LONDON — Yulia S. Skripal has been released from a hospital in southern England, officials said Tuesday, five weeks after she and her father, a former Russian spy, were poisoned with a nerve agent that left them fighting for their lives.
The poisoning of Skripal and her father, Sergei V. Skripal, has had ramifications far beyond the cathedral city of Salisbury, England, where it took place, prompting a confrontation between Russia and the West
Britain has blamed Moscow for the poisonings, an accusation that the Kremlin has continually mocked and rejected, and the dispute precipitated a series of expulsions of diplomats between the two countries and beyond, as Britain’s allies rallied to its side.
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Britain says the poisoning on March 4 involved a rare class of the military-grade nerve agent Novichok, widely believed to have been developed in Soviet laboratories. Yulia Skripal came out of critical condition almost two weeks ago, and her father’s condition was raised from critical to stable on Friday.
“Yulia has asked for privacy from the media, and I want to reiterate that request,” Dr. Christine Blanshard, medical director of Salisbury District Hospital, told reporters on Tuesday. “This is not the end of her treatment, but it marks a significant milestone.”
Though Sergei Skripal, 66, is recovering more slowly than his daughter, Blanshard said he is improving.
“We hope that he, too, will be able to leave hospital in due course,” she said.
She did not comment on reports in the British news media that Yulia Skripal, 33, had been released on Monday. It was not immediately clear where Skripal might go. Investigators have sealed off Sergei Skripal’s house in Salisbury, and investigators say the nerve agent was most likely applied to its front door.
Yulia Skripal, who lives in Russia, was visiting her father when they were poisoned, and it is not clear whether she will return. Russian officials say they have been improperly denied access to her, but the British police said last week that Skripal was aware of the Russian offer to visit and help, and that she had turned it down.
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On Tuesday, the Russian Embassy in London wrote on Twitter: “We congratulate Yulia Skripal on her recovery. Yet we need urgent proof that what is being done to her is done on her own free will.”
The Sunday Times of London, citing anonymous sources, has reported that senior intelligence officials in Britain were talking to their counterparts at the CIA about sending the Skripals to the United States. The two Russians would be provided with new identities, part of a broader effort to keep them safe in case there should be another attempt on their lives.
The Russian Embassy seemed to acknowledge that possibility with another post on Twitter later Tuesday, again demanding proof that Skripal was acting of her own accord.
“Secret resettlement of Mr. and Ms. Skripal, barred from any contact with their family, will be seen as an abduction or at least as their forced isolation,” the post read.
The case has mixed high-stakes international diplomacy with elements of farce. Hundreds of diplomats around the world have been expelled, Britain has moved to crack down on the financial dealings of Russians in the country, and President Vladimir Putin’s government has offered a variety of alternative explanations for what happened and complained that the Skripals’ pets — two guinea pigs and a cat — were killed by the British and then cremated to destroy evidence.
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The investigation took another bizarre twist last week when Viktoria Skripal, a relative of the two Russians, questioned the accounts of the British authorities and said that she was “scared” for the pair.
She made her comments in an interview conducted after she recorded what she said was a phone call with Yulia Skripal. She had given the recording to Russian state television, which broadcast it.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international body, is examining evidence in the case and is expected to announce the results of its tests this week. The findings of its investigation are expected to be limited, however, to identifying the poison but not its source.
Weeks ago, British government officials speculated that the Skripals might never fully recover.
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