US, France, Germany and Canada back Britain, pledge action over Salisbury poisoning assessment

The United States, France, Germany and Canada on Thursday backed Britain’s assessment that Russian officers were behind a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia and pledged further action, Reuters reports. The previous day, Britain charged two Russians in absentia with the attempted murder, saying the suspects were military intelligence officers almost certainly acting on orders from high up in the Russian state. In a joint statement with Britain, the nations urged Russia to provide “full disclosure of its Novichok program.” The Kremlin on Thursday denied that Russia had been in any way involved in the poisoning, describing British accusations that an attack had been approved by senior Russian officials as “unacceptable.”