Russia opens probe into poisoning of Skripal's daughter

The committee, which reports directly to President Vladimir Putin, opened a case based "on the fact of attempted premeditated murder of Russian national Yulia Skripal", it said in a statement.

The statement did not mention Yulia Skripal's father Sergei, who is also in a critical condition in hospital after being poisoned with a Soviet-designed nerve agent called Novichok.

Britain has accused the Russian government of responsibility for Skripals' poisoning and British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Friday it's "overwhelmingly likely" that Putin himself ordered the attack.

"Our quarrel is with Putin's Kremlin, and with his decision, and we think it overwhelmingly likely that it was his decision, to direct the use of a nerve agent on the streets of the UK, on the streets of Europe, for the first time since the Second World War," Johnson said.

Putin's spokesman has denounced Johnson's comment as "shocking and inexcusable."

Murder inquiry launched into death of Glushkov

The Investigative Committee said in the same statement that it had opened a murder probe into the suspected murder of a Russian living in London, Nikolai Glushkov, even though British police were still treating the crime as "unexplained."

Glushkov was a former deputy general director at the Aeroflot airline and associate of the late Kremlin opponent Boris Berezovsky.

Glushkov was found dead at his home in London on March 12, days after the poisoning of the Skripals.

London's Metropolitan Police have so far been treating the death as "unexplained".

A spokesman told AFP Friday that the police were awaiting the results of a post-mortem  expected later in the day.

The Russian embassy in London said this week that it had asked British authorities for details about Glushkov's death in the London suburb of New Malden.

Glushkov was an associate of Berezovsky, a one-time Putin supporter who then turned against him, and was found hanged in a bathroom at his home outside London in 2013.

Glushkov had received political asylum in Britain after being held in pre-trial detention and convicted in Russia for money laundering and fraud.

British police are revisiting a number of other unexplained deaths following the Skripal case.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)