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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Yulia Skripal (lead image) has telephoned home to say that she and her father, Sergei Skripal, are alive and well in the UK; living in separate rented accommodations;  paying for them with the pension her father gets from MI6; getting plenty of exercise on a treadmill and nature walks; keeping her diabetic father’s sugar level down; and planning to meet next for a Christmas or New Year dinner together.

Sergei has a minder living with him. Yulia described him as a medic whose job is to  maintain a tracheostomy tube installed in Sergei’s throat. Its function is to compensate for what she said was partial paralysis of his nasopharyngeal muscles, for his lack of air to breathe, and for the danger that Sergei might choke on his own phlegm.  

In an hour-long telephone call at noon, British time, on November 21, Yulia Skripal also said she wanted to set the record straight that her father never wrote a letter to President Vladimir Putin asking for permission to return to Russia,  nor gave an interview to Mark Urban, a BBC reporter who published a book of what he claims Skripal told him.

She also said: “I really want to go to New Zealand, but, unfortunately, not yet.”

A transcript of the telephone conversation was published in Moskovsky Komsomolets (MK) yesterday, December 1. Introducing it, MK reporter Lev Speransky noted that Yulia Skripal had used a telephone with a spoof identification number.  

Yulia spoke to her cousin, Viktoria Skripal, for about an hour. Speransky, who has often reported on the Skripal case but refuses to answer questions himself, did not publish a recording of the call, so that voice-matching to authenticate Yulia as the speaker, is impossible, and MK does not claim to have taken the precaution. According to Speransky, Viktoria “has no doubts” she was speaking to Yulia.

Speransky’s text can be read here.

Source: https://www.mk.ru/      
 On October 31, Speransky reported speaking directly with Viktoria who told him she was angry at Yulia for selling her apartment in Moscow to friends but doing nothing to assist financially in the support of their grandmother, Sergei’s 93-year old mother, who lives with Viktoria.   When Yulia was speaking to Viktoria, she  tried explaining what she had done with the apartment, the family belongings, her car and dog.  

Here are excerpts of Yulia’s remarks, according to Speransky’s report:

– “My dad asked me to call today; he said he had some bad premonitions [about his mother].”

– “Okay, I’ll ask him to call sometime. You know, his tube is now changed every three months because of the coronavirus.”

– “I have now left for the fields – you can walk in nature. I need to call Father today, I don’t live with him, and we mostly communicate by phone. That has its own security restrictions. He  doesn’t really need me; you can reach him just through me. And so he lives there with a medic. He feels good. I don’t see him at all because of the lockdown. He is at risk, he already has a tube in his throat, where he still has a cough or something else…His sugar is normal. He is now trying to play sports. He has a treadmill, [he does] strengthening exercises.”

– “[Viktoria: you are sent somewhere every two months: either to New Zealand, or to Australia]. I’m kidding that I don’t know where I’ve been. I really want to go to New Zealand, but, unfortunately, not yet.”

Read the story: http://johnhelmer.org/

– “And so, pah-pah-pah, my health has been fully restored. Dad, if not for this tube, would not have had any problems either… Now he has his good days and his bad days. When he begins to cough on the path, the phlegm comes out. In general, it’s hard.  And every time the tube is changed, every three to four months, tubes with cameras are pushed through his nose, and the muscles of the nasopharynx are checked. But they don’t really start to move. That is, the likelihood that they will recover is very small. In his nasopharynx, only these muscles are affected, which separate breathing through the nose and through the mouth. When the tube is plugged, he can breathe a little through his nose, but he does not get enough air.”

– “In the near future, Dad will still acquire permanent housing. Now he has a rented apartment. When he decides, then he will be given this money [from the sale of his Salisbury house] so that he can buy a house for himself. They pay me half of my father’s pension, and half to him. I have enough for rent, and for the rest I will earn. I live calmly, I will not say that I am chic, but I do not complain either.”

– “Dad and I try not to talk about this [the events of March 4, 2018], but he has a very great guilt, of course. Sometimes it starts – I say: that’s it, no need, good. He is very sorry that I was accidentally turned on this flywheel of repression with him. He cannot forgive himself for this in any way. I say: oh well, everything is alright —  it’s just as well that I came. And if he had been  alone, no one would have found [him] in the house —  he would have died. At least we were on the street, in a crowded place. And so there certainly would have been no chance if he had been alone.”

– Rumours began: he wrote a petition to the president. He did not write anything to anyone, he did not ask anyone for anything.”

– [Viktoria: But you see, it all started with a BBC journalist who came and Sergei agreed to give him an interview. He inflated it all. Everything is due to the fact that someone starts up some kind of gossip, just fanning fantasy, that’s all….] You mean Mark Urban? [Yes.] This is a separate character, because Dad did not give him an interview. They talked a couple of years ago. He only advised Urban through acquaintances. And Dad told me: I didn’t tell him anything about himself.  He is shocked because he did not give him an interview — did not give him permission to use anything at all.” Read the true story.  

– [Viktoria: And so everyone is alive and well, no one gave birth to new children?] … Despite what they wrote, I also did not give birth to anyone. My Russian friends and I have had fun with this.  I say: yes, I probably gave birth. Since I survived after Novichok, now the local services in the laboratory are breeding me so that there are many such soldiers.”

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