Double agent Sergei Skripal’s family in Russia today wished him and daughter Yulia well amid claims they have started a new life in New Zealand.
Cousin Natalya Pestsova and niece Elena said they hope the former GRU spy was doing well wherever he was living.
It comes after a senior government source in London reportedly said the pair had been given new identities and moved to the other side of the world.
But the relatives suspect the reports are a bluff and that they have secretly remained in Britain or slipped under the radar in another country.
Double agent Sergei Skripal’s (right) family in Russia today wished him and daughter Yulia (left) well amid claims they have started a new life in New Zealand
Cousin Natalya Pestsova (left) and niece Elena said they hope the former GRU spy was doing well wherever he was living. The family said two calls last year by Skripal, 68, to his niece Viktoria (top right, with her family)
Skripal and Yulia were found unconscious on a park bench on March 4, 2018, after Russian agents smeared Novichok on the door-handle of their home.
They were rushed to hospital and put in induced comas to prevent the poison damaging their organs.
Yulia left hospital in the April and was taken by police to a secret location, where she was guarded by British intelligence agents. Her father joined her a month later.
Natalya said: ‘I am happy to know that they are in New Zealand – if it’s true. It’s a faraway country. I am hoping they will have a safe start to a new, happier life.’
The family said two calls last year by Skripal, 68, to his niece Viktoria – who cares for his 91-year-old mother Elena – feel like permanent farewells.
Viktoria cares for Skripal’s 91-year-old mother Elena (pictured). She said: ‘Maybe they moved in March when Yulia was seen checking out our social media page – I wonder’
Natalya, 67, who lives in Siberia and was close to Skripal, said Yulia, 36, went on her family’s social media pages in March but did not make contact.
She said: ‘Maybe they moved in March when Yulia was seen checking out our social media page – I wonder.
‘There was a little beacon of hope in March when Yulia visited her own social media and went on to my page.
‘She didn’t say anything, but I know she went around all our family profiles. I wonder if this is because she was missing us.’
She continued: ‘I think about them all the time, and pray for their health. I often see Sergei in my dreams. I do hope they find peace and happiness after their ordeal.
‘I say to them: Please remember we love you and think of you wherever you are and whatever name you now carry. We are family. You are not alone.’
She added: ‘I was always very close with Sergei, as we spent so much time together in our younger years.
‘Back then I always felt a kind of spiritual connection with him, and it looks like this will be the only way I’ll be able to communicate with him now.’
There has been no contact since his calls to Viktoria and his mother last year ‘when he basically said farewell’.
Viktoria, 47, said: ‘New Zealand has been mentioned for a long while. I believe it’s only said to distract attention from Porton Down’.
Skripal and Yulia were rushed to hospital and put in induced comas to prevent the poison damaging their organs after they were found unconscious on a park bench on March 4, 2018 (pictured, fire brigade officers next to the bench)
She claims the top secret laboratory in Wiltshire staged the Novichok attack in March 2018 to undermine Russia.
She believes Skripal and his daughter have remained in ‘hospitable England’ under new identities.
She said: ‘I think we won’t have any more calls this year. Or in the next ten years.’
When he called last year, he told her: ‘Let’s decide, from this day you are on your own. We are on our own.’
He indicated he and Yulia were ‘fine’ but that they had no wish ever to return to Russia.
When she said his elderly mother needed increasing assistance, he replied ‘here I cannot help you,’ adding: ‘Soon we will be taken to another place.’
Elena, 38, who lives in the far east of Russian, said she hoped her uncle was doing well.
She said: ‘We do not know anything about Uncle Sergei and Yulia now. But we really hope that they are doing well.
After all the hype subsided, I think it is much easier for them to live. I would like to tell them that we love them, ask them to take care of themselves and each other.
‘We are happy if they are all right and doing well. I don’t know where they are now. They might be in any European country, and perhaps still in Britain.’
It remains a mystery why two agents were sent to target Mr Skripal, as he was pardoned for sharing Russian secrets with MI6 and had been allowed to start a new life in Britain. Pictured, the forensic tent at the scene where Mr Skripal and his daughter were found in March 2018
The report of their new life in New Zealand came a week before the broadcast of a BBC drama telling the stories of people caught up in the Novichok poisoning.
It also followed in February confirmation the pair were alive but no word on where they now lived.
British ambassador to Russia Deborah Bronnert said: ‘Of course they are alive. I can’t tell you where they are because we respect people’s right to make their own decisions.
‘Both the government and the police will always be guided by wishes of the individuals.’
Asked if they were in the UK she said: ‘Unfortunately, we cannot comment on these matters.’
Britain believes GRU agents Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin were behind the Novichok poisoning on the Skripals in Salisbury.
The attack claimed the life of British mother Dawn Sturgess, 44, after she handled a perfume bottle containing the poison.
Her boyfriend Charlie Rowley, 45, was seriously ill due to the contents of a bottle that he had found seven miles away.
Skripal had been exchanged with – among others – glamour spy Anna Chapman a decade ago in a Cold War-style exchange.
The Novichok attack claimed the life of British mother Dawn Sturgess, 44, (left) and her boyfriend Charles Rowley, 45, (right) was seriously ill after she handled a perfume bottle containing the poison which had been discarded by the Russian poisoners