010 spy swap, is unconscious in a critical but stable condition in hospital along with his daughter Yulia after they collapsed on a bench outside a shopping centre on Sunday. / AFP PHOTO / Ben STANSALL

Photo by AFP

Ukraine’s foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin has expressed hope that the shocking use of banned chemical weapons as an assassination weapon in Salisbury serves as a “wake-up call” for the West leading to a response that piles more pressure upon Russia over its disregard for international law and norms.

Expressing full solidarity with the UK in a statement issued while Prime Minister Theresa May addressed the parliament, Mr. Klimkin wrote: “This is beginning to feel like a real wake-up call for the West — I really hope it is. But the West must now respond in a way that will make Russia feel the consequences of their actions.”